This Blog Is About Art.

When you really get down to it, art is what this blog is about. Art is an expression of culture. Culture is my broader subject, but art is how I can best focus attention on that subject. For its part, art takes many forms, including anime and video games. These, too, express culture.

Recently, Gamespot had a “Why It Matters” feature on storytelling. Gamespot was eager to point out that this is not the same thing as “the plot.” Rather, a story in a video game is told through how the player experiences the game. This is a good observation, and one I wish to build on here.

In anime, the plot is not the entirety of the story. Nor is the script the story itself. Anime, built upon manga roots, is partly a visual medium; it is also heavily reinforced by sound, not only from the veteran-packed domestic voice acting (声優、seiyuu) industry, but by the wide varety of sound effects and music used to dramatize the experience. While sound effects and music are crisper, the experience has changed due to changes in visual technology.

Gundam 00 (double-o) is an excellent example of this. This was the first mecha show to really show us what could be done in full HD, though a great deal of praise must be given to Macross Frontier. While HD is something accomplished with extremely detailed, computer assisted backgrounds, older examples of inserting computer graphics into anime had spotty success, and felt jarring and unnatural much of the time. Comparing Gundam 00 to, let’s say, the original season of Aquarion, would result in amazement at the difference.

Put another way, Gundam 00 seems at home with an extremely high degree of technical wizardry. This is part of the story of the show, and a great deal of the artistic value of the show can be measured by how the story is told visually.

Now, I am well known among my friends for not being a great fan of the writing of Gundam 00, which I found to be far too mechanical for my tastes. Meant to be two seasons from the start, numerous events had to happen as scripted without any meaningful variation or the whole project would have been thrown off. Many characterizations were meant to be pretentious in one way or another. Overall, the whole show suffered from issues with creative genius… at the episode and show scripting levels.

Unlike some of my friends, I did watch the entire show and suffered through its difficult parts to see all the spectacular mecha in action. The mecha were absolutely not lacking in creativity; the designers did a lot of serious thinking, much of which is appreciated by serious fans who do a lot of chatter about the pretend physics details that interest them and draw them in. There’s a large “wouldn’t this be cool?” factor to it.

So, my personal feeling is that what success Gundam 00 has had – and certainly, it is considerable success – is thanks more to the creativity put into the machines portrayed in the show than the sense of grim inevitability of mankind’s sucking dragging down the present and the future which completely pervaded the script.

Put more bluntly, the experience that a great deal of people felt from Gundam 00 was better than the plot that they had to deal with. Therefore, they found Gundam 00 to tell a very compelling story as a whole. Certainly it is an epic story, but ultimately it’s all about touching upon possibilities and the what-ifs of the future, and if humanity can truly become ready for greater things (or will strangle itself to death first).

Well, the result is nine-tenths pessimism and one-tenths hope, which is not the ratio I go for when I watch a show, but that’s how it is.

In video games, many designers work hard to see that the story is told by the experience of the game much more than the plot. Now, let’s be honest here: sometimes designers go overboard and the plot feels thin as a result, too thin. However, let’s also not fault the reason for attempting such lofty goals; the sense of discovery of an unknown world, a world which we do not yet know, is a powerful motivation for playing any immersive game.

Properly accomplished, a video game draws a player into its world and uses interactivity and proactive player behavior to provide an experience that is more compelling, and more treasured, than passive artistic mediums where we are recipients of some kind of broadcast.

In this sense, we don’t play the game; the game plays us.

What I mean by this is, a video game is a structure and a system, but it is only the human element – the player – that makes it into entertainment. The game uses us to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, and far greater than a passive experience using the same components could provide. The game provides the player with input, but the player’s reactions, thoughts, and plans are the output that is required for the creation of a real experience.

Of course, we’re the ones who enjoy the result. That is good.

The Persona 4 Case

Now, this is more of an afterthought for me rather than the thrust of my point (the point being that anime and video games are art mediums for providing a vivid experience in their own ways), but the announcement of an anime directly based on the video game Persona 4 resulted in a very ambivalent reaction among Japanese people.

Apparently, it’s not really the issue of “the game has been done already” and the story has already been told; rather, it is that the story was designed to be told at the pace of a video game, with the intensive involvement of the player, creating an experience that cannot be simply replicated by an animated show.

