Jman

I’ve posted about it before, but Warner Media is betting the farm on HBO Max and has begun restructuring just about everything to support it. Why else would they be throwing Wonder Woman 84 on there? I’m genuinely shocked there isn’t an archive of All Elite Wrestling there.

Tsuburaya has always demanded more control over its projects than other companies, so Syber Squad is a pretty accurate version of Gridman, just one with a rather eclectic cast including Curry and Matthew Lawrence of all people. Ultraman and Sentai are cousins rather than direct opposites, which is probably why Syber Squad did better than most of the PR also rans.

Barry Yandel does his damndest to impersonate Curry (he said on Twitter that he was specifically told to study Curry’s performances).

Gridman himself isn’t a mecha but a giant hero like Ultraman (same company). You don’t need to know anything about Gridman or Syber Squad, and the show doesn’t expect you to have that information outside or shout outs and the like.

Anyway, Gridman is good, but I wonder how many people even remember Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad.

So imagine how terrible VLD is for Franxx to outclass it. All that being said, I’m wondering if Toonami will ever be interested in Promare.

$5 says it’s a cheap mobile game. Admittedly, I’ve been pondering how a live action Code Geass makes more sense than a LA Avatar, but something tells me I haven’t willed that into existence. At least having Geass being full of hate sex would make sense.

I’m saying most of those characters who were cast were in a handful of scenes in the original, and there isn’t hide or hair of Ed. Which really tells you their priorities and sort of missing the point of Bebop’s story. The central plot of Bebop takes a lot of time to breathe between episodes where Spike and friends are off dealing with the case of the week. That’s the point, it’s more focused on the little cases as we get to know the characters than big revelations and a tight serial narrative. Hell, that’s why the movie is the crew taking on another case before the big finale. And they still haven’t casted the three old guys.

And this is why Western cartoon writers, to be Frank. Suck. It’s all about the asspats and trying to clone Avatar the Last Airbender when that formula has worked all of once. Let me just say it’s not Western writers as a whole, we’re doing pretty damn well pumping out more prestige TV and high quality stuff than ever before, but Western animation writers are butthurt, whiny, heads up their ass hipsters who are more concerned with Twitter claps and being seen as smart than making anything entertaining, when they’re not working their way through their own issues because they never went to their prom. Boo fucking hoo. Entertain people. Or when they clearly project how woke they are to hide trading sex for jobs, Warren Ellis, you jackoff. The jackasses who make unpopular crap like VLD, like She Ra, like Owl House, honestly probably couldn’t make Gridman without making it a self-aware, pretentious mess with terrible animation and no fights,

I think their parading of Shiro around and the whole gay wedding satisfying no one shows the futility of appealing to them.

Most mecha shows are better than VLD because VLD is a pile of dogshit made by hipsters more concerned with Tumblr claps than money. And Franxx’s weird doggy style mecha as a metaphor is dumb, like...really dumb, but it’s not the worst thing about the show. It’s just a weird stylistic choice, one that they didn’t need but I’ll laugh at.

At least a crappy Bebop adaptation will just be badly acted and look bad. I still maintain that I’m glad this isn’t an adaptation of Outlaw Star, which would have been a complete trainwreck.

I have a pretty simple rule for mecha anime - If you have a mecha, use it. It doesn’t mean do nothing but robot fights at the expense of characters and plot, but robots are there to be used and be integral to the plot. None of this Diet Avatar crap where two writers with a raging hate-boner for giant robots and pissed that Capcom rejected their Street Fighter cartoon idea (look it up), felt that coddling a Tumblr audience that never buys merch, never appeals to a mainstream audience, and NEVER MATTERS (case in point, the financial failure that is She-Ra and the Proms of Noelle Stevenson’s lost childhood with a conservative mother) was the way to go. The toys didn’t sell, kids didn’t watch, and the show was a failure in every metric possible except its small, crazy group of hardcore fans that turned once it was clear the two guys weren’t going to be a couple. Gridman doesn’t have that problem. It knows why people would want to watch an animated take on the Ultraman mythos (fun fact, they originally wanted to make an Ultraman anime, but Production IG was already doing the Ultraman anime for Netflix based on the manga, so Tsuburaya offered Trigger a choice between Gridman and an Ultra spinoff called Andro Melos. Gridman was fairly popular in its day during a lull in Ultra shows, so they chose Gridman), and it’s rather intelligent with its handling of those tropes. Because they actually know what they’re doing, unlike Western writers with their heads up their asses.

Franxx used its robot. It wins by default.

Between this and Onyx Equinox, I really want to know what the hell CR is thinking. You might as well start every meeting of their originals staff with this -

It starts OK, then drops in quality. And it’s still better than Voltron.

That was predominantly the work of A-1, particularly when things when to hell. Trigger did this and Promare. It worked.

I’m kind of wondering now if people would have been more accepting of a simpler comedy than something that has an uncertain audience.

It is.

First, check this out because it has Black Dynamite himself, Michael Jai White, playing Bronze Tiger - Second, with Crunchyroll presumably being sold in the next few months, do you see Toonami leaning more into DC animated films to plug schedule holes? And would you want them to?

I’m surprised it made the list at all. Don’t suppose DC will let Toonami throw more movies on while we wait for Gridman. Of course the new one won’t be out till next year.

The audience will appreciate it. I know Genndy feels like Toonami limits the audience, but still.

The problem is simple -

Some actual good news for the block - And yes, it’s not a mecha show per se, it’s more a take on the Ultraman/Giant hero genre. And most 90’s kids at least remember its (surprisingly faithful, since Tsuburaya had a direct hand in it) adaptation of the original with Tim Curry.