So how realistic is Dai-Guard?*
It actually acknowledges that waving a drill around wouldn't work very well as a combat weapon.
*If this post seems random, I don't care. I don't believe in timely blogging or following patterns.
...Anyway, I'm super bad at blogging consistently.
-Signing off.
Showing posts with label dai-guard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dai-guard. Show all posts
Monday, December 22, 2014
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Some Indie Giant Robot Thing
So I was watching this animated short, which feels odd to call that because if you added a modern volume of commercials and an intro segment it'd probably fill half an hour.
Obviously, bits of this are pretty slow, and most of that I don't mind (although I'd be lying if I didn't say I skipped over some bits). The fight was good but not great (way too much sitting there with the monster pushing its claws in further and the sound effects for the stomps and the hits were way too small-sounding), and I loved that the hangar had a progression of increasingly larger and more advanced robots in it. It was nice to see the newspaper clippings; it kind of reminded me of The Incredibles.
But I don't think we needed to see quite as much of the monster's origins as we got.
One of my favorite robot anime is Dai-Guard (which I actually only properly finished last month, as a result of having trouble finding the final volume). One of the many reasons I love it is because it gets past the question of "where do monsters come from?" really quickly: According to nonsensical science, earthquakes make monsters* emerge from another dimension**.
There we go. There's your origin for every monster. (Not necessarily literally, of course, but when you come up with something that simple and elegant, you certainly don't need to muck around with other ideas.)
It's like the Marvel mutant origin for superpowers-you're just born with powers, now let's get on with the story.
As far as I'm concerned, the earliest we needed to see the monster was when it woke up and started rampaging, possibly even later than that.
*Of course, according to the scientists in the series, you can barely consider the Heterodynes*** alive, and calling them monsters is arguably misleading.
**One of the really elegant things about the use of earthquakes as a trigger, of course, is that we can predict earthquakes, so the show has a good excuse for why the robot is always in the right place to fight the monsters, but we can't predict earthquakes perfectly, so sometimes one will happen unexpectedly; there was even one episode where multiple quakes failed to have monster results, and that was the actual source of conflict for the episode.
***No relation to the family from Girl Genius.
-Signing off.
Obviously, bits of this are pretty slow, and most of that I don't mind (although I'd be lying if I didn't say I skipped over some bits). The fight was good but not great (way too much sitting there with the monster pushing its claws in further and the sound effects for the stomps and the hits were way too small-sounding), and I loved that the hangar had a progression of increasingly larger and more advanced robots in it. It was nice to see the newspaper clippings; it kind of reminded me of The Incredibles.
But I don't think we needed to see quite as much of the monster's origins as we got.
One of my favorite robot anime is Dai-Guard (which I actually only properly finished last month, as a result of having trouble finding the final volume). One of the many reasons I love it is because it gets past the question of "where do monsters come from?" really quickly: According to nonsensical science, earthquakes make monsters* emerge from another dimension**.
There we go. There's your origin for every monster. (Not necessarily literally, of course, but when you come up with something that simple and elegant, you certainly don't need to muck around with other ideas.)
It's like the Marvel mutant origin for superpowers-you're just born with powers, now let's get on with the story.
As far as I'm concerned, the earliest we needed to see the monster was when it woke up and started rampaging, possibly even later than that.
*Of course, according to the scientists in the series, you can barely consider the Heterodynes*** alive, and calling them monsters is arguably misleading.
**One of the really elegant things about the use of earthquakes as a trigger, of course, is that we can predict earthquakes, so the show has a good excuse for why the robot is always in the right place to fight the monsters, but we can't predict earthquakes perfectly, so sometimes one will happen unexpectedly; there was even one episode where multiple quakes failed to have monster results, and that was the actual source of conflict for the episode.
***No relation to the family from Girl Genius.
-Signing off.
Monday, September 30, 2013
ROCKETTO PAUNCHI
Pretty sure I've posted at least one of this videos before (probably with some variant of this exact title), but it's been a while so I don't care.
If one is a fan of Japanese mecha, Dai-Guard is a series that one is obligated to watch because of moments like this:
If you don't understand why someone would shout "rocket punch" while throwing his own robot's severed arm as an impromptu attack, it's because Mazinger Z, one of the super robots that inspired everything that came after him, has rockets built into his detachable arms so that he can throw punches over any distance. Silly, but fun.
And in the most recent Mazinger Z series, someone got the same idea as the guy from Dai-Guard did.
That's coming full circle.
(Incidentally, the titanic gold/yellow robot is actually supposed to be Zeus from Greek mythology. Yes, really. ...I honestly can't imagine mythological Zeus having that reaction to a rocket punch. One of the Viking gods, on the other hand, would have that exact reaction. Those guys had parties where they had the indestructible guy sit against a wall and chucked things at him. That happens to be how and where Ragnarok got started, as it happens. Vikings were metal.)
-Signing off.