This has little bearing on whether or not the anime will be good on its own. It is simply a natural concern that the comparisons can only be harsh because, as vivid and entertaining as anime can be, there are things that video games are likely to do better.

This simply reflects how powerful video games can be as a medium. This isn’t your old radio -> television -> broadcast style internet. This is true interactivity. It’s a different animal. It is not just art – it is direct transmission of culture.

In the case of Japanese video games, there’s a lot of Japanese culture – or at least cultural ideas and biases – that are overtly and covertly transmitted.

But, enough general talk. Sometime in the future I’ll do posts on far more specific things. I just thought I’d cover the big picture while I had some time. – J

Oh and, definitely count me among the mecha crowd. I’ve played the predecessor of this PSP game exhaustively. Rather than babble about my experiences, those inclined to see a sampling of the various series and mecha should just watch the video above. Have fun! – J

“Sighted” Via Twitter

Some fans of Gundam 00 had wondered if Gundam Exia had even survived the end of the second season in some form, or if it had been completely destroyed, never to be utilized again in any way.

Apparently, it had survived in some form, though details are not particularly clear. Exia did not appear in the Gundam 00 movie whatsoever, and I can only guess, but this is likely because it was not combat worthy whatsoever; possibly the all-important GN Drive had been lost, but some other capabilities would have survived.

Namely, stealth camouflage.

What we do know is that Setsuna’s use of Gundam Exia to covertly travel around Earth was revealed on a Twitter account officially used by Gundam 00 staff. (It’s in Japanese, by the way!) This was relayed to me by all-around Gundam 00 super-fan Velocity7. His efforts are appreciated.

I try not to get too too deep into the super obscure fan stuff, but the survival or non-survival of a main character mecha of a major anime is absolutely worthy of mention here.

Due to Velocity7’s efforts, information on this page regarding the repaired Gundam Exia used at the end of Season 2 was properly updated. That’s how you increase your cred as a mecha fanboy, people. Get to work.

Depiction: The Gundam 00 qan[t], shortly after entering the quantum portal in the Gundam 00 movie. No spoilers – watch the movie if you want to see where the destination is.

Pretty, isn’t it? This just underlines how Gundam 00 is the hardest core “science fiction” Gundam ever made. That is, there’s more elements that could fit comfortably into Star Trek (besides the Gundams themselves) than in any other part of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise.

A Naive Idea, Often Repeated

An idea advanced by Japanese writers, directors, and thinkers in general, goes something like this: if we only understood what was in each others’ hearts, war would cease and we would become a better, more advanced race with eternal peace among ourselves.

This is naive.

Let’s get right to the point, and take Japanese society as an example.

In Japanese society, humans are packed like sardines as a matter of course. One of the key reasons this society has a low incidence of violence in spite of the crowding is that offenses are apologized for instantly and with the veneer of sincerity. Profusely apologizing as a signal of heartfelt contrition defuses innumerable situations, avoiding a vast amount of violence by stopping incidents mid-way.

Now let’s add the psychic ability to understand that the other party’s apology is completely insincere.

There would be rivers of blood.

The Gundam View

Now, if you take a franchise like Gundam, especially Gundam 00 (leading up to the Gundam 00 movie), you essentially have this idea, writ large, punctuated by large robots and mass violence to show us what we need to evolve away from.

Essentially, the metaplot is that an incompletely evolved human race, taking small steps or even large steps towards enlightenment, but not all the way there, is condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past until humanity all becomes newtypes, i.e. a new type of human being. This has become invariably associated with psionic insight, culminating in “resonance” between two psychics that puts each into the other’s head (with the individuals represented naked on-screen to visually punctuate how the walls are down).

In Zeta Gundam, an incident like this between one of the villains (a woman) and the main character resulted in the woman taking vicious offense to what was, unintentionally, but still vividly in her own mind, a violation of the armor she put up around herself to keep people out. Rather than finding enlightenment, she reconfirmed in her own mind that politically oriented violence was a far better way of getting people to do what you want than trying to appeal to their better selves.

Also, more to the point, stopping war when you haven’t won makes defeat permanent and she wasn’t going to accept that at all.

For this, said main character considered her one of the sources of evil poisoning the world. And I’m not saying that she wasn’t; rather, the world itself had a lot of issues, so believing that weapons are one way to change it isn’t crazy. One can call it evil, but it certainly isn’t the stupidity people claim it to be.

