After quitting teaching–over a decade ago now–I found myself at a rather big Japanese company, embarking on baby’s very first salaryman job. Everyone with “manager” in their title (or above) smoked, scrubs like me got chewed out and publicly humiliated when they “fucked up,” and sexual harassment was rampant at company dinners. The Shōwa era still lived on there, even as it was dying out in the later part of the Heisei era, when I joined. That’s the kind of company it was–and I’ll leave it at that. Gotta keep material for when I finish that series I linked above! 

Anyway, to the meat of this post! Earlier this month I had a chance to reconnect with some old colleagues from that time on the occasion of my old boss’s retirement, and I wanted to leave some thoughts on the experience. I haven’t done many “travelogue” posts on here for a while, and given how fragile social media is now, I’d rather drop my thoughts here as opposed to pissing into the wind on Bluesky or something. 

I love hanging out with old work buddies–and while I had hung out with a few close colleagues from this first salaryman job every now and again since leaving the company, it had been a long while since I had seen many of the other people I shared space with daily, occasionally carried around heavy objects with^[1]I will explain this one day., and drank with from time to time at team gatherings. The call to meet up for dinner and celebrate Boss’s legacy came out of the blue from one guy on the team who I had literally not seen since I left the company. But we were friendly when we worked together, and he left an impression on me–and I guess I left an impression on him, as well^[2]Of note, every now and again we spent hours together driving to the warehouse where we had to carry around said heavy objects, and I suppose then we got close.! I quickly returned the message, and appeared at the party about two weeks later.

I was one of the first people to arrive, but once all the old faces started coming in, the small izakaya dining room transformed into a time capsule. Of course, there were a handful of folks who looked different–of note, Boss looked like a low-level thug in a Kitano flick, or a support member of the Crazy Ken Band–but while certain appearances had changed, the vibe stayed the same. Boss was the center of attention, bragging about his over four-decade career at the company, while also being sure to mix in dirty comments about how he doesn’t go to soaplands because he prefers “amateurs.” Of course, he was also keen to talk about his two marriages, both of which were with women he met at the company–and out of left field, I also learned that he was a gamer, and had played Assassin’s Creed^[3]Not sure which one. and The Last of Us. Of course as former minions, it was our job to be “impressed” by his stories, while pulling off to the side to take fun jabs at one another. And of course, the youngest woman in the group–who is nearly 40-years-old at this point–still prepared Boss’s drinks.

Aside from taking in the old, extremely off-color, and nostalgic vibes, what struck me was how no one had changed. While it was an intimate gathering of around 12 folks–and strangely the people I worked the most closely with weren’t around–only two people (including me) had left the company. For the most part, everyone was still working there, and most likely doing a similar job to what they were doing over 10 years ago. With the pandemic behind society now, they were more or less back to the office daily^[4]Apparently you’re allowed one day at home per week., working the same 9:00 to 17:30 hours, with the same 12:00 to 13:00 lunch break. As someone who is probably kind of restless by nature and demands change–and also as someone who has expensive hobbies–I left the company after 3 years as I wasn’t satisfied with the working conditions, and I have continued job hopping at a similar pace for the past decade and change. And while now I’m actually in a good place, I still have a restlessness, and typically find myself scanning job boards for the next potential thing. 

Meanwhile, my old co-workers seem satisfied with their lives, and seeing them happier than ever at this dinner^[5]I have a feeling the working conditions have probably improved somewhat in the past decade. did conjure up something of an epiphany–the realization that yes, it’s okay to be satisfied with your life. It’s okay to settle down. I do realize that this may sound incredibly condescending–and there probably is an ugly part of me that is–but being immersed in this old vibe, amongst old colleagues who had not changed in over a decade, was comforting. And it told me that maybe, just maybe, I should chill out. And I think I’ll get there–but it’ll require work.

Anyway, before I get too personal and introspective, I’ll go ahead and wrap this up. It was great seeing everyone! As someone who had only ever worked at non-Japanese firms since leaving that company, being in that space again was comforting… even if much of the experience was extremely taboo in the year 2026. It certainly was a legit “time slip” back to the early 2010s. After the dinner, I was almost compelled to go back–but with only one remote work day a week, I think I’ll continue to work elsewhere. 

The post The Old Crew appeared first on Analog Housou.

How Gundam Wing Falls Apart

It’s no mystery that Gundam Wing’s quality declines as it goes on–it’s one of the key criticisms leveled at the show. However, as someone who only saw the series through to the end once when I was a kid, I wanted to see for myself just how “bad” it gets. Indeed, once past the two clipshows, the back-half of Wing is indeed a huge mess, but to be honest… it’s not dire. But who knows, maybe that’s just the nostalgia glasses talking. 