If one is a fan of Japanese mecha, Dai-Guard is a series that one is obligated to watch because of moments like this:
If you don't understand why someone would shout "rocket punch" while throwing his own robot's severed arm as an impromptu attack, it's because Mazinger Z, one of the super robots that inspired everything that came after him, has rockets built into his detachable arms so that he can throw punches over any distance. Silly, but fun.
And in the most recent Mazinger Z series, someone got the same idea as the guy from Dai-Guard did.
That's coming full circle.
(Incidentally, the titanic gold/yellow robot is actually supposed to be Zeus from Greek mythology. Yes, really. ...I honestly can't imagine mythological Zeus having that reaction to a rocket punch. One of the Viking gods, on the other hand, would have that exact reaction. Those guys had parties where they had the indestructible guy sit against a wall and chucked things at him. That happens to be how and where Ragnarok got started, as it happens. Vikings were metal.)
-Signing off.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Super Actually Surprisingly Realistic Robot Profiles: Dai-Guard
Dai-Guard is a 1999 anime about a giant robot and the office workers who operate it. Yes, there is nothing incorrect about that sentence. (I would dare to say that everything is right about that sentence.)
The robot looks like an old-school super robot, and the opening sequence plays it up like one... but it isn't. It isn't even very powerful. It's just a big, heavy, slow-moving piece of metal that happens to look like a robot.
And it's still one of the most batman* giant robots ever. Why? Because even though it's slow, can only run for a few minutes at a time without being recharged, and has armor that at times seems to be made of cardboard (it also lacks air conditioning), it manages to consistently take out giant extradimensional monsters.
Granted, that's probably because its pilot is a surprisingly batman giant robot fanboy who apparently learned how to operate similar vehicles and then worked at the company that owns the robot merely so he could be close to the only giant robot in the world that actually existed. This guy is living the dream.
Except that in the world of Dai-Guard, there are lawsuits, insurance claim forms, and other such troubles, and those are the absolute least favorite things in the universe for the guy.
Wait, there we go. Dai-Guard is the robot anime version of The Incredibles.
I'm not sure there's anything more to say about it after that. (Well, other than that it's a funny series at the same time as it takes the world it's in very seriously. That's pretty awesome.)
*My sister and I use this (batman) as a euphemism in everyday conversation for another word. It has the same number of letters, the same first letter, the same vowels, and the same number of syllables, but most importantly, the same cadence and roughly the same meaning.
-Signing off.
The robot looks like an old-school super robot, and the opening sequence plays it up like one... but it isn't. It isn't even very powerful. It's just a big, heavy, slow-moving piece of metal that happens to look like a robot.
And it's still one of the most batman* giant robots ever. Why? Because even though it's slow, can only run for a few minutes at a time without being recharged, and has armor that at times seems to be made of cardboard (it also lacks air conditioning), it manages to consistently take out giant extradimensional monsters.
Granted, that's probably because its pilot is a surprisingly batman giant robot fanboy who apparently learned how to operate similar vehicles and then worked at the company that owns the robot merely so he could be close to the only giant robot in the world that actually existed. This guy is living the dream.
Except that in the world of Dai-Guard, there are lawsuits, insurance claim forms, and other such troubles, and those are the absolute least favorite things in the universe for the guy.
Wait, there we go. Dai-Guard is the robot anime version of The Incredibles.
I'm not sure there's anything more to say about it after that. (Well, other than that it's a funny series at the same time as it takes the world it's in very seriously. That's pretty awesome.)
*My sister and I use this (batman) as a euphemism in everyday conversation for another word. It has the same number of letters, the same first letter, the same vowels, and the same number of syllables, but most importantly, the same cadence and roughly the same meaning.
-Signing off.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Evil Heterodyne Coffee
It should be noted that Dai-Guard is actually slightly older than Girl Genius, so the use of the term "Heterodyne" is a coincidence.
The fact that there's reference to "Heterodyne coffee" when the Girl Genius comic features a magic coffee machine made by the titular character which made "Heterodyne coffee." (Note that "Heterodyne" just means "different energy.")
-Signing off.
The fact that there's reference to "Heterodyne coffee" when the Girl Genius comic features a magic coffee machine made by the titular character which made "Heterodyne coffee." (Note that "Heterodyne" just means "different energy.")
-Signing off.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
ROCKETTO PAUNCH
I don't know that much about the anime Dai-Guard (or Dai Guard, or even "Di Guard"), but something tells me I'd like to know more.
That something is this video.
Some people actually call Dai-Guard a "real robot" (i.e. a non-super robot mecha) disguised as a super robot, and even say it's more realistic than most "real robots." That last bit might be an exaggeration, but from what I've heard, it's not much of one.
-Signing off.
That something is this video.
Some people actually call Dai-Guard a "real robot" (i.e. a non-super robot mecha) disguised as a super robot, and even say it's more realistic than most "real robots." That last bit might be an exaggeration, but from what I've heard, it's not much of one.
-Signing off.
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