by TWO-MIX
Gundam Wing OP1
karaoke cover by dtns0, recorded at Tom’s World, Robinsons Galleria December 9, 2017
TJ Media song #60637
singer’s comments:
If Slayers was one of the 2 series that pushed me over the edge of weebdom, Gundam Wing was the second.
As with most people, I’ve heard of Gundam before but I didn’t have the resources (nor the reason) to go out looking for them. Then GMA 7 just decided to air it in the afternoon so watching it was a no-brainer.
On the local side, the dub was okay and it had the occasional cuts due to time constraints (good thing they re-ran it a couple of times later). But what was more important was this series helped ushered in GMA 7’s anime spree, eventually leading to much more localized series from all local stations in the future.
On the internet, it wasn’t that influential… until Adult Swim made it part of the first wave of Toonami. Sure it had giant robots, but it had two things going for it that helped it make an impression on a new generation of American anime fans: first was the politics - yes, it’s a bit shallow, but it’s much more complicated than the previous Gundam series; and the other was the pretty boys - this drew in a lot of female fans, fans that would’ve enjoyed the series on its own but wouldn’t have watched it if it wasn’t for the eye candy.
Anyway, long story short, if Slayers taught me to see anime as a medium as one that can span different media, Gundam Wing seemingly unlikely (at least for an outsider) success taught me how fandom affects people and communities in ways that we might not expect. And I found both really interesting.
Robinsons Galleria, with its association to the other parts of geekdom like trading card games, reminds me a lot of Gundam figures. I really don’t know why, since the only Gundam figure I bought (Deathscythe for a friend’s xmas gift), I got from Goldcrest (now part of Glorietta).
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