Reading Report: 01 March 2026

無敵超人ザンボット３

有害図書の本

The chapters this week included a bit more of a history lesson about the Tokyo regulations from the 60s through 2024. Kimi Rito had one chapter about it with a lot of data and graphs to demonstrate the trends throughout each decade. It also had a chart with "colour coding" but because the book is in black and white it was basically impossible to parse, aha...

There was also a chapter where Kimi Rito visits the national library where he was able to access a handful of "adult-designated" books. To my interest, two of the books were BLUE by Yamamoto Naoki, the first tankobon to be hit by the regulations (Yamamoto Naoki also illustrated the art used throughout this book, which is neat), and Bed no Okazu, another early manga that got hit by regulations.

Finally out of the history lessons, I got into the section which is a series of interviews. I'm deep in the third interview now, though there haven't really been any noteworthy points raised that weren't already touched on earlier.

Actually, right at the end of my reading session Saturday night I read the people involved in one interview agree that 手塚治虫 (Tezuka Osamu) is not just the god of manga, his liberal approach to sex and violence shows that they're themes that can't be untangled from manga. I totally agree.

スーパーロボット大戦ＥＸ

I feel like my progress with the game was quite slow this week, owing partially to one particularly lengthy mission.

In one mission Kayla and Hathaway from Char's Counterattack showed up. A surprise, but a welcome one. I've never used Hathaway as a pilot in SRW so I decided to raise him up.

I got to a mission where we confronted Ruozole, the guy who (partially) revived the god of destruction at the end of Masaki's route. It gave me some flash backs to a similar mission with unique golems on Masaki's route. I wonder if the bad guy in that mission was Ruozole or someone else... ah well.

Ruozole revived Gilgilgan, the big bad from SRW 1, and always a welcome sight because it validates my time spent playing that gameboy game.

メダリスト

I finished this series. It was alright, though I didn't really find it particularly special. I was actually kind of shocked by how high it was rated on Anilist considering my experience left me feeling pretty uninterested in watching the following season. In the interest of fairness I would like to mention a few things I did like: Inori is a very sweet character, and her chemistry with Tsukasa is quite good; I generally liked the episode where Inori forgets her luggage on the train and Tsukasa has to rush to get it before the competition starts; I liked when characters made visible mistakes during the ice skating, including the part where Inori hurts herself after finishing one routine.

I found the broader cast quite exhausting. Miketa (Mikke) has some nice moments, and she was probably the best of the side characters. Hikaru and Rio just did nothing for me. I especially found the whole, "You'll never be at her level so don't even try," shtick by Jun so tired.

I think Medalist has just enough in it that reminds me why I typically don't watch sports anime. It's so obsessed with the tournament format, it wants to have a "colourful cast!" but every sports anime is still obsessed with emulating a natural world (give me an ice skating anime where humans compete with aliens or something), and the main character(s) always have to be the underdogs but just good enough that they continue to qualify/succeed up to an elite level. Now you may want to say, "But, Ruby, super robot anime is also formulaic!"

Yes. But they look cool.

真ゲッターロボ世界最後の日

Finished the rewatch of this on Saturday and Sunday (today). Definitely enjoyed the second half of the story more than the first, which actually made me reassess the series as a whole a little bit more. If I were to watch it again I'd almost want to just skip over the first few episodes, so the image of it being a "basically perfect" anime feels less true for me.

I really like the way they make Kei and Gou fit into this weird world, and it has some amazing animations for fusions and fights. Plus Yuushou/Heroism is still the coolest song.

無敵超人ザンボット３

I decided to put this on a fast track after watching a fairly interesting video about the history of Super Robots in the 70s. The video basically spoils the end of the story, but it was the kind of spoiler that I didn't mind hearing about; instead it sort of gave me the confidence that this series would be exploring new ground.

And I love it. For the first time I feel connected to the city under peril. The camera and story gives plenty of focus on the suffering of the human society under attack from the enemy kaiju* in a continuous way that isn't just designed to demonstrate their threat. It's not uncommon for the start of super robot/hero anime to first introduce the kaiju* to demonstrate its power level and/or a gimmick, but Zambot 3 shows the continuous threat, drain, and suffering of people who have to struggle to keep living while the Zambot team can at least control their own destiny (to some degree) by piloting high-tech machines.

I tweeted^ on bluesky about a particular scene in episode 5 that demonstrated how Kappei, the main character and pilot of Zambo-Ace, does not recognise his position of responsibility or power and inappropriately threatens (as a joke) people expressing genuine concerns about his family's presence in the area. One thing I love about this drama is that Kouzuki (the one verbalising the anxiety) is right and wrong. He's right that Kappei should take the existing threat more seriously and the Jin family should at least make attempts to prevent civilian deaths, but it's also clear that the Mechaboost do not care about where the Zambot is - they kill humans indiscriminately and they destroy landmarks in countries that Zambot does not have easy access to. I should probably examine this taste of mine more deeply, but characters who are strongly motivated but also antagonistic and misguided by a sense of duty. Yes, I love Javert Les Miserable.

*Kaiju: or Mechasaurus, or Aliens, or Mechaboost as they may be in this series. Just big, threatening enemies.
^Tweeted: Well, I "posted" or "skeeted" but I feel like "tweet" is still the most appropriate verb for this level of expression.