brvrn

I hate that I missed out on almost all the Bravern threads, but I do read them cuz I watch the show and now that it's done, I'm left with only one thing to say.

The biggest praise I can lavish about Bravern that no one has said yet is that it never apologized for anything. It never apologized for its tonal bait-and-switch in E1, it never apologized for its weirder choices in the middle, it never apologized for the time-travel, and it never apologized for putting Isami and Bravern together as a couple because Lewis and Isami are a couple and Lewis = Bravern. It never did because it never felt like it owed anyone an apology -- there's no shame in the decisions made by Masami Obari and the team he assembled under Cygames.

Everything about Bravern is the best possible indictment that anyone, Japanese or Western, can level against Bandai for betraying *Gundam: The Witch from Mercury* and it's why it's being held in much higher regard today; it's why so many people online see it as the far more successful gay love story between the two.

I don't really buy that take, though. It's dishonest, often made in bad faith by people who have Char Aznable profile pics, and only serves to fragment a demographic that takes pride in unity through inclusiveness. Frankly, for al its faults, G-Witch is still the anime I'd recommend to non-anime normies, not Bravern. Bravern's exuberant confidence comes from deep origins, and a casual whose only "mecha" is Pacific Rim at best won't have the patience to understand where that exuberance come from. Even then, the girls got married, and as of an hour ago, SuleMio was in the same drone show as Char x Amuro (a toxic relationship) and Kira x Lacus (a weird hetero couple) so honestly, what the hell do weebs like me know?

And while I agree that in many ways Bravern is a better-written story in 12 than G-Witch was in 25, I also found that I wasn't as eager to see the scene-to-scene moments in Bravern as much as I do with G-Witch. Weird, but it's probably because the whole show didn't click until E11 for me and I still felt a bit off until I binged everything.

But my point still stands: Cygames stood by Obari. And that's enough to elevate Bravern to the top as one of the best in 2024 alongside Frieren and Kusuriya despite its smaller audience here. Over time, Bravern's legacy is the one that resists tarnishing. But to fully-appreciate it, you have to also show the same commitment to reverence that Bravern id to the giants whose shoulders it stands on.