Steamflogger Boss wrote:I don't really read manga much but the anime of Gundam Origin was phenomenal so I'm not surprised the manga is good.
if you're not familiar, and it's very likely you're not because they're coy about it if you don't look directly into it, the ova series only adapts the "prequel" content that is in the manga, which is less than a quarter of the overall content (and drops in to add to already existing changes somewhere about a quarter into the manga). parts of the story get significant rewrites and a lot of characterizations for classic characters change, a few events happen really significantly different. while everything ends in just about the same place as first gundam, how you get there
really matters a lot, and some characters are in very different emotional places, lines along their spiritual progress and development, etc. there's some follow-up content that's pretty fun, too.
the tone of the ova's is a bit off and the 3d... really sucks. it really sucks to the point i had this bizarre fear that the mecha fights in the comic would be awful (they are, of course, actually breathtakingly gorgeous), which put me off reading it for a while. a really superstitious, paranoid fear looking back on it, but sweet fuck that shit looked so bad it put the fear of god in me. no joke, i still get flashbacks to the shit in the first ova, in particular, where everything is moving around so fast and seemingly 100% without any morphing of the models in any frames that it is not only difficult to parse but looks so bad that it casts serious aspersions on whether you'll be able to have faith in any given gundam thing to ever look good again. there is no way that YAS got to direct that as he wanted to (he didn't even get to direct the ova's, just did some supervision iirc) and i'm sure he sat there with that extraordinarily humble look on his face as he asserted that it looked like ass. or maybe he just shut up because he already realized with the terms he'd hesitantly set with the producers would mean things like this. it is really, really interesting how much he decided he wanted to work on gundam again and how much his doing that (after years away, entirely, and many more from animating) meant that he knew there would be endless squabbling with executives wanting to stifle any creative control to a man who has repeatedly proven to be a stellar creator.
those fights in the first ova have outright become what i use to set the tone for what i will accept before getting insulted. those ridiculous spins the models make, the absolute disregard for so many key fundamentals of proper animation, eugh. thank GOD the fights in cucuruz doan's island look beautiful despite the continued use of 3D for them. you can 100% tell he directed those if you're familiar with them - the palettes, the key frames, the angles, the dramatic emphasis... all 100% obviously his touch. plenty of traditional animation in the smoke billowing, the eruptions of gas and light, the dust kicking up as things move around, etc. that movie is thoroughly gorgeous. his character designs also properly shine through whereas i always thought they looked good but
just a little weird in the origin ovas.
i took a couple of gifs of cucuruz doan's island to give you a little teaser into its quality. they introduce a really interesting organic mobile suit (extremely wild canonical implications for early UC especially) that i think you're going to like:
anyway, right, the origin. there's a few differences in what it presents, too. in particular, they seemed to want to make char more sinister. i don't quite understand why they did this and if it was their own decision or yas'. i could believe yas suggested it, but at the same time it doesn't really fit well into the manga that he would have - in cold blood - just straight-up assassinated that classmate that hands him the mask (though maybe even if yas suggested it, it isn't meant to connect, it's just a surprise thing for the animation if you've already read the manga). it doesn't really make sense, especially given some of the things he says in the sayla confrontation in the manga on TEXAS COLONY. that raid scene, all-in-all, is super embellished in the ovas for... i guesssss pacing reasons? the thing that makes me the most mad is how the ovas end with "TO CONTINUE THIS EPIC STORY, GO BUY THE BLU-RAYS FOR MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM AND PAY FOR THAT SHIT AGAIN." i cannot imagine how many people, particularly westerners who don't read manga, were deluded into seriously thinking that somehow despite all these wildly serious character changes that this was ever meant to just immediately follow into first gundam. insane. i was deluded, at the time, and more than confused lol. i knew the manga existed but thought it was just this content being adapted. it is chillingly sinister how pernicious the people who control media properties born from love and hard work are. gundam is in a constant battle between becoming everything it stands against and having an exciting new property remind you starkly of what's good in life and the horrors of the world.
iirc, yas expressed desire at adapting all of the origin manga, but has repeatedly declined because of refusal to give him more creative control. the guy is... seriously getting up there, i don't know how much he has left in him. everything that he does at this point feels like not just frosting, but entire additional cakes upon the already existing cake. i'm really eternally grateful for his continued service in entertainment. i promise i'm not just buying more model kits and idly thinking about how cool war is but that you're actually selling me, a non-christian, on the passion of christ, yas. whatever change you have wanted to instigate in the human mind to be more compassionate is really and truly being communicated in your work to anyone receptive. i don't want to make the guy out to be a god, he's just a really hard-working person and with more than a few faults (and he certainly sees himself as such), but he's a wellspring in times like these. i've already recommended his adaptation of kaze to ki no uta's early chapters, but i also really heavily recommend venus wars, if you haven't seen it. superb shit.
(left to right, from his
jesus manga. infuriating to me this wasn't flipped and the scans are twenty centuries old but i think it was a christian group who weren't even huge yas fans or something)
(i love how he consistently depicts the disciples as idiots)
the origin is a whopping 23 volumes, 24 if you count the bonus material added together. or, preferably 12 hardcover special editions that are very, very nice - glossy paper stock for fully gorgeous yas color explosions, you seriously get dozens of breathtaking full-color paintings per volumes. the chalky but smooth exterior texture makes it a firm and comfortable grip in your reading hand, but it's obnoxiously hard to get without smushed spines because the way books are shipped these days is an actual affront to god. i really recommend buying those, preferably in-store so that you're able to inspect the condition, first. localization is spot-on, though some of the text boxes are... i think they could have maybe set the text a little better. more of a nitpick than a condemnation, it's still quite readable and superbly written.
one thing i have to say, though! if you don't like the kids, you are maybe going to be deeply frustrated at certain parts and how much the comic relief and little drops of humanism are eked out by their smiling faces. but you're also
wrong. that's right, i'm going to say this to everyone here and you can fight me if you want: if you don't like katz, kikka (especially kikka, yas really fucking loves drawing her and she's such a primordially, platonically-exact, happy blobshape that if you're not smiling every time she's in a panel, i'm not sure you experience happiness), and letz, you don't actually like what
mobile suit gundam is actually about. every seriously great gundam work is about children and the hope for future generations... which is part of why despite liking war in the pocket a lot, i can't bring myself to "love it." it's cruel and hilarious and cynical but it is obviously deliberately trying to be anti-gundam and i think that's not as hard or clever to present as gundam and more than a little bit questionably mean to stick to poor tomino-san (who i love to pieces but is - in stark contrast to yas' too-much-humility becoming a hubris of its own - a bit of an insecure retard whose feelings you should be more considerate of when working with his ideas) in the first work he wasn't involved with.
drauch wrote:I want that cat one, too. Shame about the shipping. I got fucked so hard on it recently that it soured me for a bit (6000 yen for 9000 yen figure).
to really take advantage of import services, you've got to be willing to do them in bundles and then to sometimes get really assertive in messages about consolidating your boxes into one shipment in addition to selecting options to do that. tell them to take things out of their shipping containers, waive the insurance checks to do this, etc. you can save a lot, but you also have to first be willing to... spend a lot. there's a couple other cat covers, if you're interested, i was unable to determine if these are both consolidated in that one hardback or not but felt they'd be worth it just for the cover illustrations, either way.