As Wing gets late into its run, the momentum from the start of the show completely evaporates, and while there is a story that is in motion, each episode effectively feels like a one-off. And don’t get me wrong–they are entertaining one-and-done tales, at times providing some cool world-building. But ultimately nothing really happens for all the time spent on these stories, aside from the main plot constantly breaking the different sides of the war into further microfactions, as if they’re some far-left student organization in the 1960s. It ultimately feels like the writers are buying time to focus on getting the ending right–which is what I assumed happened, without going back to check the twisted history of the show’s production in detail.

Eventually Wing falls back on established Gundam beats, which is glaringly clear to someone who has eaten up much UC Gundam in the years since watching Wing for the first time. The record shows that the initial idea for Wing was to tell a story that covered the UC beats spanning from First to Victory, but this idea was scrapped when the show actually got started. However, to wrap it all up, the staff ended up going back to that original idea. I suppose this is an okay way to save the production, but as a result the Gundam boys become extremely sidelined in the back-half of the show. By being caught up in the traditional Gundam military conflict, the boys’ initial cool factor–being radical militant secret agents–disappears into thin air.

The story also takes the hero robots out of the picture for a long time, making one wonder if this show really has “Gundam” in its title. When I was younger, the manner in which Wing portrayed the Gundams as overpowered weapons helped to rationalize why they don’t show up all the time–because when they do appear, they tear up the scene in incredible fashion. However, as someone who has seen a bunch of fucking Gundam now, I expect to see a Gundam in every fucking episode. Wing throws in more than a few episodes where the boys are just working for one side of the conflict, in grunt suits–and sometimes they’re just stealing them. My nostalgia memory told me that Heero piloted Wing Zero for the entire last stretch of the show–but in reality, he probably only pilots it a few times, and other times Zero is mind-fucking the other pilots. And in general, the robot just doesn’t show up that much! Consider how often both of Domon’s Gundams show up in G Gundam–it’s night and day compared to Wing, and feels like a waste of a cool mecha design. This goes for all the other suits, too!

The animation quality also drops as the staff hastily works to keep up with the weekly broadcast schedule. While the show was never quite a looker from even the beginning, as mentioned in my previous post, the show was sure to flex for the action and set pieces, even if at times other parts looked flat, with zero layers of shading^[1]Paul “Otaking” Johnson must be going insane.. By the back-half, the look becomes even flatter as artists have less time to fully color in a majority of the cels, and with battles moving to space, Wing starts to rely on copious beamspam and sliding robots, where action scenes earlier on in the show set on Earth had far more dynamism. And as someone who watched this without its openings on Toonami–only seeing them as videos downloaded off of someone’s fansite–I had no idea the second opening was more or less incomplete until the last one or two episodes. For a majority of the time that they’re using that second opening, the visuals are primarily recycled TV footage with some new clips spliced in.

Ultimately Wing comes together fine, and I think the last few episodes are quite good. And even for all the flaws I’m citing above, as mentioned earlier on, I still feel the back-half of the show is entertaining fluff, but a far cry from what the show was delivering from the start. I suppose it’s a lost cause to criticize a long Gundam show for losing the plot during its year-long run, but in something like Zeta it feels like the production crew always kind of has an idea of what they want to do, and the previous AU series before Wing, G Gundam, has a solid, charted out trajectory, despite some slow points. Wing’s production was clearly fucked, and it really shows in the final product.

Be Forever, Gundam Wing – Endless Waltz

I also got through Endless Waltz on this revisit, to appropriately cap things off, as it may well be the most iconic portion of the series. I did write up some thoughts on it here, which will likely be parroted below, but read away if you wish!

It goes without saying that Endless Waltz is all fanservice. It’s all about capturing the same vibes folks enjoyed from Wing, and doing it with as much polish and style as possible. That’s not to say that Endless Waltz has some amazing tight story that will blow your mind–it’s basically just more of the same, and even opens up more questions–but with its incredible animation, slick action and comparatively bite-sized runtime, it’s the perfect capstone for the series, and leaves a great last impression. 

For this watchthrough, I hit both the OVA and the movie cut. I don’t believe it was my first time seeing the OVA cut, but the movie cut is certainly the one I kept watching as a kid, so the OVA take on the material felt quite new to me. I much prefer the film cut–the OVA feels rushed at just around 75 minutes, and has the typical Wing problem of things kind of just… happening. The extra 15 minutes added for the film makes a great difference in helping to contextualize certain scenes, and letting the whole story breathe. 

