/m/ - Mecha and Toku

>>4571
The Adult Swim effect.
IIRC it was the first anime series we got over here, so all the little kids with Gundam toys only had Wing to watch; and as a result they loved it.

Yeah, pretty much what >>4577 said. It was a lot of peoples' first exposure to mecha anime, so it was way different than basically anything else that was really available at the time.

Also, even though the "philosophy" presented in Gundam Wing is just typical AU Gundam-tier, "WAR IS BAD but check out these fucking rad fighting robots" stuff, it was really the first anime (and, in all likelihood, the first *cartoon*) they were exposed to that had any sort of message or ambiguity. It at least FELT, to us, like there was a lot more going on than "CAN THIS HERO BEAT UP THIS BAD GUY AND SAVE THE EARTH?!", y'know? Characters were talking about politics and maneuvering and stuff. That's something you didn't see in DBZ or Ronin Warriors.

Also, from my memories of my friends and I watching the show on Toonami, the fact that the characters carried guns around a lot helped. Aside from the fact that we were all edgy nine year olds, I think it really drove the point home that there was more at play than heroes in robots fighting villains in robots: They were at fucking war, and shit could go down anywhere.

But you're right, Gundam Wing kinda sucks and is entry level as fuck, and there's really no reason to watch it if you've got access to UC or 00 or something. It just had stuff that its competition at the time didn't.

>>4582
Oh! Also, it has Endless Waltz, which is actually legitimately awesome and is way too fucking good for the Gundam Wing universe.

>>4582
You know I never thought of the violence aspect. I feel like Speed Racer and Gundam Wing were ahead of their time as far as violence goes. You could kill people on screen all the time if you just put them in a vehicle, and that's crazy. DB and DBZ had to tone down the violence, probably because it was "people" fighting people (although admittedly there was some crazy imagery with androids that would never fly with anything else).
Could Gundam Wing even fly on the shonen demographic here in America these days?

>>4585
I don't really keep up with what's shown on TV here in the West to say, but I think the problem would be that there really isn't anything like Toonami around anymore - which is ironic, since, y'know, Toonami is currently running again. Stuff like Outlaw Star and Yu Yu Hakusho would probably just get put on a later timeslot, and I imagine Gundam Wing would receive similar treatment.

But I wouldn't really say it was the degree of violence shown on Wing so much as the "type" of violence. The characters were't superheroes duking it out in isolated battles against supervillains. They were just pilots flying incredibly advanced machines, fighting battles that they were just a(n extremely important) part of and engaging in homoerotic subtext with each other. And since they were soldiers or special agents or whatever, they couldn't necessarily stop being on-guard when the "bad guys" weren't immediately visible.

Like I said, it's all run-of-the-mill Gundam stuff, but it felt a lot more "real". At least, that's why I liked it as a kid. It had nothing to do with the amount of blood they showed.

Speaking of which, does anyone even do the whole "Poorly Edit Guns to Look Like Lasers" thing anymore? The guns are probably the most obvious cause for concern, but I'd like to think the dubbing industry has moved past that practice.

>>4589
It was brief and consistent with the theme of shooting a guy thrown out from airplane.

>>4593
>the 80's
G.I. Joe is the first to come to mind. Bazooka had a real bazooka, but eveyone else's guns wen PEWP instead of BANG and shot red or blue lasers. Also every time a plane was blown up a parachute would pop out of the explosion so you'd know no one died (not even nameless grunts).

One of the most striking things about Batman: The Animated Series when it came out in the early 90's was the realistic guns. They weren't unheard of in ameican cartoons but were rather rare, unlike anime where they were commonplace.
Nothing like 4kids wasattempted back then, though. There was the "it's not a twin, Svn is still alive" thing in Voltron andthe omission of references to alcohol and suicide frm Robotech but Roy still died (they did cut the shot ofhim on the floot wher you could see the bullet holes inhis back, though). Kakizaki exploding, Admiral Hayes exploding, the whole world getting fried, even the eight year old girl talking to the MP and getting caught in a blast wave still made it on-air.

>>4603
Oh yeah, I forgot about GI Joe. That had some A-team shit in it. I wonder why anime was held to looser standards.

>get into mecha due to wing on toonami
>watch uc when given the chance
>burn out after a few years
>decide to get back into it recently after seeing unicorn clips
>try to watch my wing DVDs and turn it off after one ep

Looks like it's UC only for me.

>>6304
You probably figured this out already but the OVA is a sequel to the series.

>>6305
Yeah wing is pretty meh don't skip out on all the others though AW Gundam X, Turn A and Stargazer are pretty great series.