Mechanista in G

Go little car, go! One-seater cars should be more common. ...Okay, no. Sorry. I like them aesthetically, but that's actually the exact WRONG way for society to go. I'm forgetting my socialist roots! Gotta center myself. Trains. More trains. Metros. Buses. Maybe a boat, boats can be good. Public transportation. This machine is a friend, though. You can find a  video version  of this podcast for fre...

It does break my heart that for practical, copyright reasons, I can't do themed music on here anymore. Final Fantasy VI was a very influential game for me, and I hold its soundtrack close in my heart. That said, this episode is vastly Type-0 by volume, so perhaps it should be that? The Theme of Ace or whatever? Never played it. You can find a  video version  of this podcast for free on  Scanline M...

I suppose I can't fault the theming: these machines are, in fact, of a knightly aesthetic. Dylan makes the Shovel Knight comparison during this ep, and it's spot on. But something about it rubs me the wrong way. Not the designs- that's a whole separate matter. But these guys being called the Black Knights. Maybe it's just because they're Sauceless in Seattle? Not quite sure. I have encountered a l...

Surf Dracula eat your heart out, this robot surfs in the FIRST EPISODE. This week we're tackling the leading machine of Eureka Seven, across its upgrades, variants, and even counterparts. ...Except AO. We're not doing AO. No love for that show around here. You can find a  video version  of this podcast for free on  Scanline Media’s Patreon ! If you want to find us on Twitter, Dylan is  @lowpo...

These days, it's all about having extra legs. Think about it: more legs means more fun. Especially if they're incoms! Though actually, that brings up an interesting point of discussion: the Trinity's legs are remote weapons on wires. Classically, we call those "incoms." But the show calls them "leg funnels." There's also the classic example of the Nu Gundam's "fin funnels." By the original definit...

Enough about Mobile Suits, let's talk Heavy Metals! The D.Sserd is, as best as I can tell, the GM of Heavy Metal L-Gaim . It's an old school Nagano design, which is another way of saying "awesome." We'll have to put off the L-Gaim itself for another time, but we do want to double back to it. That guy's cool too. You can find a  video version  of this podcast for free on  Scanline Media’s Patreon !...

The role of mobile armors in Gundam is always interesting. What does a machine gain by discarding its human-like form? It can indicate determination, or amorality, or y'know, all sorts of stuff. 00 definitely thinks using a mobile armor makes you a bad person. Don't you GN Arms me, those are attachments. The Trilobite? The Alvaaron? The Empruss? The Regnant? Even the Gadelaza? Piloted by bad peopl...

Fighting gold! This Final Boss weirdo kinda shows up out of nowhere. But despite that, it's a pretty compelling design! Ostentatious isn't usually my aesthetic, but it really works for the Alvaaron, a tastefully tacky piece of metal. With wings! That's fun. You can find a video version  of this podcast for free on Scanline Media's Patreon ! If you want to find us on Twitter, Dylan is @lowpolyrobot...

As Dylan says, it's kinda wild we haven't covered this one already, but that's what happens when you live at the whim of the dice. The Den'an Zon may go even further with imperialist aesthetic than even the mobile suits of Zeon, but by focusing on a more German Empire WW1 thing, it ducks the Nazi comparison in favor of examining old world European aristocracy as aesthetic. It works for me. You can...

It really looks like a mobile suit wearing a mobile armor like clothes, but apparently, it isn't. It's a weird face-lookin' machine with a smaller torso poking out of its mouth. A perfectly normal design for a normal machine from a normal show. Heck, the show's so normal they even call the base form of each gundam machine in it the "Normal!" Can't argue with that. You can find a video version  of...

As Spider-Man learned, you can't solve every problem by punching. Well, scratch that- you can't solve every problem by punching yourself . Some problems are just too big for your fists! This is why you make a huge robot with bigger fists, so you can solve these problems. Also we get to talk Armored Core design again, which is always a blast! You can find a video version  of this podcast for free o...

Seed, just... stop. Ok? At first the idea of your tributes to classic Universal Century Zeon designs was fun to me. I happen to know some haters I could name, but I like your ZAKU! I like your DOM! But you just couldn't stop. And now you're doing a GELGOOG and a GYAN? Just draw your own stuff! That turns out way better! Like the Strike Freedom, or the Akatsuki, or... uhm... ok, maybe try the JUAGG...