The story itself is certainly an attempt to try and patch up some of the holes that were opened up due to Wing’s haphazard storytelling, but as mentioned above, it does also invite more questions. And compared to watching it as a kid, the conflict feels a lot smaller and far less “epic” than I remembered. Cool-looking robots went a long way for me as a kid, and they still help a lot now, but I can’t help but feel that the story lacks the kind of scale I want out of a sci-fi epic with giant robots.

But hey, who cares–it’s a super fun time. By this point Une, Noin and Sally are basically the Hot Moms for the Gundam boys, so you can see them drawn at Ultimate Hotness, and have fun watching them help their screwball sons out. Meanwhile Endless Waltz feels like one of the few times we see the Gundam boys all together, and eventually come together as a team^[2]…basically by the very end. Watching the TV show, the boys are more or less separated into different groups throughout the story, and only really come together as a unit in the final few episodes. 

As a result, it’s one of the few times we get to see all of the robots together as well, blowing up a bunch of bad guys in the final battle, albeit with a bit of a struggle to keep things spicy. Another advantage the film has over the OVA is that this final battle is extended, so we can get the most of the robot action, and those sweet custom Endless Waltz designs. Furthermore, in the OVA cut, due to the way the story is broken up, the middle episode has very little mech action, which feels slightly less weird across a 90-minute film. And yeah, the action is incredible–the animation is super smooth, the robots are perfectly rendered, and each clash is incredibly dynamic. While the TV show had some stand-out battles, if you want Wing action, Endless Waltz is the way to go–but that goes without saying. All said, Endless Waltz is a lot of fluff, but it’s a super fun time. And yeah, the nostalgia glasses help a lot.

Not that this take will come as a surprise to anyone who’s engaged with discourse on Wing over the past three decades, but when taking into consideration both the cool parts and not-so-cool parts of Gundam Wing, I think it’s fair to say it’s a huge mixed bag. While it certainly squanders its potential due to poor production management, I think it remains entertaining throughout and never really becomes actively bad. That said, if I was watching this fresh as an adult, I don’t think it would do it for me–this one has to be enjoyed through nostalgia glasses. Meanwhile, something like G Gundam is a show I could see myself enjoying fresh–I revisited it through reruns just before the pandemic, and was still compelled by Imagawa’s signature style of storytelling–perhaps even more so than when I was kid. Meanwhile, the impression I get from Gundam X is that it’s quite solid without the veneer of nostalgia–so maybe I’ll check that out. But first, I need to get through that Eva watch I mentioned in my last post. I’m currently on episode two!

But yeah, Wing ain’t bad–though you need the nostalgiavision for it to hit. Otherwise, skip it for better Gundam outings.

The post Watching Gundam Wing in Your Late 30s: Part 2 – The Not-So-Hot Stuff appeared first on Analog Housou.

Like many American anime fans of my generation, Gundam Wing airing on Toonami acted as a major gateway to a now decades-spanning fascination with Japanese animation, and Japanese culture on the whole. As documented on this blog, after initially being sucked into anime via Pokemon and Dragon Ball, 12 or 13-year-old wah discovered Gundam via a bootlegged t-shirt my buddy had on at school one day–and luck would have it that Gundam Wing started airing on TV shortly after. “Yo, it’s that thing! On my friend’s t-shirt!” I probably said, pointing at the TV while this ad was playing. So yeah, Gundam Wing was literally the third anime I ever watched. I caught most of the Toonami run^[1]Poor VCR recording technology meant that I missed episodes here and there. and had the first few DVDs of the show, along with Endless Waltz in my then minuscule anime home video collection. With access to anime being scarce at the time, for a few years I had Endless Waltz playing on heavy rotation, and dipped back into those first few DVDs of the TV series time and again. But in the years since, I never went back to watch the entire show.

However, inspiration to dive back into Wing for real hit in December of 2024, when the mecha podcast Giant Robot FM^[2]Listen to them! They’re great! covered Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz for the holiday season. Listening through the account of Wing’s troubled production history on their show made me curious as to how I would feel about watching it as a grown-up, now with years of media literacy under my belt. It took a while, but in August of last year I found a nice-looking torrent of the show, and was off to the races. It also happened to be the 30th anniversary of the show, so the timing was perfect. Concurrently I was also planning to revisit Evangelion for its 30th anniversary… something that never happened due to dramatic events involving my employment^[3]I’ll get to it… likely this year., but I kept on with Wing as it was light enough to keep my mind off what was happening in the real world around me.

