So The Prequel Novel To Witch From Mercury Has Been Uploaded For Free On The Official Site! Go Have A

So the prequel novel to Witch From Mercury has been uploaded for free on the official site! Go have a read!

Mobile Suit Gundam THE WITCH FROM MERCURY Official Site

Mobile Suit Gundam THE WITCH FROM MERCURY Official Site

All episodes are currently streaming through the official Gundam YouTube channel GUNDAM.INFO!

In 2004 an anonymous fan made half hour reels of all the known intros to all known super robot and mecha anime that was known to exist. In 2010 they were copyright struck from YouTube.

All four reels are now back.

Internet Archive

Mecha Anime of The 60s & 70s : unknown : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This is the first of three (later four) videos which surfaced and became widely distributed in the western mecha anime fandom in 2004. It's

Internet Archive

Mecha Anime of The 80s : unknown : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This is the second of three (later four) videos which surfaced and became widely distributed in the western mecha anime fandom in 2004. It's

Internet Archive

Mecha Anime of The 90s : unknown : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This is the third of three (later four) videos which surfaced and became widely distributed in the western mecha anime fandom in 2004. It's

Internet Archive

Mecha Anime of The 2000s : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This is the final of four videos which surfaced and became widely distributed in the western mecha anime fandom in the mid 2000s. It's a col

And now for something a little different from your regularly scheduled programming.

*This post and any others like it will contain spoilers*

*General spoiler-free advice for anyone looking to try the game out will be listed at the bottom*

I recently realised I had basically every Assassin’s Creed game I really wanted to play, so I figured I’d play through the entire series until I either got bored or distracted, starting with the Original game for the Xbox 360, which I had never played before. I got into the series via AC: Brotherhood and AC: Revelations and I have a bad habit of starting a game, getting most of the way through, then just stopping, so I was determined to see at least the first game through to the end.

I’m going to go through my specific highlights of the game, low points and just generally talk about the parts that interest me. I’ve played multiple Assassins Creed games in the past, predominantly Brotherhood, Revelations and IV: Black Flag.

Highlights

Characters! I absolutely love how everyone has an actual personality and acts and reacts as actual people. I’ll probably go further into this in another point but most every character you interact with is different (barring the guards and pedestrians), and give the impression of goals, motivations and an entire life that you only have a brief window into.

The Bureau Leaders are probably my favourite example of the above. Jabal, Malik and…. the other fellow are Altaïr’s main points of contact in each city and their relationship with him changes as you progress throughout the game, parallel with how Altaïr himself develops.

Speaking of; Altaïr. He starts the game as an entitled prick of the Assassin Order, promptly fucks up horribly, and spends much of the game making amends for his mistake and ultimately growing as a person and understanding the philosophies of the Assassin Order. Their creed, if you will. He has real development and makes mistakes, but you emphasise with him for most of it because you learn things at the same rate he does.

The single Templars dotted about the map - functioning essentially as mini-bosses, there are Templar Knights with red helmets standing guard at various points throughout the maps. Though I never searched them out, it was gratifying to be presented with a single target where the only objective was to kill them. In one memorable encounter, I ran full pelt at a Templar and was able to stab them seven times before they could even get their sword out.

The actual Templar assassination targets are also all pretty good, character-wise. Certainly some are better than others (I’m not really a fan of the penultimate boss(es), nor Majd Addin), but it’s overall a very good showing, some managing to elicit sympathy, others showcasing how far they’re gone.

I like how the three cities are each distinct in their colouration and architectural style - Acre is a dull grey and has numerous churches and destroyed buildings, reflecting its recent seizure by King Richard and the Crusaders. Damascus is a warm orange and is dotted with mosques and gorgeous towers with scripture all across them. Jerusalem is a delightful green and has numerous gardens, lending it an earthy feel. I admittedly found Acre the weakest of the three, but it was nonetheless nice how I could easily tell which city I was in.

