Girls Can Pilot Giant Robots Too You Know

My sister is home for the holidays so I forced her to watch a few episodes of Gurren Lagann with me. I think she sort of enjoyed it although her first impressions were pretty funny, like calling Kamina an idiot and his dad an ass for abandoning him at an early age.

Then she turned to me and said, “so the robots are powered by testosterone… can girls pilot them too?” 

“Of course they can! It’s not testosterone, it’s fighting spirit” I said, desperate to keep her from forming a bad opinion of her first mecha show. But let’s be honest here, in Gurren Lagann piloting giant robots is a man’s job. Sure, Yoko and Kittan’s sisters pilot a couple of times but it still comes down to the girls providing backup for the guys. This is an important job – just look at how Nia was the catalyst for everything that happened after episode 8 – but it’s just not as cool as ripping a giant pair of sunglasses off your robot and cutting down the opponent with them.

Mind you, this doesn’t bother me. I love Gurren Lagann and frankly my tastes are so “manly” that I’m told people think I’m a guy (that’s probably what you get for thinking that the chauvinism in Golgo 13 is funny). Even so, there’s times when I really do wish there were more anime with girls in the cockpit. In fact I can only think of two with female pilots as main characters: Gunbuster and Gunbuster 2. I do love both of these but there’s only so many times I can re-watch them before hungering for more.

What I really want is a full length TV show revolving around a female mecha pilot, and she can’t just be a moeblob or fanservice character. Unless she’s cute and has a badass-goggle-wearing-planet-sized version like Nono. Have you seen through to what this post really is yet? Yes, it’s a shameless request for recommendations. So if you know, please tell me. Are there any anime that fit the bill?

Oh and I am somewhat optimistic about the upcoming Ride Back which has a girl riding a motorcycle mecha… or is it a mecha motorcycle?

Anime Music Has Taken Over, Please Send Help

I was reading 21stcenturydigitalboy’s post on top anime songs (a pretty good list) when a terrible thought occurred to me. When was the last time I listened to music that wasn’t from an anime? I wracked my brain until I remembered. Ah yes, a few weeks ago I went to see a friend and while driving around LA we listened to the radio… and I kept inwardly wishing that somebody would call the DJ and ask him to put on JAM Project.

Wait a minute. I couldn’t really be this far gone, right? There was only one way to find out so I went to my iTunes and did some quick calculations.

Total: 3,785 songs

Anime related: 3,118 = 82%

Non anime related: 667 = 18%

Definitely much worse than I thought but there’s still hope. I spend a lot of time driving around and I always have a CD playing. Let me check, I’m sure most of it is pretty normal…

Slot 1: Gurren Lagann, Slot 2: Revolutionary Girl Utena, Slot 3: JAM Project, Slot 4: Mix – all anime music, Slot 5: Macross Frontier, Slot 6: Eureka Seven.

I think I know defeat when I see it. I’d speculate on how I got this way but there’s only so much terrifying Truth I can handle in one day.

So the next time you’re in your car and you see somebody in the lane next to you chanting MOTTO MOTTO! you know who it is. Unless I’m not the only one…?

A tale of woe… next time I’m buying it online

I hate the weird looks I get when I buy manga in person. Today I went to Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of Yen Plus, Yen Press’ newish manga anthology which I read partly because I like some of the stories and partly for the novelty of reading a manga magazine. That’s one thing I’m really envious of Japan for. They have dozens… hundreds? of manga magazines filled with hot off the press stories. Whereas we have about 3 and they’re months or years behind.

Anyway I grabbed it off the shelf and handed it to the woman at the checkout who studied it for an interminably long time, muttered “oh my” then looked up at me with the same expression as if I’d suddenly told her that I was having a Satanic ritual tonight and would she like to come? So I gave her my sweetest “just because I like manga doesn’t mean I murder small children” smile and tried not to sink into the floor from embarrassment.

I know anime and manga is a lot more mainstream nowadays so I really hate that I still get weird looks about it. It’s the reason that unless they initiated the conversation I would never tell anyone I don’t know very well that I’m such an anime nerd. At twenty years of age I figure I’m far too old to care what people think but still, nobody likes to be thought of as a freak.

Of course, it is partially my fault. You know you’ve got problems when you deliberately flip the magazine over to the back cover because for some reason you believe a girl with a cleaver is much less embarrassing and strange than shoujo style art. Or maybe I just need to read more shoujo.

So what’s the most embarrassing anime/manga related thing that’s happened to you?

On being a fan – paying attention to creators… or not

So I recently did a rather silly team post over at Oi Hayaku! which Mark A. commented on:

Selective memory indeed. Nevermind the fact that so many U.S. otaku can’t name the various directors, animators, or even studios behind their favorite shows. Didn’t it used to be fandom de rigueur was a hunger to find out all the background meta data on your favorite works, and from there place them and their creators into a historical context?

which made a lightbulb ding on over my head with the sudden realization that “hey, other people think about these things too.” I like that feeling so I hope you’ll forgive me for being so arrogant as to write up an entire post in response to a comment on another of my posts.