Reading Report: 10 March 2024

二十四歳職業OL転生先で、キシリアやってます

This week I watched about 10 hours of anime and read about 70 pages of 二十四歳職業OL転生先で、キシリアやってます.

機動戦士ガンダム ジ・オリジン

A 6-episode OVA series covering the story of Gundam from UC0068-0079. I sort of fast-tracked watching this because I realised that the light novel I was reading was covering the same era with an expectation of familiarity. Strangely I ended up being more chronologically confused since the apparent age of キシリア (the sole female member of the Zabi family, and protagonist of the light novel) is not consistent between the OVA and book.
The story mostly focuses on キャスバル and アルテイシア who are the rightful heirs to Zeon but are forced into hiding because of Zabi shenanigans. There were some great moments, though I felt that some moments were a bit forced in order to get all of the major players into place for the start of the original Gundam series.
A nice line was during a little coup シャア (キャスバル) and ガルマ orchestrated. ガルマ is kind of a wimpy boy, but シャア convinces him to be the face of the coup by saying:

君は、自分の手で歴史の歯車を回してみたくないのか？
I think ガルマ's naivete generally came across well throughout the series.

機動武闘伝Gガンダム

Watched 6 more episodes of this when I had some free time. My feeling about this series could maybe be summed up like this... I think most Gundam shows could be on evening broadcasts or even shown in cinemas and feel at home. Gundam G feels like a morning cartoon. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's really hard to feel invested in the story compared to basically any other Gundam property (or even other recent anime I've watched). I like ドモン and レイン's relationship. I can't stand the mobile suit designs.

勇気爆発バーンブレイバーン

I'll probably hold off on more detailed thoughts until the show ends, but this was a pretty good episode.

二十四歳職業OL転生先で、キシリアやってます

So the main development since last week is that the timeline continues to go out of whack while キシリア tries to correct things. Mobile suit development is stagnant, and even a test model in computer simulations looks nothing like what キシリア wants. Minofsky's lab is not being funded and plans to fund it are being blocked by Deikun. Likewise the import of Helium 3 (which I guess is relevant for Minofsky particles) has been banned. I stopped reading last night just as キシリア was rocking up to Deikun's house to confront him about everything, so maybe I'm on the cusp of a big revelation.
Another small timeline mishap includes キシリア accidentally encouraging ガルマ and キャスバル's friendship, which could interfere with シャア infiltrating Zeon later on.