Panon

to me... sticking big silly hands on the monster is just... well, the first thing that pops to mind is that ridiculous gundam line where the gundams where fish suits, or turn into bulls and there's that mummy gundam...oooh oooh and the gundam that wears the zebra stripped dress. I'm not saying it's that bad, it's just the first thing that comes to mind.

Wait until you've watched the episode until judgeing it.

They way they are implemented on the Monster and they way they're used come off *nothing* even close to that kind of thing.

They're completely utilitarian and not 'big claws'. They're not for combat as the Monster, like it's older brother, has very little mobility.

There are three specials, each running 90 minutes.

The first two specials were shown on tv, but on the Internet they were released each split into two 45 minute parts.

The third special is dvd only, and came out last week.

Special 1 covers episodes 1-22 (beginning through to the desert arc)

Special 2 covers episodes 23-40 (sea arc/Operation Spitbreak through to the Orb invasion arc)

Special 3 covers episodes 41-50

OK, so I have special 1 and half of special 2 then. Got these from Anime Kraze. Anyone else sub the seed specials yet?

A-Kraze are the only group that has subbed any of them.

It's hard to believe that those skinny little wings can hold the stress of those huge boosters, especially placed that far out on the wings. And why would they put thrust vectoring flaps on a booster... to spin the fighter out of control?!

That picture doesn't show it, but the wings lock into a different, closer in position when the boosters are actually in use.

There are three specials, each running 90 minutes.

The first two specials were shown on tv, but on the Internet they were released each split into two 45 minute parts.

The third special is dvd only, and came out last week.

Special 1 covers episodes 1-22 (beginning through to the desert arc)

Special 2 covers episodes 23-40 (sea arc/Operation Spitbreak through to the Orb invasion arc)

Special 3 covers episodes 41-50

Flying sub and aircraft carriers?!

When does this happen, is there a picture.

ah son of ...damn I was hoping he'd die. What happens to Mao?

Mao lives. She's on the Asuka the entire episode, and has the last words of the show, saying something to/about Shin as he flies off.

So what exactly happens in the end? Who dies? Does it lead into SDF Macross, DYRL or is it just vague? Who or what makes a surprise apppearance?

Aries, Ivanov and Nora are dead.

Sara and Shin are 'gone', as they both appear to head out into space.

Edgar lives but appears for about 15 seconds total.

No direct lead in's to any of the other series.

Probably what's going to hit people the hardest about the episode is that it certainly does appear to suffer from being accelerated to get things finished. Specifically, the cliffhanger of episode 4 is not addressed at all. I mean that literally - no explaination is given for how Shin and Sara survived the blast, and it jumps ahead an unknown amount of time as Shin, Sara, Focker and Aries are all together in front of an AIPHOS artifact, then suddenly SV-51s swoop in and grab it.. and Aries and Sara are captured because they were inside it (when a second ago they were outside it). This happens in the first MINUTE of the episode. I don't understand Japanese so I don't know whether Shin's narration is making anything clearer, but I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't.

What happed to Drednaught's DRAGOON system?

It was removed as Canard (who now has Dreadnaught since Hyperion was destroyed) wasn't able to use it.

As for Outframe and Raystra, they're both Junk Guild made.

Outframe was a uncomplete mobile suit they salvaged (it had no armor, hence "outframe") and does in fact have a female pilot, I believe.

Raystra was a custom build put together by the Junk Guild from salvaged parts, and they have it for sale or rent on the condition it's not used for war or hostile purposes.

I know that. I'm just curious if an unedited version is available.

Nope.

Only the five Yamato movies are available in their unedited form.

wait, is the voice actor for Shin in Macross Zero the same as Shin in Gundam Seed destiny?

Yes. But Gundam SEED Destiny's Shin is spelled with an extra "n" and his last name is the ship Shin in Macross Zero is stationed on. Maybe the voice actor coined the names "Shinn" and "Asuka" for his character in Destiny after finishing his VOs for Macross Zero.

The Gundam SEED main characters are named after Japanese historical periods - the Asuka and Yamato periods.

For DVD's a good source of reviews is

That is not a good source. One, it's for illegal bootlegs and two, it's not a very credible site even for those since it's mostly populated by people who only buy those things and as such have rather 'low' standards, to put it mildly.

Well, it we did actually consider that. But seriously we're not gonna put "big brother" or "brother". That's just so wrong, no one talks like that.

In my opinion, the best handling of it is the way Animeigo did it for the SDF Macross dvds - leave it as sempai, and put an explaining note on screen during it's first usage.

"Commander" is tolerable I guess. Inaccurate, but a lot better than the awful "big brother".

wait, is the voice actor for Shin in Macross Zero the same as Shin in Gundam Seed destiny?

Yes.

