Nene in the Pocket

*deep sigh*

The tag is #nenechispace.

*deep sigh*

I finished watching War in the Pocket.

…Where exactly is my fun, happy Christmas? Strange. My happy Merry Christmas, where is it?

Right? It IS Christmas night, yes? This isn’t exactly the kind of Christmas night I imagined.

And then Twitter has some new feature that rolls BGM when you start a space, and the BGM going “dun dun dun” made me kinda grit my teeth.

Hmm? Where did my Happy Merry Christmas mood from the lunch stream go?

So, well, yeah. Where do I even start…

For starters, since I only watched Witch of Mercury, as well as 00, the Gundam being overwhelmingly the strongest was a bit of a surprise. In Witch of Mercury there’s a bunch of strong stuff other than the Gundam, and some of them look way stronger than the Gundam even. Then there’s the multiple Gundam varieties.

And here the new Gundam just beats everything else. Guess that’s how it is here.

So, Bernie… Berny? Bernie? I wasn’t watching with subtitles, but I’m gonna guess it’s spelled Bernie… When I was watching the first and second eps I was wondering “There hasn’t been a “cool” character so far...” and when he appeared I went “Here he is!”, and…

What a bloodbath.

Also, when Gundams… Mobile Suits are fighting each other, having blood come out from them was not something I’ve seen before. Did they stop depicting that at some point? But yeah, having blood spurt out of the mecha themselves gave me a good scare.

Bernie, then.

Oh yeah, I was expecting some cool guy to show up, for some reason. And until like, halfway in… Now, it works for me, actually, but the only characters that appeared were middle-aged men. I was wondering if one of those old men was the protagonist, but then Bernie appeared halfway in.

Oh yeah, you know how the topic of watching War in the Pocket on Christmas was a while ago? I don’t actually remember who the rec came from to begin with. Hm? I remember seeing a clip titled something like “Nenechi steels her mind to watch 0080 on Christmas” and then the comment section was all “No way!” “A gundam noob like Nenechi, for real?” Made me wonder why they were reacting like this… And now I know.

That was sad. The scene at the very end, during the school assembly, where Al’s friends are innocently going “The next war will be even cooler!”, seeing that innocence was… Like when they gathered a bunch of bullet pieces and were all “Isn’t this awesome?”... Made me think that there’s still a lot about the world I need to learn. That it’s not good to have a one-sided outlook. Deep…

Christmas is deep…

The world is…

Actually, why the hell do I have to talk about the world on Christmas? Huh? Huuuh? Oh yeah, since you guys said it’d be best if I timed the show to have the final episode start around midnight, I did exactly that…

So when the other girls were doing ASMR and having a nice relaxed tete-a-tete with their viewers, I was silently sitting on my sofa watching people get shot to death. On Christmas. For what purpose?

“Lmao”?

“Because you said you would”?

I mean, I did...

Man… I’m tired.

Wait, Al was voiced by Namikawa [Daisuke] -san? Really? I was skipping the endings since I promised to do a space and didn’t want to be too late with it, so I didn’t read the credits.

Happy… Eh? Merry Christmas, I guess?

Right now I’m gonna have to restore my mind with Bocchi the Rock.

“The fighting was gritty”

Yeah! In 00 and Witch of Mercury the fighting scenes were more cool… Like the act of fighting itself is simply cool, tickling that boyish itch. I guess they’re more modern-oriented, makes sense.

With 0080, I got immediately surprised right from the art style, it was very… old-fashioned, in a good way. It’s been a while since I’ve watched something with black bars on the sides.

It’s like… Hmm… It’s probably something you couldn’t depict in anime these days.

Oh, so he was a child actor then? Then he wasn’t putting on a voice, his voice actually sounded like that then.

00? I finished the anime. The TV anime, that it is, I think. There were 2 seasons, I watched them all. I finished a while ago, actually.

I wonder if you could air… Though wait, aren’t OVAs stuff you couldn’t show on TV anyway? I’m not really sure how it works. But I think you can’t see OVAs on TV. There was like, a “FUCK” written on a wall with blood, made me go “Wow, you couldn’t air that these days”.

