Reading Report: 26 May 2024

鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

This week I finished FMA and started watching The Vision of Escaflowne.
Not too many spoilers but perhaps don't read if you're staying pure on FMA.

鋼の錬金術師 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

I finally finished this series. The content for this week basically covered the final arc from start to finish. I enjoyed the stories of some characters (Roy, Hohenheim, and Greed to some extent), though I found the conclusions for basically every character fell flat (especially post-final battle stuff). I don't want to spoil anything, but I generally just felt like themes established at the start of the show more or less didn't matter by the end. The "villain" side was extremely unrelatable, and I wasn't sold on the pathos of the main antagonist. I felt like the near-miss towards the end was reversed way too quickly, and then the final sacrifice didn't satisfy me at all. I could go on and on about the things I didn't like about the show, but honestly it was mostly just fine. Roy was a good character, and his relationship with Hawkeye was good (though I felt like some late-story development between them must have been cut for time).

天空のエスカフローネ

Started this new series. "Normal girl" Hitomi has visions and then gets transported to another world called Gaia with a rugged prince, Van. There is an evil empire, and a heroic magical mech called Escaflowne that is very cool. Each episode is marked by a tarot card and Hitomi is interested in tarot. She also has visions of future events, so her talents are basically being anxious all the time and sometimes warning Van about enemies behind him. I noticed the antagonist, Albatou, is voiced by the same woman who voices Envy in FMA. I'm usually pretty bad at voices so it's nice when I notice.
The bickering between Hitomi and a catgirl in the show was pretty cute. Also the other guy in the love triangle is a nice wrinkle.

本当にあった！世界の〝機動戦士ガンダム〟計画

Steadily getting through this. I read through the entirety of Part 2, "宇宙世紀の技術". This week the book touched on how the colonies work, the use of Minofsky particles (a fictional particle in the gundam universe) for a variety of functions such as anti-gravity, shielding, radar jamming, and even as a light source.
There was some discussion of space logistics, how food is prepared for space, how astronauts eat, bathe, and... other bathroom activities. Current space suit technology was discussed and compared against Gundam's Normal Suit. Apparently real space suits can weigh up to 100kg! The technology is still developing, though.
There was a chapter about Gundam Newtypes and top secret military science that attempted to create telepathic super soldiers.
Finally there was a column chapter about vehicles which mostly focused on how cool Jeeps are because of how easy they are to service, adapt, and retrofit.