Hello humans.

Sorry I haven't been around lately but I've been vacationing in the Berkshires, getting in a little leaf viewing as you can tell from the vacation snapshot above. Even super robots need some down time. Ah, nothing like a crisp autumn in western Mass...

I've been going over the experience of the past weeks and it's obvious I need more than a week to find the time to produce a new Mekatown entry. So we're calling them stages and I'll get them done when I get them done. It seems last week's special guest was a hit, so I'll try to do more stages like that.

This time I thought I would give some reviews of recent anime's I've been watching, naturally in the perspective of a mecha fan. (or freak, as I've heard it's the current Japanese word for obsessive fan--e.g. Game Freak, Car Freak)

Starship troopers and a little bit of Mospeada. In the present day our hero, a gas station attendant, is diagnosed with a crazy new disease. His only hope is to be frozen so that future generations might find a cure for him. He is awakened about 20 years later only to find earth is over run with giant alien bugs. Civilization is in ruins, and humanity is in such dire straits that they have to resort to unfreezing diseased humans like our hero to help them build a spaceship to take the survivors away from earth.

Blue Gender is a somber, violent story that has our heroes traveling across a post apocalyptic earth, scrounging resources from wrecked military bases and battling giant bugs that keep getting stronger. The art and animation is a bit poor. Our heroes use power suits that carry design cues from "Aliens" powerloader (open cockpits with rollbar frames) and have Votoms-like wheeled feet. The mecha design is standard, actually I think the bugs are better designed than the mecha. In Blue Gender the hard-core plot is the key. The characters and visuals are rather bland but it's the tension filled plot, of humans barely holding on against overwhelming odds that makes me reservedly recommend this anime.

Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko (Right Stuff)

Battle Athletes plus the Last Starfighter. This DVD contains 6 episodes of the OVA series. In the year 3000, conflicts between spacefaring nations are settled by young girls piloting fighters. They participate in bloodless dogfights to decide ownership of planets, etc. The Terrans have decided that the best pilots are Japanese schoolgirls from our time, so they build a time machine to bring them to the future. Yeah, it's a comedy. Yamamoto Yohko is the squadron leader for the 4 member Terran team. They fly giant fighters that resemble the futuristic race cars of Cyberformula GPX. Their main rivals are the Red Snappers, the team from Ness. They fly fish-shaped fighters a la the Darius video games.

We interrupt this stage for an amazing announcement--Bandai will be producing action figures of Accuy and Zock to be released first in the Japanese market! WE DID IT! HOORAY! Let the celebrations begin!