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Because we just don’t have enough randos blaming us singlehandedly for American anime fandom’s ignorance, we’ve decided to talk about the theatrical film Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island, a remake of the “lost episode” of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series.
Intro (0:00 – 49:55)
The gauntlet of quality that is the current anime season is upon us, and we spend the first half of the intro simply running down what we’re currently watching. For once, only a very small amount of it is not from what’s ongoing as of this recording. Daryl and Gerald will be attending Anime Weekend Atlanta 2022 this week. Gerald has two 18+ offerings: Hentai of the 80s and 90s at 12:30 AM Thursday (technically it’s Friday but schedule wise that’s considered “Thursday night”), and then Anime in Non-Anime at midnight Friday. Then on Sunday at 12:45 PM, Daryl has the all-ages Thirty Years Ago: Anime in 1992.
For the second half of the intro, we talk about a topic that’s coming up more and more frequently now that the multi-billion dollar corporations own more and more of the US anime industry: the issue of worker pay (and the lack thereof). While most visible with regards to voice actors, this is widespread throughout which leads to the question: who’s seeing the benefits of anime’s elevated prominence, anyway?
Promo: Right Stuf Anime (49:55 – 52:43)
With Halloween upon us, this week is the time that Junji Ito hardcover manga editions are on sale. But that’s not all; you can also the um, not at all spooky Yotsuba&! at a solid discount, and with Tatami Time Machine Blues about to be released stateside on Disney+, the current sale for The Night is Short, Walk On Girl is timely indeed. You know what else is timely, considering this review? The fact that all of the Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin manga is back in print!
Review: Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island (52:43 – 2:08:07)
Just as Umberto Eco noted that a common feature among fascists is that “by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak,” so too is the Anime World Order podcast a thing listened to by nobody hosted by nobodies whose articles are read by nobody yet simultaneously somehow responsible for the bad rep of Yoshiyuki Tomino among the English-speaking anime fanbase. (We prefer to think it was widespread availability of the cartoons that did that one.) So it goes that despite the fact that multiple entire podcasts dedicated to Mobile Suit Gundam exist, we give our own account of what may very well be the final film of Yoshikazu “YAS” Yasuhiko: a lavish, movie-length retelling of episode 15 of the first Mobile Suit Gundam TV series (which to this day is not legally available to view in the United States by personal request of Yoshiyuki Tomino), only this time it’s done without Tomino’s involvement and YAS isn’t hospitalized from overwork. We actually don’t start talking about the movie itself until 1:28:14 because we need to spend about 40 minutes on slander.
- The Men Who Created Gundam was a documentary, though the events do NOT take place in real time since talk of this episode is effectively absent
- If you would rather hear a version of this story that isn’t told by partisan liars, Mobile Suit Breakdown as well as Operation V did entire episodes about Doan’s Island
- We’re too lazy to see if the archived Anime Jump has the original anecdote, so here’s Mike Toole relaying the story a few years later on Anime News Network
- Gundam expert and now also motherhood expert Lauren Orsini did this writeup regarding the years of fan investigative interest in “the episode of Gundam that Yoshiyuki Tomino doesn’t want you to see”
- Tim Eldred has translations of multiple Yoshikazu Yasuhiko interviews which we have pulled out of context excerpts from in order to advance our venomous agenda. If you would rather not be deceived by our forked tongues you can read these interviews for yourself: https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/58/ https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/524a/ https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/549/ (other interviews are excerpted from those included at the ends of the volumes of the Gundam: The Origin manga)
You guys need to watch more slice of life anime from this season. Do It Yourself, Bocchi the Rock, and Yama no Susume are some of the best shows from this season, especially in animation.
Great episode! Always enjoy the Tomino discussions, especially as someone who finds themselves surrounded by people in fandom who swear there is nothing strange about his dialogue or work whatsoever, while personally finding his stuff uh…. y’know. And while I think it’s cool if people enjoy his works, it is kinda maddening to hear the consistent strangeness (and sometimes ineptitude) of his stuff downplayed, or flat out denied. And I say that as someone who considers Turn A an amazing series!
Personally, I don’t think there was ever any real expectation that those G-Reco movies were going to do particularly well. They’re compilations of a peculiar show, making only very minor changes. And while Doan’s Island might be the victor between those, it’s neither Tomino or Yas that captured the old Gundam fan zeitgeist in these past 10/15 years. It was Fukui’s Unicorn that presented the new recipe: taking the themes and motifs of Tomino and Yas, and filtering them through the styles and fixations of the generation that grew up with his work (Note: this is not a qualitative statement on Fukui, who has basically made a career out of writing the worst Metal Gear Solid fanfic with hilariously bad politics).
