Everywhere You Go
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Nov 16, 2008
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Well, I don't want the pilot to be a female in the end. I have nothing against them, they're awesome in anime like Gunbuster, but I think Gaiking's pilot should be male, and Sanshiro or a non-asian should be the main character and is still a baseball player. Even if they won't make him a baseball player, I still want the pilot to be a young hot-blooded male.
 
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I blame Michael Bay for this. I love Super Robots but you just can't add any sense of realism to them and expect them to work let alone these highly detail and mechanical aspects. I mean if you yell loud enough inside one you can power up the photon energy reaction generator that powers the fire laser burst so you can kill the space dinosaur Greek god spaceship. This is going to end up like the American Godzilla, taking an awesome yet goofy over the top concept and turning into a gritty serious affair which will fail.
 
"Shocker Gundan, Banzai!"
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Don't get your panties in a bunch, naysayers, before you actually hear more about the production... in fact, Toei is right on top of this thing:

This is an international co-production between Toei Animation and several foreign investments (GAIKING and the other Super Robots are huge in Europe and South America to this day, with big fan bases). The production was officially announced yesterday at the Tokyo International Anime Fair:

Corrected link: http://gigazine.net/index.php?/news/comments/20100328_taf2010_gaiking_making/

There will be more news and photos on AICN tomorrow.
 
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I have to say, this is damned surprising.

I would have expected a Live Action Gundam movie (that's not G-Savior) or the Voltron movie finally escaping Developmental Hell before something like THIS.

Jaw... officially dropped.
 
Active Member
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I would have expected a Live Action Gundam movie (that's not G-Savior) or the Voltron movie finally escaping Developmental Hell before something like THIS.

Toei is bigger and has more connections than Sunrise. Especially, stepping out of the "anime" field.
 
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Nice post!!
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Nov 20, 2008
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Bandai ran the Gundam brand into the ground here. Shogun Warriors has huge nostalgia value and the license is much cheaper.

Marvel's Shogun Warriors comics didn't use AI, I think they had human pilot characters. They just weren't the characters from the original show (and kinda boring, tbh). Either Raideen or Combattler was piloted by a black guy with an enormous afro, for instance.

Gaiking's original colors would look garbagey in live-action (and they're pretty garish in the original). I like the more detailed look combined with Gaiking's truly ridiculous giant horns and crazy skull-face. If they find a way to keep Face Open in, it will be glorious.

Honestly original Gaiking doesn't have very memorable characters except Pete, that's the only guy I'd like to see a version of in the cast. Don't even bother to call him Pete, just make him a carrier commander who is a complete jerk to the main pilot but also a sensitive intellectual who loves archaeology.

Gaiking's pilot can be whatever so long as s/he doesn't make Gaiking less interesting. Even Sanshiro was a bog-standard type of protagonist back in his day, so why shouldn't Hollywood get to come up with their own?

Regarding Gaiking Neo not using anything but oblique references to the original cast, I've heard that's because Toei only owns the mechanical designs to Gaiking. Due to a lawsuit, the characters are owned by Go Nagai, so you have to get his permission to do anything with them.

That's the word from the Italian fandom, anyway. I don't know if this would affect the Hollywood production if it wanted to carry some characters over-- certainly SRW has managed to deal with Nagai to get Gaiking into more recent games.

Gaiking Neo was butt, anyway, so I'm glad it's not going to be the last word on the Gaiking license. If this movie actually comes out it's probably going to be a lot better, even if it's not a very great movie.
 
二番目の翻訳者
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Pete probably won't get to be an action archaeologist, though. :(
 
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Marvel's Shogun Warriors comics didn't use AI, I think they had human pilot characters. They just weren't the characters from the original show (and kinda boring, tbh). Either Raideen or Combattler was piloted by a black guy with an enormous afro, for instance.

Hm... doing a quick search, you're right... But I remember reading a comic with a seemingly AI Combattler V attacking the Fantastic 4... I guess I must be remembering the story completely wrong...

Regarding Gaiking Neo not using anything but oblique references to the original cast, I've heard that's because Toei only owns the mechanical designs to Gaiking. Due to a lawsuit, the characters are owned by Go Nagai, so you have to get his permission to do anything with them.

That's wrong. There was a legal battle, but Go Nagai ended with no rights over any part of Gaiking. He didn't even create the characters originally, only the mecha itself. And, like you've said, SRW has no problems including Gaiking characters, something that it can't do to series with legal conflicts. Legal conflicts is the reason Tekkaman Blade was dropped from SRW Gakuen, even though every other series based on the K/W engine was there (well, taking in account things like SEED units getting in, branded as Destiny units, Mazinger units getting in, branded as Mazinkaiser units).

Gaiking Neo was butt, anyway, so I'm glad it's not going to be the last word on the Gaiking license.

I thought it was pretty good for what it was, an episodic Super Robot series. The actual plot relevant episodes generally were handled well, besides, unfortunately, the first few ones. I also loved the way it used the theme song as a battle theme, like many classic SR shows.

It's certainly better than the new Dancougar or Gravion and I thought it still had better pacing than GaoGaiGar. I'd even rate it higher than Shin Mazinger (which had some awesome moments, but was too often clearly an ego trip of its director...).
 
Some kind of Beast mode
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Feb 24, 2008
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This looks cool. I don't have the slightest clue what this is or what it's about, but I really like that trailer.
 
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