Fighting giant robot evil by moonlight, winning giant robot love by daylight

The Nobel/Noble Gundam (left) and the Super Nobel/Noble Gundam (right), from the Mobile Fighter G Gundam manga adaption by Kouichi Tokita. What better way to represent Sweden than with a giant robot Japanese schoolgirl?

The Super Nobel/Noble Gundam was a design exclusive to the manga adaption - you can see it in color here, which firmly cements it as a giant robot Super Sailor Moon. I tried to point out the existence of this suit in a Mecha and Anime Headquarters thread some years ago (a website home to a massive Gundam compendium, incredibly useful before wikis were a thing), but despite it being a legitimate variant, it's never been added to the MAHQ index. Kinda disappointing, as I had previously pointed out and provided scans of the Scud Gundam, Manager Gundam, and Jumping Gundam to the site.

In any event, the G Gundam manga adaption is not something I can really recommend on its own. Trying to condense 49 episodes of content into three volumes gives the work a breakneck pace, but without the context of the television series, a lot of it doesn't make sense. The "Go For It, Domon!" gag strips in the back are kinda cute, though.

There is apparently a recent re-imagining of G Gundam in manga form written by series director and all-around awesome dude Yasuhiro Imagawa, but I've heard of no plans to bring it over in English. More's the pity.

Equal Opportunity Punching?

(scans are in left to right reading order)

So I’ve been reading through Yoshihiro Togashi’s YuYu Hakusho, a series about a juvenile delinquent who gets drafted by the netherworld to become a spirit detective. The first couple of volumes surprised me with their level of quality, featuring some more-emotional material that didn’t make it into the anime adaption. Midway into volume 3, though, we run smack dab into a fighting tournament, and the series consists of a whole lot more punching from there on out.

In volume 6, our heroes Yusuke and Kuwabara make their way through a mansion protected by demons to save an ice maiden who’s being held captive and tortured for the jewels she generates when she cries. One of these demons is Miyuki, whose main appearance I’ve scanned here. Miyuki is a male demon who dresses like a woman, but our protagonists don’t find this out until Yusuke, uh, checks for himself.

I’m… not really sure what message the author is trying to get across during Miyuki’s defeat.

“You beat me up because I’m different!” “You’re not a REAL crossdresser - you just can’t make up your mind!” *slump* “You’re so right…”

Not a… real crossdresser? Wha? Are demon crossdressers unionized in Japan, or something…? Is Yusuke questioning Miyuki’s dedication to his craft…?

I am confused.

Let's talk about heterosexuality: A Bride's Story

I don't want to do a full review right now, because only one volume out of three has been released thus far, but I will tell you this: buy this comic right god damned now. I can guarantee it's the best romance you'll read this year. Seriously.

The Greatest Robots in the World: Epsilon

The Greatest Robot in the World is Andrew's favorite Astro Boy story, and his retelling of it to me may have been what got me to pick up Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy manga in the first place.The Greatest Robot in the World is considered to be one of the best Astro Boy stories (if not the best Astro Boy story), and has been adapted at least four times since its inception. Each time, the cast of international robots that feature in it have been adapted in different ways. I had planned to make collages of all of them to showcase these different adaptions - partly because I am very fond of collages - but as it happens, I only got as far as Epsilon, the Australian solar-powered robot.

Epsilon in the original manga, the 1980s TV show, and the 2000 era
TV show. After growing a nose, he decided becoming a girl was the
next logical step.

Andrew doesn't actually like Epsilon because he thinks he's a wuss. He's not very Australian, for sure, but I found his part of the story touching in its own way, because I am a sucker for melodrama.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find an encode of the 1960s TV adaption of The Greatest Robot in the World (which was never dubbed into English), and haven't actually read Naoki Urasawa's Pluto yet despite owning all of it, so those two versions are not present in this collage.

To me, the cream and brown accents of the '80s version don't really come across as good colors for Epsilon, given the florid stylings they went with - he's a very fancy robot with very utilitarian colors. I question the color design there. The '00 version is... well, nothing like how he was originally at all, but it was animated prettily. I guess that counts for something?

Maybe I'll go back and do some more collages. Maybe not! We'll see.

Let's talk about yuri: COME EMBRACE ME, SENPAI!

Remember, always read from right to left.

I was going to use this image instead,
but in the end, good taste prevailed. By
 which I mean wouldn't fit right.

If there's one thing that's really important to a compelling superhero origin story, it's having a good coming of age metaphor. Spider-Man is the most obvious (and also the most grossest). Sailor Moon was about the awesomeness of pre-arranged marriage learning to balance working and love. The X-Men are all about illustrating how homosexuality is exactly the same as shooting kinetic energy out of your eyes. And so forth.

A Lifeform in Puberty — Vega has a pretty similar setup, but a little less pretense about its own metaphor.

This post doesn't contain any sex

Remember, always read from right to left.
From 20-Year-Old Girl x 30-Year-Old Maiden, by Akiko Morishima.

Sorry, no review this week! I promise I'll have something good in a few days, though.

I'm the Zuggernaut, Bitch

Firestorm has a dismal rogues gallery. He just has a dirty closet mostly full of various furries and bondage fetishists. Looking through those weirdos a strange one just caught my eye.

"Where did my left leg go Torchman?"

Zuggernaut. *snicker* Seriously. That's the name you went with? Something about the design of this giant purple space roach is eerily familiar.

Let's talk about yuri: Gokujou Drops

A pretty stock dramatic device in basically any form of fiction is the use of recurring motifs at regular intervals, as a means of punctuating the story. If you ever read F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited" in school, you'd recognize that as drinking. If you're a modern Doctor Who fan, it's running aimlessly about while dramatic music plays. In a Sal Buscema comic, it's someone getting punched so hard they fly towards the reader.

Remember, always read from right to left. This post'll be kind of NSFW.

In Gokujou Drops, it's girl-on-girl groping. Do I have your attention now?

Let's talk about yuri: Iono the Fanatics

Remember, always read from right to left.

I was actually going to start off this feature with something far more mundane before I got to the really embarassing stuff, but honestly, pretty much nothing I can write about can top Rob pleading for a Cardiac miniseries, so we might as well just jump into the crazy right away. Iono the Fanatics is a comic about the queen of a small country who comes to visit Japan in order to pick up black-haired girls for her giant harem.

Yeah, we're keepin' it classy.