Low points

The fucking timed assassination missions. I like the flag hunts, those are nice. It’s a good test of your free-running ability and it feels like you’re strutting your skills to the novitates. But the timed assassination missions are just you running around stabbing people and desperately hoping there aren’t any guards you haven’t seen. They’re the only missions I ever had to retry.

Speaking of the guards - There’s roughly three kinds, varying in competency and damage. With three cities and multiple different armour designs, it can be difficult to distinguish which are the actual threats in any given fight. This can lead to Altaïr being thoroughly brutalised in a very short period, since you can very easily not notice how much health you’re losing until it’s too late. Furthermore, the guards tend to crowd around you and attack sequentially. Though rare this can sometimes lead to you getting what I termed “Ultra Combo’d” during my playthrough - multiple guards will attack within a very short window, each knocking you into the next swing and leaving you little opportunity to parry or dodge.

Speaking of the guards, during the final parts of the game you essentially have to wade through multiple combat encounters with well-trained enemies. So unless you’ve rigorously practiced with the combat system beforehand it can be very easy to get killed. It bothers me specifically because it’s just been one aspect of the game until now, but it just becomes the main part right near the end, so if you don’t have the combat down pat, then you’re gonna have a bad time.

Saving Citizens is fine, but I wish they had more than five lines to thank you with, even if some of the line deliveries are really good. Also I didn’t use the vigilantes much (barring one memorable assassination where they restrained a target for me)

General points

The beggars are fairly obviously designed to be annoying and get in the way, which is reinforced by their behaviour and almost mocking voice lines. However there’s one in Jerusalem that appears to randomly have a far softer voice that elicits far more sympathy.

I was surprised by how much of Desmond’s story is in this - particularly given that later games apparently decided to drop that entire plot. I find it far more interesting than I expected to, particularly how Desmond grows from experiencing his ancestor’s past life and how you know absolutely nothing about the modern Assassin Order (Desmond and Lucy’s conversation about how Abstergo found him is particularly interesting).

Though it’s something of an old game now, I was surprised by how resonant I found many of its themes - the Abstergo and the Templars are explicitly mentioned and shown to excercise information control and censorship - one of your assassination targets is in the process of leading a book burning when you kill them which is a relevant theme to, well, basically all modern media. The Assassins and Templars both seek peace, but the Assassins aim to teach people to comprehend the truth, whereas the Templars seek to obfuscate the truth and control people by presenting an illusion of the world. Freedom through knowledge versus Order through Oppression. It’s also interesting that this is what the Assassins seek as a group, rather than a focus on individualism.

Similarly to the above point, I like how Brotherhood is emphasised as a theme - Altair succeeds in his tasks due to the help of his brothers, but it’s them working towards a common goal, not some “power of friendship” thing (for the record, I don’t dislike “power of friendship” but it’s very easy to do wrong).

The Ending…… I like, but it does feel anticlimactic, and I find it’s very easy to pick up on some of the twists just through the landscape and the design of certain areas. That said, I think it’s a good set up for a sequel (even though they probably couldn’t have known it at the time). I can however see why they made the decision to excise Desmond’s plot later - though I very much like Desmond’s plot (at least so far), it kinda clashes with the historical Assassin storyline. Though I do love how eagle vision becomes relevant right at the end.

The Freerun system - it’s in the other points column because, when it works, it’s amazing. You feel like a masterful assassin, free and able to effortlessly outrun your pursuers, striking down targets as you need. When it doesn’t work, it’s just a massive frustration, as you try get Altair’s chaffinch brain to grab something as ten guards bear down on you. Mixed results, essentially.

Tips for new players

So you hear about that new Assassin’s Creed *Insert Title Here* and wanna see how it all started do you? Or maybe you just think this particular one sounds cool. Here’s some stuff I picked up during my playthrough:

Throwing Knives are amazing, use them. Just one little blade and a guard is no more. However, you do need to ensure there’s nothing between the two of you and it’s difficult to refill them without returning to Masayaf.

The Hidden Blade, as long as you just do the slow walk assassination and don’t do the big fancy jump, a target killed by the hidden blade will take a few seconds to die, thus granting you time to escape before the guards notice.