What an amazing coincidence, for I recently discussed Tomino with a friend, as well as what you think of him. The conclusion of the discussion is left to your imagination.
Unrelated to the man, I am so lucky I managed to find the old Bluray of Nadia for a good price. If you did not make your review years before, I would not have put the anime on my “to buy” list as soon as I did, and would’ve waited longer, resulting in maybe paying 200 dollars for the set (instead of just 50 without shipping). Seriously, the fact the 2022 re-release looks WORSE, and lacks clean OP and ED, is a travesty.
Also, you lied. You said the unnecessary episodes of Nadia are skippable. And yes, they were. But only mostly. There is 0 explanation of why the trio+lion is back with Team Rocket, and there is this new guy with them. Who IS the new guy? Now I will have to suffer to find out.
From what I had heard, Yas did technically attend the premiere for Crusher Joe, but mysteriously vanished. A flustered Tomino did his best to keep the premiere rolling along. Yas was found in a small coffee shop neighbouring the venue discussing his plans for Giant Gorg. This resulted in a “scuffle” between an enraged Tomino and Yas in the parking lot nearby. For lack of a better term, Yas “won.”
I hope you can have Noah on to discuss Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. I too am a fan of the tabletop game, and to this day have their Pacific Rim Sourcebook shelved for easy access. Noah can tell you how the book gave Comiket a future role as political activists determined to defend the world’s largest “underground” market against Arasaka—the sourcebook, by the way, came out in 1994, when doujinshi were still scarcely available in the U.S. The cover art was by Mike Ebert, who was the art director and co-founder of Animag. There were overlapping circles of staff between R. Talsorian Games, Animag, V.Max (another high-quality San Francisco Bay Area anime magazine that in the early 90s put our nearly as many issues as Animag—R. Talsorian took over publishing of V.Max after issue #9), and also with Viz. Needless to say, R. Talsorian was also the company of Mekton and Teenagers From Outer Space, and were hip to anime fan culture well before the ‘90s. I once spent an awed ten minutes or so talking to Mike Pondsmith about Blade Runner in his office—which with the proper hacker aesthetic had its only light coming from the computer screens. No hoodies pulled over heads, though.
Regarding Akiba Maid Wars—I did once see with my own glazzies in Akihabara an instance where a maid was handing out flyers for her cafe, and another maid came up to her and shoved, starting an audible contretemps. The sense was of someone attempting to work a corner claimed by another. Now, it’s possible the only time a fight like that ever happened was just when a random weeb like myself happened to be strolling by, but another explanation is that I chanced on a bit of the drama behind the scenes of any scene. I thought momentarily of intervening, but I had seen enough Black Lagoon to reject the idea as imprudent.
I agree with almost everything said about Gundam here, and kudos for trying to stay objective. You did good. Yes, many works are collaborations, even if it’s not 50/50. I love FMA 2003 because of the changes to the “superior source material” by the writer/director team. It may be subjective, but the changes do it for me. And if someone else was adapting FMA in 2001 it would have a completely different ending. Reign the Conqueror was a Rintaro/Chung co-directing job, official credits can go to Hell. So it was a collaboration. When you claim you did something 100% all by yourself when your collaborators changed it and you consented at the time, that’s dumb claim and should be ridiculed. But with some projects 1 person really IS making all decisions, so sometimes the ex-captain of the ship can afford to get cocky. In other words, it depends on the project.
I think it’s okay to come out now? If I were to watch the compilation movies based on the original show, will THIS MOVIE contradict anything? Asking for a friend. [As noted in the review, the answer is “not significantly enough for most people to notice.” –Daryl]
Help, I’m an elder otaku and started listening to the episode; but when the review got too juicy I bailed out and went in search of a US release. As a geezer that can’t trust the internet to stream things, assuming it’s streaming legally, is there a US release date for this OVA on disk? I’d like to watch it so I can finish listening to the gang’s review without spoiling what sounds like an awesome movie. I do have a region free bluray player; and I’ve read the Japanese release includes subs, but if Rightstuf is going to release this I would like to throw them the cash. Please help. Thanks.
[It’s actually a movie that was in theaters, not an OVA. Presumably Right Stuf will release a US version but Japan usually has an exclusively period of some amount of time (generally one year). We still don’t even have a US Blu-Ray of the first Gundam Hathaway movie, though it is (hopefully still) on Netflix. Presumably that’d have to come out first before Doan’s Island. —-Daryl]