In other words, that’s an example of the negative view: psychic ability won’t save us until we change ourselves so that we are worthy of this kind of connectivity with each other.

But there are problems with that.

As for Gundam 00, my reviews of the movie (non-spoiler, spoilers included) should be instructive.

The Cyborg 009-1 Hypothesis

In Episode 2 of Cyborg 009-1, a show featuring a shapely and intelligent lady/ secret agent/ cyborg, a psychic girl is pursued by agents because the ‘Western Bloc’ powers deem psionic mutants to be a threat that has to be rooted out. Agent 009-1 (9-1 for short, goes by Mylene) is sent to confirm the killing of this child after four intelligence agents died in the process, the last of which was filmed shooting himself in the head with his own pistol.

The actual killing was meant to be done by a special forces unit or something of that ilk, but it goes terribly wrong, with the parents dying to conceal (at first) an underground escape route that the girl uses to get away. While pursuing, the men of the unit start fighting and killing each other left and right. Finally, the captain hunts for her with Agent 9-1 watching with some horror as the man is forced to shoot himself as well.

She sees the girl, clearly created to resemble a younger version of herself, alone behind a tree, looking out. The girl finally shrieks and runs off.

Agent 9-1 realizes that the girl is like a mirror. The only power she has, one she did not choose, was to use the violent urges and intentions of other people against themselves. Agent 9-1 wasn’t there to kill her, nor was she inclined to do so, and therefore nothing affected her. (Quick note: Psi wave blocking devices were not powerful enough to stop her. This includes 9-1’s own, the same kind as the captain’s.) So, the captain’s wanting to kill the girl so badly, and resisting all efforts to stop him from doing so, is what led him to shoot himself in the head.

Agent 9-1 ponders if the girl is a new kind of humanity, and if humanity would get along with each other if people knew what lay in each other’s hearts. At any rate… who was the real monster in this whole story?

What I like about this is, Agent 9-1 (Mylene) may have an opinion, but there’s no attempt to force the viewer to agree. It is all too easy to argue that there are no heroes here, and that is the tone the show takes in general. It’s a thinking man’s ambiguity.

I happen to think it’s a surprisingly good show in general.

The Ultimate Groupthink

The problem I have with the newtype awakening concept isn’t so much an issue of practicality.

It’s an issue of morality.

If we were able to peer into the heads of others and know for real what they were thinking, and not just what images they learn to project for deception purposes (a logical step), we would then have the ultimate tool for enforcing pure conformity of thought. Whatever thoughtcrime people commit would be evident, and could be punished. The perpetrator could be eliminated altogether, leaving an ideologically cleansed people behind.

So yes, maybe in the end we’ll all get along… because those who think like we do will be the only people left standing.

Personally, I think we need our individuality. We need our mental distance. Like the director of Paprika tried to convey, albeit in an overly psychedelic manner, we need our dreams as refuges from other people. The more these sacred boundaries are trampled on, the less we can call ourselves individuals.

Even in Japan, people have their individuality. There may be great social pressures to subsume that individuality for the greater good, but it’s still there, and there is arguably no deeper need for a Japanese person than to have that individuality respected, especially because they’re afraid to show it without knowing it’s OK first.

Mutual mental invasions make the world smaller. Too small. We wouldn’t be able to live with each other. The human race could even have a hard time surviving. We’re social creatures, not a hive mind, and there’s no reason we should be a hive mind. Because that’s the only way mass thought swapping could wind up, really. A collective thought entity that eliminates complexity and individuality because it isn’t… convenient.

I’ll take this world as it is, rather than go for that ideal, which is, well… people just refusing to look at the other side of it.

This is where I think the old Star Trek with Captain Kirk would’ve had an advantage over others. The show’s writers had a deep, fundamental respect for humanity, and didn’t think we should be in such a rush to discard that humanity, even after meeting races many people would – and if nerd enough, do – laud for having “superior” methods of thought sharing, social organization, or even that fanatical devotion to logic thing. Often, a show would have a simple message in the end: there is too much of a good thing in this universe. Progress must be natural and not forced, or we lose something precious.

