Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans

First I have to point out the thing that was said in that little box, they're acting like Hanasaku Iroha was huge with fans when both Anohana and Toradora that were also mentioned were much much bigger.

The article itself was really cool, I find it super interesting that Nagai and Okada have to reign each other in when creating an anime and that it was mostly Nagai's brainchild and Okada just helped it come to life. Some haters of her should read this article.

edited 22nd May '16 4:59:49 PM by diyedas

So did anyone catch the dub? (As an aside: since we may have people in the thread who are watching the dub but didn't see the sub, please spoiler-tag things appropriately.)

Generally speaking, I thought the dub was pretty good. I'm not entirely sold on JYB as Orga yet, but that's as much me being distracted by a familiar voice as anything else. The two big surprises for me were Mika and Kudelia, both of which I actually think are better in English than in Japanese. Mika's much deeper pitched in Japanese than in English, and I was a bit unsure about that from hearing it in the trailers, but in the full episode it works really well. The fact that he actually sounds like a scrawny teenager but still talks with that casual deadpan works even better than when he sounded like a barrel-chested 20-something. Kudelia's English performance is less "proper demure Japanese young lady who's slightly embarrassed by her own activism" and more "bounces back and forth between being genuinely enthusiastic about her chosen cause and stumbling over herself thanks to her sheltered upbringing", which I think makes her more sympathetic as a character.

The rest of the cast is alright; nothing jumped out at me as being especially good or bad. A lot of the Tekkadan pilots sound similar enough that sometimes it's hard (for me, at least) to tell who's talking when they're all yelling on the radio, but that was the case in Japanese, as well.

They just bit the bullet and call Biscuit Biscuit, which sounds sillier in English than in Japanese, but I'm honestly not sure what else they could have done.

Overall, I thought it was pretty good. I'm looking forward to watching it both for the dub and as a rewatch of the series (or, well, the first season anyway). Assuming they keep up a steady pace of one episode a week, season two should hit before the season one dub is finished, but we'll see how that goes.

How's Biscuit's dub? That's the one I've been worried about. I hope he got to keep a soothing voice.

I tend to not watch dubs if I've seen the show subbed and the reverse where if I watched the dub first I don't watch the sub because I'm too used to the voices and the way the characters and story are handled in whatever version I watched first that switching between the two doesn't feel right. How is the dub's handling of things anyways?

About as well as the first episode was handled in Japanese. It is a little awkward getting used to the English voices, but the only thing that actually bothers me is the pronunciation of "Mikazuki" - everyone says it with a slight pause in the middle like its "Mika-Zuki", and with less emphasis on the "a" and extra emphasis on the "u."

I just saw the first episode this past Saturday night. I thought it was pretty good.

Biscuit doesn't have a whole lot of dialogue in the first episode, but he sounded alright to me for the few lines he did have.

One thing I forgot to mention: baby flashback Mika's voice was pretty bad, which is unfortunately if only because it's literally the first thing you hear when episode one starts. It's basically an adult trying to sound childlike and not quite getting there.

I saw complaining about the way Mika's name was pronounced somewhere else online, but to be honest I didn't notice it myself.

Saw the first episode of the dub over the weekend, probably going to rewatch it before the next ep comes out.

Never saw a single bit of the subbed version, so I'm totally going in blind.

Let's see..... first impressions.... I kept having a few 08th MS Team flashbacks over the course of the episode, mostly due to the way that the Third Group was introduced. Although the show's tone feels more like Zeta or the first season of 00. The latter especially, given what I can tell of the Gjallarhorn inspection teams.

Not entirely sure of what to make of Mikazuki yet. His interaction with Kudelia makes me wonder if he's got No Social Skills, or if he's just a bit of an ass.

And speaking of Kudelia, I like her a lot. Cute kid! ....which means, of course, she's totally boned, and not in the fun away.

Although, I have to admit that I kind of have mixed feelings about it being a Funimation dub instead of an Ocean dub.

