THAT Animeblog

A Zeon worth fighting for.

Well now that work is out of the way and I am currently waiting for orders during Spring Break I am finally able to fully address IKnight’s “War Sucks!” post in a fuller manner. IKnight raises an important distinction between the war sucks theme and the prevalent misnomer that it essentially means that such a work is by nature anti-war. For the most part Gundam is anything but anti-war and with exception to a few animated works such as Waltz with Bashir and Grave of the Fireflies there aren’t many animated works that are at their core anti-war. For the most part Gundam is not anti-war since all mecha is a glorification of violence on some level and not an out right rejection of violence as a means to an end. In most cases those who do writing probably have never fought a war nor have ever served in uniform, even then there is a great deal of difference between a conscript and a volunteer. The only widely read writer that I can think of (note there are many more that may or may not have seen combat) who actually fought in a modern war was George Orwell, given that anime is done almost exclusively by Japanese writers and given that they hardly talk of the full scope of the last war that they fought it is unlikely that they are capable of fully understanding the great big mess that is war. IKinght is largely correct in deducing that opposition to one war does not automatically mean that such a person is anti-war, the notion that there can be a just war is proof enough that there are few true pacifists.

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So with convention season reaching a fevered pitch during the spring and summer I thought that it would be fun to introduce the finer points of one of my convention staples, the MRE. Now I know that the thing says COMMERCIAL RESALE IS ILLEGAL, but there is no actual law that I have seen and they sell the things at the Travis AFB commissary anyways so if one wanted to one could get these things, even the manufacturers sell them directly though you have to buy a whole case at a time. Still at about $7.25 (there is a Tailored Operational Training Meal that goes for about $4.22 that has less calories, though is not nearly as impact resistant) a pop it’s not nearly as bad as those hotdogs, hamburgers, and small bowls of chili that the hotel or convention center tries to sell you, I am sure usagijen is going to have a fit at what I am about to say, but there certainly are benefits to having a light weight lunch that is rated to be shoved off C-130s. Besides it tastes just as good if not better than the standard convention food, and at least when you make it is fairly hot and not mildly warm to cold. If you can get a hold of these and your venue won’t have reasonably priced food I’d recommend getting an MRE especially if your schedule is packed, less time spent eating means more time doing other stuff. Besides it’s a better option than eating fast food at every meal or getting that $1.50 1 oz. bag of chips. So yeah I had one that was getting a bit old and decided it would be fun to open it up just for fun.

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Sherry’s got the Gundam, Hughes is in the truck, and if we are lucky the Zeke will take a Kampfer. If not he’s a loser.

Well I am not sure if this is new or not but here’s some pics some gentle/m/en dug up recently. Well I can’t read moon, but judging by the hubbub it seems it will be a UC series or OVA (HELL FUCKING YEAH UC) and will be set between 0080 and 0083 in 0081. I suspect that the girl Sherry Allison will be the pilot for the RX-78-7. At least the characters barring the Zeke look older than 16. Hughes (Feddie Officer) clocks in at a nice 32 years of age, Sherry at 24 (mai hunni!), and the Zeke twat comes in at 20, though it still seems like a far cry from the old looking dudes like South Burning. Still aesthetics aside I hope that because it is the 30th Anniversary Project that it will be great, after all the RX-78-7 looks like it was based off of Alex from 0080, and the tentative pilot seems to be a girl rather than some pretty boy twat, so the stars might be aligned for this one. Let’s not forget how great things were when a woman was allowed to pilot the only Gundam in her series.

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Soon this will all be behind me.

So I got the news from my university Dean’s office about a week ago, I’ll get my degree early…but the catch is that I will be getting a B.A. in Microbiology with a minor in East Asian Studies and English, instead of the B.S. in Microbiology with a minor in East Asian Studies. Perhaps there is not much of a difference in a B.A. from a BS, but the fact that my degree is going to have Art instead of Science really eats at me. Whether or not that is going to affect my chances for employment remains to be seen but I attach more prestige to the B.S. than the B.A. even if the difference is only going to be two classes. I know that ultimately though I have no one to blame for this other than myself, I transferred with too many credits and took about a quarter’s worth of classes I did not really need that I only took to keep my options open. I had gambled on the idea that the student population would not mushroom the way it did. I already went over the unit cap so it was pretty much a forgone conclusion that they would boot me out with a degree as the Dean’s Office held all the cards and had no incentive to let me petition for excess units once they figured out that went around them the first time and will be 2.5 units over the 225 cap. Certainly if I had been more focused on getting a B.S. I could have gotten it, and the fact that I did better in my minor classes than my major classes did little to help my lost cause. Most of the anger and bitterness has subsided, but in the end I find it mildly irritating all the same.