I ended up watching through the show on and off, at times taking long-ish breaks, but I finally made it to the end last month, and recently got through both versions of Endless Waltz as well. So in an attempt to keep this blog updated, and also to talk about anime for a change (shock!), here are some jumbled thoughts on Wing, watching it as an old and dying person in their late-30s.

If you’re reading this, I assume you have some experience with Wing. If not, and you feel like reading this post anyway, you can get yourself up to speed here. Also–there will be casual spoilers! 

Anyway, let’s… suit up!

Why Gundam Wing is Still Cool

As mentioned above, Gundam Wing was the third Japanese animated TV show I ever watched, and acted as a gateway to Japanese entertainment and its culture for me. Without Gundam Wing, there’s a chance I may not have ended up living here in Japan. Watching it around 25 years later as a jaded and old person, I was surprised at how much of the show still hits. While I certainly watched it with nostalgia glasses, I do think the show’s high points are legitimately great.

Firstly, allow me to echo the common sentiment that the show’s quality is frontloaded–the first dozen or so episodes are top-notch anime, and I would argue that the quality is still quite good throughout the first half of the show. But that first batch of episodes–damn, so good! Each time you tune in, you either get some cool new character, a shocking new development, or both–it’s simply a rollercoaster. Like, dude–there’s a fucking coup d’etat within the first 10 episodes! It does get a bit more episodic towards the middle, but it remains exciting, and the story keeps on moving at a great pace. 

Wing is also frontloaded with cool. Many of the opening episodes have excellent moments of dynamic action, and cool set pieces. One scene from early on that sticks out is Duo breaking Heero out of the military hospital–Duo facilitates the escape by hurling a grenade at the wall, and then breaks out some weird lightsaber helicopter gadget to fly down, while Heero plummets to his death^[4]Until he realizes he likes A Girl. A few episodes later Lady Une assassinates a bunch of dudes with an explosive makeup powder case, which also owns. And that part where Wufei beats up all those dumb military dudes in that Chinese village–that owns, too! And of course Heero, blowing up his robot, getting hurled through the air, and lifelessly hitting the ground while gushing out blood is the fucking best. I could go on, but suffice it to say, the first half is chock-full of these memorable moments. 

Given how Wing opens with a bang, I did experience some whiplash watching First Gundam for the first time, with its opening set of episodes being comparatively quite slow–which would actually turn out to be the standard for Gundam, as I would come to learn. So in this sense, Wing still feels a bit fresh now that I have a bunch of UC experience under my belt.

The setup for Wing is also cool, and a first^[5]…I think. for the franchise in anime. It focuses on radical activism, with the expected visceral elements associated with the premise, such as sudden terrorist attacks and down-and-dirty guerrilla warfare. As someone who has come to hold a morbid interest in real-life radical activists, I can jive with this vibe even more 25 years later. Hell, perhaps Wing is what planted this seed of interest in me, years ago. While Gundam greatly diversified in the decades since, it’s cool to see them leveraging this angle for the franchise in mainstream anime in as early as the mid-90s. But I suppose what came before was a super robot show, so maybe the sky was the limit. Either way, it’s cool.

Lastly, I just want to make a note of Wing’s technical quality–especially in the first half. While it is indeed a cheap-looking show from the mid-90s, the HD upgrade certainly helps when it comes to appreciating the typically high-quality drawings (even if they are at times not shaded), and in general the mecha action is quite well choreographed and solid (even if they recycle footage here and there). Furthermore, I think the design work is strong, from the cool and sexy traditionally anime-looking boys and girls, to the more grizzled-looking adult side characters–I especially love all the weirdo scientists^[6]Shame they got so little screentime…. I also enjoy a majority of the enemy mech designs, which seem closer to utilitarian fighting machines, as opposed to more variations of the Zaku^[7]And I love me a good Zaku clone, don’t get me wrong. or the kooky mechanical beasts that mobile armors in UC Gundam tend to be.  Meanwhile, Ōtani Kō’s score is awesome, mixing up tracks with spy thriller vibes, Chū-ni guitar solos, and traditional Gundam orchestral sounds. And that sax, baby! It’s so corny! And so GOOD!

…and since I’m already over 1,000 words, I’ll be stopping here for now. Tune in next time for when I examine the… not so hot parts of Wing–which as the record shows, are mostly concentrated to the back-half of the show! I’ll also look at Endless Waltz, as well.

Until next time!

The post Watching Gundam Wing in Your Late 30s: Part 1 – The Hot Stuff appeared first on Analog Housou.