A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Watched because of my current gundam-mania, and I recalled that I had somehow obtained the first disc ages ago or was given it, and never watched it. I thought it was pretty dull, but it was interesting to see where some mecha tropes come from.

The DVD only had an English track. This was very unfortunate, as the voice actors were mostly bad (which probably wouldn't have been as noticeable in Japanese, even if the Japanese ones were too) and also made a very poor decision-- to have the hero's name, Amuro, called out every thirty seconds-- much more unnatural and distracting than it would have been in Japanese. It reminded me of a bad eighties slasher movie where a similar choice made the audience yell "Cindy! Cindy!" at the screen in derisive tones. And also throw popcorn.

The opening credits have a song which repeats the word "gundam" about twelve times in sixty seconds. The animation is, to modern eyes, old-fashioned. And, to mine, unattractive.

Amuro (aka "Amuro! Amuro! Amuro!") is a studious kid on a colony which, a portentous voice-over tells us, is at war with Earth. A woman who looks like a sterotypical fifties housewife runs in to roust him out of his room, as he was too busy studying to hear the evacuation announcement. I thought for a while that she was his mother, but she turns out to be a friend. Her name is Frowbo, or Frow for short. Frowbo and Amuro! Amuro! Amuro! take off for the fallout shelter.

Some guys attack. I thought at first that they were aliens, but it turns out that they only look blue because their helmets are polarized.

Cut to Amuro's father, clearly the inspiration of sorts for Gendo Ikari, who is a scientist on a spaceship and is clearly never home. There's some "As you know, Bob" dialogue about the horrors of war.

Cut to a blonde guy in a bird helmet-- the inspiration for Zechs! I think he was the enemy, but I'm not sure.

Cut to everyone huddled in a shelter. For reasons which I did not really understand, Amuro runs out of the shelter. He runs into his father, returning to the colony with a big-ass gundam. His father tells him to evacuate, then everyone runs away, leaving the gundam behind. I guess because they were under fire, but this was really confusingly motivated. There's a big explosion! A gundam attacks! Rocks and debris fall all over, including a big book. I thought snarkily to myself, "It's the gundam user's manual!"

Amuro opens the book. It is the gundam user's manual.

The enemy gundam rampages. Amuro gets into the other gundam and begins operating it with the manual in one hand. It's quite difficult. I have to say, while this was more realistic than later shows where pilots have more of a mystic fusion with their mecha, the mystic fusion is more dramatic and less hilarious.

Amuro beats up the other gundam, but everyone but him and Frowbo get blown up. "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screams Frowbo. Amuro slaps her to make her snap out of it. I laughed.

I attempted to watch the next episode, but ennui overcame me partway through. There were lots of shots of Amuro looking absolutely terrified, and also of gundams having outer space swordfights while Amuro looks absolutely terrified inside the head. While unlike the heroes of Evangelion or Gundam Wing, he doesn't seem to start out needing therapy, if those shots are repeated much more, he surely will by the time the series is through.