It was some heavy stuff…

“I’d like you to watch the movie as well.”

There’s a movie too?

“It was on videotapes.”

Oh, that’s what it means? OVA stands for video tapes? VA? Video? O… What does the O stand for? V stands for video, I assume?

Did I cry? No, not quite. It didn’t make me want to cry, it gave me the same feeling you get when you watch a documentary. You know how when you’re watching a show that goes “we will guide you through the details of this atrocious case” and it doesn’t quite make you sad or sorry in a tearjerker way, but you just… sigh. *deep sigh* I don’t know how to word it better.

Oh, but! The Zaku? The Zaku showing up was a nice moment for me. Since it was in GunEvo. Also, the GM? I think it was the GM, and the Zaku too. Seeing the units I remembered was nice.

Since there are no Witch of Mercury suits in it.

Still, though, I can’t really tell robots…? mecha…? mobile suits…? apart very well. I couldn’t see that red one [Gelgoog J] as anything but a small Sazabi. But turns out it wasn’t. Yeah.

Oh yeah, the Zaku… Wait, no, the GM. It wasn’t the sniper model, I think. Can it use different weapons? In GunEvo there’s a GM Sniper, but the one in the show looked like it had a smaller weapon.

Oh yeah, the monoeye! The one in the middle of the Zaku’s face. That thing moves, huh? Couldn’t see that in the game! I thought it was like a pattern on its face, but then it moved and I went “Wow, it really is like an eyeball!” It freaked me out a little when it moved, too. I was convinced it wouldn’t be moving, so it moving while looking around was a bit of a surprise. It’s like seeing the supposedly immobile skeleton in the science room move.

Right? It actually looks around through it, huh.

“Watch Macross next.”

But I don’t even know uh, Eva yet! I’m a total noob, I don’t know my Evas from my Macrosses! Those shows about pilots, in general.
Oh, so it’s a camera? So it looks around through it…

Oh yeah, the depiction of blood was kinda realistic! Me, I guess I’m fine with gore. I don’t like it when it’s sudden, but since I was prepared for the blood when I started, it didn’t surprise me that much. Still, I haven’t seen anime go this bloody in a while. Anime these days has these pretty blood splatters… Wait, what am I even saying? I mean, it splatters in cool ways, and they tone down the colour a bit. Like, instead of red, they make it black and shadowy, I guess to cut down on the grotesque aspect? That happens a lot these days, right? So seeing deep red, vermillion blood seeping through clothes? Been a while.

I guess I’ll take a bath.

00? Well, I guess there was bloodshed in there, too. But it feels like War in the Pocket had this depiction of wounds… Like, people getting shot? People getting stabbed was common enough in 00, too, but people getting shot, pierced through, losing eyes, getting their heads blasted, falling after gunshots, all that looked… Now, I haven’t seen it in real life, so I don’t know if it IS realistic, but it FELT realistic.

I think I’ll take a relaxing bath while watching Bocchi the Rock now. Happy Merry Christmas, guys. T-Thanks for… telling me about this wonderful work on Christmas.

Well, it was fun, though! …Was it? Fun? Calling it fun doesn’t seem right. But if you ask me if I enjoyed the work? Experienced it? Felt it? Passed it through myself as a Gundam show? I guess I enjoyed it in that way.

But, well… It’s gonna live in my head for a while. I have to watch some cheerful anime like Minami-ke or Nichijou to wash away the corpses burnt into my mind. If I don’t reset myself before sleeping, it’s going to weigh on me during tomorrow’s Christmas karaoke.

Happy Merry Christmas, guys.

*deep sighing continues*

Once I’m out of the bath with a fresh mind, I’ll put up the waiting room for tomorrow’s stream.

Well then, at the recommendation of Gundam lovers, I watched War in the Pocket right on Christmas night and had a very… impressive Christmas. Let’s hope we can spend tomorrow being happy. Good night. Not that I’m sleeping right away. But for this space, good night.