I understand that there is a Japanese wish for war to just magically go away forever, but losing the peace through surrendering our individuality and humanity is no victory for the human race. – J

Gundam 00 Movie:

Awakening of the Trailblazer

Spoilers Under Tags Below

Non-spoiler review HERE.

Now, the point of this review is not to spoil the plot. It is to write in detail about various things of interest to the Gundam community, especially details which are not explained within the four corners of the movie itself.

But, no discussion of these things without spoiler tags. So, let’s dive into the spoiler space, minna-san!

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And Now, The Review

So for people who didn’t want to go through all those details, here’s my simple, spoiler-enhanced short version of a review. But, it too will be under spoilers. See the non-spoiler review for er, a non-spoiler review.

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And that’s all for now. Comments welcome. Anyone reading this post has been repeatedly warned, so don’t bother worrying about spoilers in the comments.

Thanks. – J

No Spoilers Here

Spoilers, under appropriate tags, will be included in a separate post. This post is spoiler-free so that I can link back to it for people who don’t want to know any of the plot.

The Skinny

This is a must-see for fans of the Gundam 00 series. If you haven’t seen any of the show, or much of it, you can still enjoy it as a movie, but the movie does not stop to hold your hand and explain who characters are (beyond pointing us at the main character) and what their relationships to each other are.

This movie has spectacular visuals. If you have a large HDTV and want to make it sing, get this on Blu-Ray when you can and feel your optic receptors explode. The battles are very visually intense. Judged purely by visual hedonism, this movie is 10 of 10.

The theme – again, without spoilers about how it ends – is first contact with an alien species. As such, it is best approached as more traditional science fiction that just happens to have giant robots (Gundams) in it, rather than dwell on it being a “Gundam” anime.

Now, to be completely honest, I always found Gundam 00 to be very predictable in overall plot, however ornate its handling of technical details (minor and major). The movie is no different. The movie retains the series’ penchant for over-wrought dialog, but that’s the nature of the beast.

In its favor, the movie has a minimum of human beings acting like jerks, largely thanks to the single unifying threat in the show.

Running time: 2 Hours (120 minutes). Bring extra popcorn.

Overall impression:

It is what it is. If you’re into Gundam 00, or into the sci-fi genre, watch it, enjoy it for what it is, and sit back and enjoy the pretty colors.

A Sniper’s Dream Come True

For people who have not actually watched Gundam 00, this post may show you things you have not seen before. Really, I wanted to resume showing the background of the Gundam 00 Movie, not so much in terms of plot, which you could skip 98% of and still grasp the movie, but in terms of mecha, which are the real reason to watch a mecha show.

I know, I know, it’s supposed to be human drama, but when you make machines that have humanoid characteristics, they become de facto characters as well. Let’s not deny that they’re a big part of the attraction.

Recap: Technological Foundation

All Gundams in Gundam 00 are based around a super-particle that the series calls GN Particles, with no actual breakdown of what “GN” stands for. Keep this in mind when reading the rest of this article.

The Gundams of the “protagonist” organization Celestial Being use what are known as “solar furnaces” for engines, miraculous even for the futuristic setting, being nearly perpetual energy machines. These GN Drives have effectively unlimited operating time, but are limited in how much energy they can generate at any one moment. This provides the foundation for the Gundams’ astonishing abilities and weaponry.

Concept

As the first headline suggests, Dynames was designed for sniping. However, this is not quite its only function; it serves as a highly mobile sniper/ sharpshooter. The combination of relatively high agility and great accuracy and power in its ranged weapons creates the need for what passes for a co-pilot.

“Haro”

This cute looking talking robot was originally part of the first Mobile Suit Gundam as a hand-built toy created by the main character, a teenager with high mechanical aptitude. (As with many old mecha anime (and despite the show’s overall introduction of a highly “realistic” style), the main character was the son of the lead designer of the Gundam itself.) In later incarnations of the franchise, Haro units appeared at various times as well.

Only in one previous anime, Gundam V (“Victory”), did a fully intelligent AI-based Haro serve as a co-pilot for an early teen main character. Here, the pilot is the decidedly young adult Lockon Stratos (a codename).

With this setup, Haro acts as the co-pilot, but in reality, handles virtually everything except actual shooting. This includes evasive action, sensor search, emergency SOS, and so on and so forth.