Citizens around the streets will spawn either vigilantes or scholars after being saved. If you’re struggling to get in places, then look around for a citizen that can get you some scholars. Vigilantes will distract guards for you, but they don’t really come up much unless you run towards them when being pursued.

Some Story assassination missions are designed to degenerate into chases or combat. When in doubt, just gun for the assassination target.

Speaking of Combat, some later enemies will counter your attacks, but you can counter their counters. A good strategy is to attack then immediately counter as the animation plays - if there’s no counter then it doesn’t cancel anything, but it will immediately counter the enemies counter if they attempt one.

You lose synchronisation by punching beggars and lepers/madmen, but not drunkards. Do with this information as you will.

Try to get all the Eagle Vision synchronisation points in the Kingdom on your first visit to each city. Guards get tetchier later in the game, and it makes navigation much easier to have them all.

Minas Tirith (Roger Garland)

Battleships from my upcoming narrative artbook TANKHEAD

Gundam Build Metaverse then, now that I’ve finished watching it.

Well, that was shit.

That’s kind of my opinion in a nutshell, but unlike Gundam Breaker Battlogue, I actually want to talk about this one. I’ve mentioned previously that I hold up Build Divers as an example of what I don’t want to see, but while Build Metaverse shares some flaws, it’s a whole new level of failure.

I do want to acknowledge beforehand though that, as with the rest of the build series, Gundam Build Metaverse is aimed at a younger audience and is pretty blatant about its intention to sell toys. Perhaps this precludes it being seriously analysed as a work of entertainment. However, I quite like the original Build Fighters series so I at least want to compare it to that. Gundam Build Metaverse also has the air of: “we’re not doing anything else with this series, ever” about it, simply because it’s almost a reunion of prior characters from the series. As such, I’d like to consider it as the end of the series (because I likely won’t watch any future instalments).

Alright so, the plot as it is; Rio Hojo is joining the Gundam Metaverse in Hawaii and wants to impress his mentor, Seira Urutsuki. Unfortunately she’s sworn off Gundam Metaverse due to a falling out with her sister Maria, in which her Maria used her Gunpla parts without permission in a battle and still lost, revealing her insecurities about not being as good as her sister in the process. Rio eventually challenges Maria and defeats her, healing the rift between the sisters. Along the way Rio meets and interacts with past series protagonists and characters. It’s about as insipid as it sounds.

I want to specifically focus on Maria, the antagonist, because the reveal of her motivation was essentially the point I realised it wasn’t going to get better. The usage of somebody’s Gunpla parts without permission is exactly as dumb of a motivation as it sounds, but the feelings of inadequacy actually has some weight to it, since it’s the sort of topic Build Fighters has touched on before. What bothers me about Maria is that she presents this cool, unbothered persona for her early encounters, but the second Rio mentions her sister, she basically has a breakdown with zero prompting. Over an event that happened two years ago. But wait! It’s typical Gundam protagonist style to talk female foes in giant mobile suits (Maria’s Typhoeus Gundam even incorporates psycho Gundam Mk-II parts), surely Rio can get through! And what does he say?

“But you kept buying the toys, right?”

Real classy there Hojo. And this actually works too, so it just underlines how stupid this entire conflict was.

It bothers me more, because in the original Build Fighters, Aila Jyrkäinen was essentially being forced to compete against her will due to her extraordinary abilities in the field, so Reiji helping her escape that had actual meaning and stakes. But Maria’s grievances are so stupid that it’s just meaningless, moreso that she’s apparently been holding onto this for two years.

Unrelated point, but everyone’s the same age in this, despite the fact that time was pretty clearly established to have passed in the older series. It’s possible that everyone’s using younger avatars for some reason, but both Reiji and Aila show up in crowd scenes set in the real world with their original designs, despite being established as having a child together. I know no-one really cares about chronology in the build series (myself included), but it’s still notable.

