the unicorn

[davemerrill]

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn; it is the Japanese cartoon that Japanese cartoons promised us the minute "Char's Counterattack" ended, but stalled out on giving us for a couple of decades. It has Yoshikazu Yasuhiko character designs, an original-Gundam storyline, an old-school logo, and top-notch animation, and therefore, I will be watching. Part One gets a simultaneous worldwide release on March 12.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Amazon lists it in BluRay only. Anyone know if a standard DVD will be available?

-Tim Eldred

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Might be time to upgrade! This would not be the first time a Sunrise release would inspire me to improve my home video equipment.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

The BD disc is an Amazon only release for a limited window. Think 'return to Animevillage' days. There's supposed to be a general release of the BD and DVD 'later'.

[thebasilblog.livejournal.com]

Sad thing is, Sony got the rights to put it out on their Playstation Network in Japan, so that all those kids can download it to their PS3s. That this actually means is that the fansubbers have already gotten a hold of it and anyone can just torrent the thing, rendering the simultaneous worldwide release somewhat useless.

EDIT: That said, mine's pre-ordered too.

[ferricide.livejournal.com]

so fucking preordered!

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Um, IIRC, 6 volumes (episodes) at $50 each. First volume was down to 'normal' DVD pricing but has now gone up to $34.99. *sigh*

Just so you know. :)

[sobieniak.livejournal.com]

The price we have to pay for!

Thanx!

[sobieniak.livejournal.com]

Yep, it was great finding that image a while back. It's weird getting off on 28 year old relics but I still do!

[kikaiju.livejournal.com]

Might be the next bestest Gundam ever, but damn that name sounds like something from Robot Chicken that has George Lowe's voice. Talking about mayonnaise.

Unicorn? What happened to all the cool names like Datarn and Vifam and L-Gaim and freaking DaiRuggar? None of them make sense but that's OK.

OK, I grant that Dancougar at least had an anime motif. But it also had a big sword and a bad guy with a mohawk. Who got sliced in half. And blown up.

[kikaiju.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, time to stop whining about BluRay. BluRay players hit $50 last Christmas for a basic one, and currently barely break $100 for an OK one, or $130 or a really good one at Costco. BDLive and Youtube and all that crap built in.

Or hell, buy the discs anyway. They will still play a year from now when the players are $30.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they've gotten a lot cheaper. I'm thinking one might be in our future.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

And of course a BD player will play regular DVDs too, so if you needed a new player anyway...

But one thing to keep foremost in mind, a BD player has to be thought of as a computer more than a video device. you need to constantly check for firmware updates because the standards are still fluid, not locked down like VHS was.

You WILL run into a disc that won't play properly, usually a recent movie release, often from MGM (the James Bond films were famous for that), Sony or Disney.

I'm sure I'll be bashed for this but I would suggest a 'major name' player until they get the standards finally frozen, as the majors seem to be more on top of doing the firmware updates.

Just my blathering 2 cents :)

[kidfenris.livejournal.com]

I will also be watching, even though I don't care about the original Gundam series (0080 excepted) or anything else that Yoshiyuki Tomino had too much of a hand in. I'm interested in Gundam Unicorn because it's by the same writer-director team that made the largely underrated Le Chevalier D'Eon.

I also want to hear how Dean Venture handles a dub involving a character named Full Frontal.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Unicorn X L-Gaim Mashup!

Full Flat Vs. Full Frontal!

[(Anonymous)]

OK, dumb question--are BD players region free? Or is that another level of functionality that I have to shop for?

-Tim E.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Not a dumb question. There are regions with BD, but there's only 3 of them, and Japan and the US are in the same region!

So you buy, say, the new Votoms OAV series from Japan on BD, pop it in your player and enjoy! Won't have English subtitles of course, and you'll be locked out of any BD Live special web-based extra content (grrrr) but otherwise it's just like popping a Japanese VHS cassette in a VCR.

(should the Japanese throw English subs on new BD releases in order to try and get at least a few more sales? Hell yeah, but they won't do that and honestly, I would fear English subs as generated by a native Japanese...brrrrrr)

[youngfreud.livejournal.com]

Only problem I got with Unicorn is Tomino has nothing to do with it. I would like him to do another Gundam series before he dies, just to show us young whippersnappers how it's done. I do like that he mellowed out from his "Kill 'Em All" phase with Turn A and King Gainer, but, as seen with the unique departure in Turn A from the tired reskinned-WW2 analogy copied from First Gundam to a more modern Israeli-Palestinan dialectic, he still has some pretty fresh ideas to bring to the table.

But that's the only problem. I've been suffering through the alt-verse phase of Gundam for the past decade and the moment I heard a new Universal Century story, one that doesn't involve retreading over the One Year War and the interim period, I was excited to say the least. And Yasuhiko character designs are just icing on that cake.