I hope for their sake that's an early concept draft.

Really early.

Since Flay was part of Flaga's bloodline too,

WHAT?! Where does it say that?

It doesn't.

Shin is a Coordinator. My guess is that he's probably first generation, because first generation in general is better than second, which is better than third.

There's no difference in 'quality' between generations of Coordinator.

You might be thinking of how they mentioned that with each passing generation of Coordinator the birth rate was declining.

i do not think it is in bad shape, i heard that SD Gundam and Seed are doing quite good, if it wasnt i do not think they would be releasing all these models and toys , they would end up losing money with all the stuff there putting on the market, somebody must be buying it for them to still be releasing stuff.

You would be incorrect.

SD Gundam Force initially had good merchandise sales then slumped badly, so badly that the second season has been sitting gathering dust unaired ever since.

SEED, counted on to be a big hit... has not been. Thanks to a combination of disappointing ratings and poorly fairing merchandise, the show has now lost it's Toonami timeslot and is being shifted to a 1:00am graveyard timeslot.

Zeta Gundam after long delays has been shifted to a limited edition only release, with no wide release planned at all now. They're not even bothering marketing it to a wide audience at this point and it's been relegated to a niche title.

No, things are not all well in the world of Gundam in the US.

Bandai can feel free to release ZZ Gundam to their hearts content, but they won't get my money. Watching ZZ once was more than enough for me, and I'm certainly not buying another 50+ episode series only for the 10-12 episodes that didn't make me want to puke blood.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

that really is a matter of opinion, while you may have not liked some of the series there are many other who did, those fans are looking forward to it (I being one of them). to leave certain series untranslated in japan because of a few people did not like it would be horrible

...and not at all what I'm suggesting. I don't think it should be left untranslated - I think it should be left until *after* they've gotten other series that are better than it and could appeal to more people released first.

More and more I'm failing to see how Coordinators are supirior to Naturals, especialy since two of ZAFT's top pilots use Natural built machines through out the war and it's two Alliance designed Gundams that come out in one piece.

Coordinators didn't *need* to invent all that stuff, before that came into play their technological advantage was huge (remember a handful of mobile suits demolishing a conventional EA fleet?)

When push came to shove, with their lower resources they made better mobile suits faster than Earth did. By the later period of the war they were already mass producing suits almost equivalent to first generation Gundams, and their own Gundams were well above the Earth Gundams capabilities.

Which is an absolutely horrible move on Bandai's part if true. They couldn't have picked a worse series to be next.

Yeah, god forbid we get a Gundam series released in sequential order for once.

Why bother? ZZ is the only one left that has any effect on any timeline (Victory is UC in name only) so it hardly matters any more. Why bring over one of the worst examples of Gundam in existance rather than one of the multiple quality shows still awaiting release?

Especially considering how bad a shape Gundam is in the US at the moment.

Does anyone know what gundam series Bandai is going to pick up next for US distrubition, I already know about F-91 . Bandai seems pretty serious about porting the whole series (with the exception of Turn-A Gundam) to the USA any word yet what will be coming next year?

Rumor (repeat, rumor) a month or two ago was that then next release may be ZZ.

Which is an absolutely horrible move on Bandai's part if true. They couldn't have picked a worse series to be next.

So what is this supposed to mean....the Gundams are again nuke powered?

No.

When Impulse (or any of the other Gundams) powers up the "Unsubdued Nuclear" part of the acronym is overwritten by "Unrestricted Network".

For those of you that saw it fansubbed/raw, did Flay and whats-her-name have brightly colored underwear on in the bathroom/shower area? O.o The DVD has them with bright blue and pink underwear on in this scene, with one removing it and setting it in a suitcase or bag. Were these garments in the original, or did Bandai edit the scene and leave the edit in despite claiming the DVDs are complete and unedited?

It's completely unedited.

On Cartoon Network, they digitally added to the underwear so that they covered more of their bodies (less cleavage, etc)

Could you tell us what was wrong with it? Mispelled names? Poor gramar? or did it just range in the "Inglish" HK Bootleg behavior?

Some of the more complex dialogue is a mess, HK bootleg level. Things like "...a treaty was made...to achieve peace, equilibrium, and walk on" as dialogue describing the peace process. They got things wrong you could hear being said in English.

It's watchable certainly, but very, very rough. It's fine to get an idea of what's going on but since other groups will be doing this show, I don't see the point in downloading confusing subs when better groups will likely be following with better subs fairly soon anyway.

oh just saw a link with a fansub of the first ep.. here

That fansub is *terrible*.

That's AJ level subtitling. Hopefully some group that doesn't totally suck will do it soon.

The news of the delay until March 2005 came out ealier this year at Anime Expo, one of the reasons being the last episode is a longer than normal one like the first was.