There’s two new designs I haven’t discussed yet that I also want to talk about;

First, the Gundam Typhoeus.

I like the Raphael Gundam, I think it’s a nice unit, but the Typhoeus is just grossly overbuilt. I’m used to the build series having gigantic mobile armours to communicate a sense of threat, but when the Typhoeus showed up I genuinely thought “How the fuck is that legal?” It just one-shots three suits with zero effort. I don’t really like designs that are just a bunch of weapons and systems crammed on to make something appear strong, and the Typhoeus is undeniably that. I understand that its model kit gives it a proper loadout when its just in its mobile suit form, but the additional armour is just unnecessary.

The Amazing Barbatos Lupus. As a design, I kinda like it. It’s a reasonably solid update to the Barbatos Lupus and I like how the backpack resembles a Pluma (or indeed, a mini-Hashmal). The mace also reminds me of the shot lancers from Gundam F91, so it feels like a natural “fit”. The new horns are also lovely. My only real criticism of the design is that I feel more could have been done to make it feel “Amazing” - the legs and front skirt for example, are pretty much unchanged. The shoulders I mind less, since the backpack compensates for their plainness, but the lower half just feels lacking.

However, I feel it had a very poor showing in series.

Part of this is because of a wider issue - while the Typhoeus and Maria are very well-animated, the rest of the series seems to have a very limited budget for animation. Many of the fights were short and I spotted instances of recycled animation. Even the first episode with the 00 Diver Arc, which I would say is the best fight in the series (though that isn’t saying much) feels distinctly wooden. I don’t rate the fights, in a nutshell. Furthermore, despite me gushing over Mask Lady’s design last time, we never get to see her properly animated - she’s in two cockpit scenes, largely static, and another where we only see her head and shoulders. It’s a shame.

But the Amazing Barbatos Lupus seems to have been designed to get around this. It’s virtually always seen in static poses - the only time it’s shown to attack is raising its mace and shooting (allowing the rest of the suit to remain still) or firing a beam cannon out of its mace (while the rest of the suit moves in a single pose). So I’m just thinking this the whole time:

So the Barbatos, a suit defined by its approach to melee combat, just flies about shooting a beam cannon out of its mace. The only dynamic shot it actually has is when it pulls out it’s claws to fight Kyoya Kujo, a fight which we do not see. Speaking of Kyoya Kujo, it’s built up that Meijin Kawaguchi III is finally going to have a climactic battle with Sei and Reiji, then Kyoya (who is, and always has been a nothing character) just shows up out of nowhere to challenge him and prevent the fight (to save them having to animate it, presumably).

Speaking of Nothing Characters, basically every returning character’s bereft of personality in this. They’re just here “to fight”. There’s no motivation or anything, they just want to fight in the Gundam Metaverse. So they feel like cardboard cut-outs. (For the record, I liked Magee in Build Divers, but in this they’re just…. Stereotypical? I think?). Speaking of a cast of cardboard, pretty much all the female characters get pushed aside in this. I’m not going to dwell on it, since I don’t find it surprising given the shows demographic, but none of the female characters are shown with any agency, they lose pretty much every fight they’re in and Maria ascends to the title of “Lady Kawaguchi VII”. So, the seventh Lady Kawaguchi, despite no-one having dethroned Meijin Kawaguchi III in all this time, you’re telling me there’s been six Lady Kawaguchi’s? Almost like the position’s disposable? (You could maybe say Gyanko’s an exception to losing every fight, but that feels like grasping at straws, since she’s barely a cameo).

Gundam Build Metaverse - a show that really wants you to be excited for the Metaverse, and has a plot almost as sufferance.

I feel like the fact that my highlight of the show was seeing 0.3 seconds of the Schuzrum Gallus probably illustrates how little I liked this show.

EDIT: I somehow made this entire post without remembering the name of the series protagonist, Rio Hojo. Instead, I mixed him up with Wistario Afram, the protagonist of Urdr Hunt. So yeah, the protagonist is pretty forgettable, because I literally forgot him.