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If only this warhorse had only to fight anything but Zakus…

Well after IKnight posted about MS IGLOO 2 I figured I might as well, for those who don’t know each ep is a 30 min love song to a weapon that took part in the One Year War. As a rule there isn’t much of a plot to speak of and truth is they aren’t going to win any awards for great characterization given the daunting task of introducing some poor guy only kill him off at the end. Still it is gritty even if it is 5,000 leagues away from realism with the shinagami chick. Unlike ghostlightning and IKnight I don’t really care about the shinagami because her name isn’t Sanders and she doesn’t pilot a mobile suit in the 8th MS Team she’s death and that is all there is to it all I care about is that the Type 61 is fight and boy is it FIGHT. I would have posted this earlier but my attempts to watch it in glorious 1080p were all for naught and I just called it quits and got the 720p instead, thanks to the boys and girls at gg for subbing this in HD.

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If Impz thinks he can get all rabu rabu while the rest of us are single he’s got another thing coming… - Lord Kitchener

So once again it is Kimberley Liberation Day, the anniversary of the beginning of then Major General John French’s attempt to relieve the South African town of Kimberley that was the first in a series of British success that rekindled support for the last Imperial War and forced the Boers to resort to guerrilla tactics which were brutally dealt with by Lord Kitchener. So while the uncaring pairs of losers in love across the globe celebrate their so called love that will not last until death do they part I wish to spread the word on another holiday that ought to occur in concert with Adnan bin Saidi Memorial Day. While others deign to celebrate that lesser holiday known as Valentines or Singles Awareness Day, i hope you wall join me in marking this day in an altogether different and far more respectful manner. For on this day in the year 1900 over 100 years ago the British Empire had suffered a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of the Boers of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Onto the stage came a polite tea drinking Englishman that led a cavalry attack that broke the 124 day siege of Kimberley that marked a dramatic turn in British fortunes in the Second Boer War. You see those lovey dovey otaku who are going out tonight have had their preconceptions colored by the heirs of a failed imperial power, known today as Akihabara who invented a cheap shoddy imitation empire known as the Britannian Empire that was full of fail and lose as they never drank enough tea. Back then when IKnight’s tea drinking ancestors were sipping tea in their colonies on every continent that mattered, the British did things that would make whiney emo commies (because we all know the people who bitch the most about empire are fucking communists) cry for years to come.

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My Alto-hime was so Yakk DECULTRE that I simply had to have a Hime-Custom of my own. I blame ghostlightning for this he made me jealous. At least that extra scratch I get for being an E-5 will cover it.

So yeah my VF-25F Hime-Custom arrived earlier this month and given a small sliver of time I can finally post a picture and proudly declare how I broke my first New Year’s resolution to hold off on model kit purchases. If only I had GODLY free hand skills I would paint a pinup based on one of them ero-stickers, but alas my skills are not so great. It was a good start to a new year, and oddly enough January has been a month chock full of pleasant surprises. I made E-5 (Sergeant/Petty Officer 2nd Class/Air Force Staff Sergeant, take a good guess why don’t you) on the first of January and did not find out about it until a drill weekend, I guess I should have checked the promotion lists when they got published, but being a cynic I didn’t even bother. I also get to update all my uniforms with new rank insignia, but hey it’s an expense I’ll gladly pay with that new raise I get by default and through the promotion, I also have to add my first bean stripe for the years I spent eating beans since I enlisted. Seeing as how I am in a fair mood for this month I also wish to ramble about what a good start to this year I have been blessed with.

So yeah Inauguration Day has come and gone and my new boss has already added to the cacophony of pleasant surprises this month. I never did think that I would live to see a person of color (a.k.a. COMBO BREAKER) be elected to the Presidency in my life time. You learn a couple things when you join the military one of them being how Churchill was right when he said, “Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” One of the reasons why I liked LOGH so damn much was because I could appreciate Yang Wenli’s problems. I promised to tell some of you what I thought for all these years, true to my word if you wanted to know here it is.

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