Cockpit of Gundam Dynames. Lineart from mahq.net

Weapons

GN Beam Sabers

Although not favored by the design concept, this suit is equipped with two GN Beam Sabers (originally explained here) for last-ditch melee defense. As the chosen pilot is not a close combat specialist by any stretch, even pistols (see below) are preferred to this unless truly desperate.

GN Beam Pistols

Dynames is equipped with a pair of GN Pistols, firing high velocity GN particles with great rate of fire and accuracy. Lockon and Haro combine to create a combat style of high speed evasion combined with pinpoint shots at close range, though things like strafing can be done to hold the enemy at a distance.

GN Missiles

The front skirt armor and both knees contain launchers for GN Missiles, which are ideally used against large targets or groups of enemies. Thus, Dynames has a means of delivering heavy firepower that the Exia cannot match, as one example.

GN Sniper Rifle

This is the main weapon of Gundam Dynames.

To put it briefly, the GN Sniper Rifle is a high energy, long range, extremely accurate sniper rifle. However, the GN Drive used by Dynames provides so much energy that the sniper rifle can be fired multiple times in close succession. This makes Dynames more resistant to “rushing” tactics.

Given time to shoot, the power and accuracy of this rifle is more than sufficient to annihilate whole squads in short order. In addition, the energy blasts are so rich with particles that atmospheric dissipation of energy beams is less of a factor, resulting in much longer effective range than most blasts would have.

The rifle can be stabilized by a bipod, taking advantage of the mobile suit’s humanoid design, but is usually attached to a rotatable right shoulder dock (which allows Dynames to switch to other weapons without losing the rifle). An optional scope may be attached above the barrel, in addition to the head’s custom external optics to further enhance reliability in targeting.

Who could multitask with this? That's why there's Haro.

A custom control system within the cockpit is used to make firing the rifle as similar to firing a “real” rifle as possible, allowing a human’s acquired sharpshooting skills to be fully translated through the suit to the final shot.

Super Substratospheric Altitude Gun

This is a special weapon system, essentially a SuperSized GM Sniper Rifle with obscene weight and bulk, that is meant for one task: sniping orbital targets from the surface of the Earth. This, combined with holographic camouflage that hides the suit before the critical moment, allows Dynames to receive an order, equip the weapon, aim, and blast a satellite from the ground.

Aside from that single purpose, it is not very practical, but it is powerful. It’s the sort of idea that gets put into a show just because it’s cool.

It is, too.

Conclusion: In The Right Hands…

In the hands of a born sniper with well-honed skills, this would be an incredibly deadly weapon of battle. Given that exactly such a person did pilot it, this was an incredibly effective tactical weapon.

Of course, it lacked any truly special defensive system – something addressed in a later version – and always retained a vulnerability in melee combat, but only a select few pilots (with the right machine) would be capable of exploiting this weakness.

Being specialized is not a bad thing. Used properly and wisely, this high performance machine played its role very, very well indeed.

Stuck in the wrong tactical situation, it would not fare well at all.

Per my earlier interview with Velocity7, I wanted to demonstrate why Velocity7 considers the first “main character mecha” of Gundam 00 to be special and unique. After all, the Gundam franchise is long and storied; to stand out takes some effort.

Technological Foundation

All Gundams in Gundam 00 are based around a super-particle that the series calls GN Particles, with no actual breakdown of what “GN” stands for. Keep this in mind when reading the rest of this article.

The Gundams of the “protagonist” organization Celestial Being use what are known as “solar furnaces” for engines, miraculous even for the futuristic setting, being nearly perpetual energy machines. These GN Drives have effectively unlimited operating time, but are limited in how much energy they can generate at any one moment. This provides the foundation for the Gundams’ astonishing abilities and weaponry.

Concept

Gundam Exia is a specialized close-combat “mobile suit” (manned humanoid combat robot) built for stealth, speed, extreme agility, situational flexibility, redundancy, and raw offensive force.

Exia was conceived as a mobile suit that would rapidly close with an enemy force, being detected only after, or just prior to, the first strike. Such a concept demands an aggressive suite of close combat weaponry.

Key Handling Characteristics

• High speed, maneuverability, agility
• Stripped-down armor; lower survivability if actually struck

Weapons

(In ascending order)

GN Vulcan Guns

Weak GN particle rapid-fire guns fired from the forearms of Exia.