All in all...... I'm not completely sold on IBO yet, but then it usually takes about three or four episodes before I fall head-over-heels for a totally new Gundam show that I don't have any prior experience with. Definitely going to keep watching it, though.

Do keep watching it.

It's worth it.

08th MS Team is a good comparison for IBO, at least in terms of its combat — it's very much about individual fights between small numbers of opponents, with a focus on tightly-choreographed fight scenes rather than the hero showing up, launching a stock footage shonen-esque finishing move to blow up twenty guys at once, and then moving on. It's one of the things I like best about it, actually.

Yeah, after SEED, SEED Destiny, 00, and Unicorn (dunno about AGE since I haven't seen it yet) the low-tech nature of Orphans and the complete lack of laser beams of any kind is really refreshing, and the show takes full advantage of it for some really visceral battles.

I like it because of it's deviations from the usual Gundam conventions that are common now. Like the Gundam being a elite super unit that tanks everything. Here? Sure it's special but not entirely unique, at best it has strong armor and a extra reactor, no bits, no super attacks. Just a slightly fancier suit than the others.

There is also the lack of beam weapons, like not a single one, anywhere. Which I felt was interesting and refreshing.

And finally, the Newtype Analog isn't some superhuman or person with psychic powers, at best they are just cyborgs capable of controlling their mobile suits better since they can work it like a human body.

There is also a emphasis on tactics and strategy as well, and of course dueling, but dueling that makes some sense thanks to the fact that most of their enemies have super strong armor plating.

AGE and G-Reco took after SEED

To be honest, IBO's Gundams are pretty scary by the setting's standards. Those twin reactors mean they're much stronger, faster, and tougher than any other suit, which doesn't just translate to hitting harder but to wielding impossibly heavy-duty equipment with minimal effort. Combine that with the way their reactors' Artificial Gravity lets them protect the pilot from inertia, and you've got some utterly lethal Lightning Bruiser monsters. They may not be as flashy (or, at least, not flashy in the same ways), but they have at least the same relative power compared to the rest of their setting as UC or CE Gundams.

It's hard to directly compare the "power level" of IBO's Gundams to other shows. Their main advantage over conventional mecha is the A-V system, but that's not restricted to Gundams and not all Gundams have it. Their second reactor is a significant qualitative improvement (ie, it makes them stronger, tougher, and faster) but not a categorical difference like the beam weapons and advanced armor technology of Gundams from other series. We also see a fair number of non-Gundam custom mecha that display Gundam-tier performance, so it's not like the second reactor is an insurmountable advantage of the Gundam design.

Can I take a moment to say that Orga - whose name, incidentally, always makes me think of this charming bastard◊ - 's hair... thingie... hanging down in front of his eyes... strikes me as really weird and bizarre, even by anime standards?

Yeah, that's definitely one of the stranger character design choices in IBO, though Kudelia's distractingly purple eyes and needlessly elaborate hair style (when she's in her formal outfit, at least) are up there as well.

I feel like Kudelia's hair, in particular, probably resulted in at least one fist fight between the character designer and the animators. "We have to draw WHAT?!"

At least Kudelia's elaborate hairstyle makes sense given who she is and that is in fact a hair style. Orga's inexplicably natural hair thingy just seems out of place.

The character designs are all over the place in general. Biscuit is a cartoon character, Kudelia walked out of a shoujo manga, Orga is from a shounen anime, etc.

Biscuit's especially funny because pretty much the entire rest of Tekkadan is super ridiculously ripped. Like, to a degree that would be unhealthy in kids that age in real life.

Especially since their all supposed to be starved.

And yet I find all weirdly endearing.

Even Mikazuki's somewhat creepy look.

Meanwhile Akihiro is Guts. But with Gusion's arm that got severed instead of his own.

edited 8th Jun '16 6:24:11 PM by TheAirman

Tekkadan isn't supposed to be starved, these kids are well fed, they have a few good cooks for 'em.