Reading Report: 03 March 2024

機動戦士ガンダム第０８MS小隊

I am returning to an English format as school is starting up soon and I don't have the time to compose Japanese reports. This means 1) people can actually read them again, yay, and 2) I am going to be way too verbose again.
This week I watched about 10 hours of anime, finished reading 沈黙, and started a new book, 二十四歳職業OL転生先で、キシリアやってます .

ゲッターロボアーク

After finishing this series, I have finally completed my journey through all of Getter Robo. While there were some interesting wrinkles to this particular series, ultimately I think it fell short of my expectations, especially considering it's the most modern production. Like most post-90s Getter Robo shows, this one attempts to balance the heroic symbolism of the Super Robot and its potential as a dominating, corrupting weapon, which is perhaps best represented by the "final form" of Getter development, the Getter Emperor, a world-eating spaceship that spurred on the events of the season in the first place. A highlight was the relatively fresh half-saurian pilot Kamui, who is genuinely torn between his allegiances. It's an element that hasn't been done well since... Getter Robo (1974).

機動戦艦ナデシコ

Not too much to note, but this series somehow still manages to excellently balance comedy and tragedy. I really liked episode 18, which delves into Ruri's back story. It was immediately followed by episode 19 where the female crew members have an idol contest to see who will be the new ship captain, and while I've never seen it, my mind immediately went to Macross. Even episode 19 had compelling non-comedic storytelling threads towards the end.

機動戦士ガンダム第０８MS小隊

I watched episode 1 like a month ago, right before going hard into Getter. Now that I'm done with that I can return to peak. And yeah, I enjoyed this one quite a lot. It's simultaneously a Romeo & Juliet story (not a foreign trope for Gundam to be fair) and a Platoon-style jungle/guerrilla warfare story. Episode 6 really stood out to me. The youngest team member, ミケル, is distracted all episode by a letter he received. His distractions keep causing serious issues for the team's current mission, and we later find out it's because the letter's contents are quite heavy. A local guerrilla, キキ, who has been tagging along says she will help get a response letter delivered, and the captain, シロー, chews them both out saying they're not on a picnic.

「俺たちは気分で動くんじゃない、命令で動くんだ！」
Ironically this line kind of bites him in the ass later, but I thought it was interesting to see the "main character" (シロー) be fairly inflexible and strict.

沈黙

I mentioned this elsewhere, but I found it interesting how my judgement of Rodrigues in this book was often tied to how well he was able to play "the good christian".
Ultimately the story is not really about a good christian, it's more of a character study of just one guy who is trying his best to be a christian despite all the pressures around him attempting to make him turn.
I enjoyed the book quite a lot. The tragedy of each principle character, Rodrigues, Ferreira, and Kichijirou, all frustrated me in a way that feels so good.

二十四歳職業OL転生先で、キシリアやってます

From God to Gouf. This is an isekai LN about a 24 year-old woman who is reborn as a 13 year-old キシリア・ザビ, 11 years before the One Year war (the setting of the original Gundam). So far the story has mostly been excuses for the narration to namedrop every Gundam side character in existence and for the MC to point at characters and say "you're doing it wrong". The conceit is that there is "something wrong" that needs righting, so she's not totally out of line to do that at least.
I admit I don't really know much about the timeline of Gundam, so I'm not sure if mobile suits wouldn't canonically exist at this point, but notably in this story they do not exist, and that's something the MC wants desperately to fix so that she can elevate the ザビ家's status and right the timeline. So basically it's Ascendency of a Bookworm for mobile suits.

機動戦士ガンダム ウェアヴォルフ

A whodunnit manga set in the Gundam universe (UC0087).
A pilot comes back from battle in an experimental Gundam, and when his cockpit is opened he has been shot dead. There are no signs of external damage and the cockpit was only opened 3 times in total (once 11 hours prior to the battle, once when he got in, and once when he was found dead), so the murder is considered 密室殺人. The main engineer is the lead suspect and there's a vote for who to punish in 12 hours. A girl who is a would-be detective drags him along an investigation to clear his name and figure out who the real culprit is.
It's okay.

Others

勇気爆発バーンブレイバーン ep 8
マジンガーZ対暗黒大将軍 (40 minutes)
グレートマジンガー対ゲッターロボ (30 minutes)