It feels like they've largely surrendered Iron-Blooded Orphans spinoff material to Ippei Gyoubu... not that I'm complaining. Well, yknow? I am complaining a little . I love Ippei Gyoubu's work, but variety is nice. I would love some more spindly, gangly friends in the extended IBO -verse. But this is hardly the time or place, because the Gundam Vual is cool, and I don't wanna disrespect it. You ca...

Three hundred years of excellence. For our 300th episode, we asked for a bunch of little one-off requests, and got a bunch of silly little friends! A few that AREN'T silly, too, but they are in the clear minority. You can find a video version  of this podcast for free on Scanline Media's Patreon ! If you want to find us on Twitter, Dylan is @lowpolyrobot  and Six is @sixdettmar . Our opening theme...

Why does the "Double O Gundam" 's name have six 0s in it? Because that's not how anything works, I know, but it does bother me a little. The 00 is a weird machine. Not to look at it: it's actually very basic, almost painfully so. But the choices made with its armaments, its abilities, and the way it gets upgraded are a bit strange. You can find a video version  of this podcast for free on Sca...

Time to head beyond the bounds. Bird bone robots arrive as we check out some of Yoji Shinkawa's Zone of the Enders  designs, one of the lesser Kojima series (by sales at least, I think they're great). Spindly weirdos meet clunky big boys, and then we close it out with a dash of evil femme by way of Egyptology. I wish he was working on something other than Death Stranding 2- I will play that g...

Truly high quality design is timeless... but that doesn't mean it's AGEless. Mobile Suit Gundam AGE  is a widely reviled entry in the beloved series, and while I'm not here to argue that its plot and characters are any good, I am  here to tell you that Kanetake Ebikawa knows how to f---in' cook. You can find a v ideo version of this podcast for free on Scanline Media's Patreon ! If you want to fin...

It's just wild to think they'd do Leif Erikson, you know? Unless Dylan and I are like missing some famous Leif from history, some hero. It's a shame the comic gives no context for this character- or almost anything, really. It's barely better than storyboards, it's such a minimal thing. You can tell that covid just obliterated their plans for a show, but they didn't want to admit that so they pret...

As Dylan argues on this ep, life on Earth is owed to the sun. So why has it taken us so long to make decent cars that use the sun? Sure, this is terrible logic that doesn't follow at all. But also I feel like I should own a solar car by now. Well, let's look at some really impractical ones- solar RACE cars. They're pretty cool, even if they look like cuts of salmon. You can find a video version  o...

X Dive is an- ahem, sorry. X DiVE is an interesting image of what Mega Man design might look like if the series had been continued to the current day. We spend a lot of both of these episodes talking about how the designs from the X series of games are so bad, but they cover a pretty specific period of time, and reflect the aesthetics of that era. Kind of. Frankly there was good design back then t...

X gonna give it to ya, or so I'm told. Today we make a surprising discovery- at least when considered with a mecha/robotic design eye, a lot of Mega Man's design is pretty... bad? These boys truly, truly don't know how to use color. There are some winners, don't get me wrong, but... yeesh. Not the best I've seen. Samus really puts X to shame. Also the X parasites, come to think of it. You can find...

Like a lot of Season 2, the GNZs feel a little underbaked to me. Not that much individually, but as a line of products. I suppose this is just how thoroughly this show has made me MSV-brained, because without seeing a bunch of variants and clear iteration, grunts and such don't feel right to me anymore. You can find a video version  of this podcast for free on Scanline Media's Patreon ! If you wan...

Really, tanks are just Heavy Cars, right? Kinda. I mean treads turn because of the wheels inside them. So it's a big box with a motor that turns wheels. I suppose this kind of reductive logic leads you to saying things like "a CAT5E network cable is a sandwich" so perhaps I should stop while I'm far, far behind. The T-34 was a workhorse of WW2 not because it was the best tank, but because it was t...

Trainer types are an interesting type of mobile suit we don't get to see often. The GM Trainer is an example, as is the Nero Trainer Type of course. Those two are different in terms of order: when they were designing mecha for the show, the GM came before the GM Trainer, but the Nero and the Nero Trainer Type were pretty much designed at the same time. Here's a third style: we see the MSJ-121 Demi...

Steel Ground Dragon! If MOGUERA were a pokemon, I'd say that was too many types! Though bit aside, MOGUERA wouldn't be Dragon type. Just Steel/Ground. This guy was in one sci-fi movie in the 50s, and then almost disappeared for forever. But almost forty years later, the Godzilla franchise decided they needed a successor to MechaGodzilla... and the rest is history. Let's read some of that history,...