GN Beam Daggers

Beam weaponry in hand to hand weapon form functions much like a lightsaber from Star Wars, though of course these use GN particles for the blades instead. The power output is similar to a full saber, but in a concentrated, harder to diffuse (i.e. break up) form. Later, technology to manipulate beam weapon length is achieved, making these daggers obsolete.

GN Beam Sabers

Mounted near the back of the arms, these two hilts can be drawn and turned into beam sabers through the use of GN particle filled force fields. Positrons (positively charged ions) form the fields themselves. That is, when physical contact with a solid object is made, the positron field gives way and the particles burn through the offending object.

GN Blades

Lineart: mahq.net

Gundam Exia possesses two solid “blades” of varying length, a GN Long Blade and a GN Short Blade. In essence, these are used so that the Exia always has the capacity to use a blade similar to the GN Sword (below) without requiring the extra elbow room required to swing the darned thing.

GN Sword

This is a solid GN Blade attached to the “bottom” of the miniature forearm shield. It is normally carried jutting back from the shield, but at a moment’s notice, it swings into a forward position. The GN Sword and the GN Blades are coated with GN particles when active, so they are not simply solid metal in action. Rather, the solid blade serves to add momentum and power to the GN particle “edge” and greatly enhance the speed at which it does catastrophic damage to the target.

At the design stage, it was conceived as a weapon of last resort against a target that is capable of diffusing GN particles, to the point that even condensed close combat beam sabers and beam daggers would be ineffective.

I like to refer to the GN Sword as the mother of all can openers.

In the folded position, the combined GN Sword/ forearm shield exposes a short beam rifle, which constitutes the Exia’s only significant standoff weapon.

Defensive Systems

GN Shield

This simple shield system provides the Gundam Exia, with its limited armor, with something to place between itself and enemy fire and close combat weapons.

In accordance with the design philosophy, the shield has a tapered point that can be used as a physical stabbing weapon.

Conclusion: A Radical Concept

Certainly, the Exia is a concept swung very far to the close quarters combat end of the scale. As such, it was far less of a “general purpose” war machine than most Gundams throughout the franchise, while still having the air of a serious machine intended for armed conflict in a realistic (albeit not real) setting.

In other words, it is radical, but also a complete and serious conceptual design.

Fine work if you ask me.

I think I would be inconsiderate to reply to Velocity7’s answers to my “interview” questions without explaining who this guy, Ali-Al Saachez, is.

Antagonist, And Proud Of It

Imagine, for an instant, a war otaku who’s good at the real thing. A connoisseur of death, destruction, war, conflict, and violence in all their forms. A man who seeks battle purely because he enjoys it. A man who is a shameless mercenary, not because he wants the money, but because it’s a legal way to get to kill people. A man who founded a terrorist group using child soldiers to resist the invasion of his homeland in the name of God, blaspheming that name to justify every atrocity, every murder of innocents – and who enjoyed killing so much, he adopted it as his new lifestyle.

Back in his terrorist days, his child soldiers were required to murder their own families to prove their devotion to God (or more accurately, to Saachez). One of these child killers left the nest and became the main character of Gundam 00, adopting the alias of Setsuna F. Seiei and acting to bring about an end to war. Seeing no fun in that, and truly enjoying the idea of toying with his former student (and more importantly, getting the best of his Gundam, a dedicated close combat weapon that seems to exist to goad Saachez, a close combat specialist), Saachez spends much of the show fighting Setsuna and Celestial Being, both on a tactical level (combat) and a strategic level (fostering war and conflict).

In short, Ali-Al Saachez comes off as the living embodiment of everything the protagonists are trying to stop in the world.

Due to the risk of the rest being spoilers in some way – the above wasn’t, it’s background that the show freely offers – I’ll put the rest in spoiler space.

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So, if you went through everything in the spoiler space, you can see that Ali-Al Saachez was a very busy man, a real fountain of inspiration for psychopaths everywhere.

Small wonder Velocity7 finds Saachez to be one of his favorite antagonists. I mean, if you’re going to be a murderous psychopath, have some pride in it, you know?

Saachez cannot be accused of lacking pride in his work. Or put another way,

If you enjoy what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. – The Punisher

Let it be said, Ali-Al Saachez truly enjoyed his work.