[SPLIT LIP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yellow Ranger

...The entire franchise is literally a toy commercial Build Fighters knows it and runs and has fun with it instead of being an overly-pretentious anti-war screed like 90% of Gundam.

It's called giving a shit, and making the most of what you got. Of course all of Gundam exists to kock model kits, but at least other series attempt to also tell a story along the way.

I see this excuse brought up all too often, as if it's infallible, this idea that being completely unashamedly self-aware somehow makes for a better story than, like, actually trying to tell a story. So what if Build Fighters "knows what it is?" All Gundam series know what they are, but they don't give up and go for the easiest, lowest-common-demoninator take on product shilling there is. It's, in my view, lazy "storytelling."

G Gundam to me was a far superior attempt at self-ridicule whilst also having a heart. It knew it was silly, and the more absurd, abtract Gundam designs directly poke fun at the need to shill model kits, no matter how ludicrous, in Gundam. But it did so with an earnest love for its wacky little universe. It wasn't literally the toys fighting each other.

It's like if in Pokemon, the Pokemon weren't real, they were just YuGiOh-style projections in a card game in the show. Or if the Transformers weren't alien robots, they were actual toys that came to life like Toy Story.

Build Fighters' oh-so-commendable self-awareness about being a toy shill is undercut by the fact that it is still a relentless, cynical toy shill.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Kain

Except the anti-war series are far superior because they tell a story and are a social commentary on the world we live in at the time those series came out. 00 is totally making a joke out of the politics from 9/11 (and justly so) while IBO is showing us how horrible it is when corporations control everything.

On top of, you know, having stories with actual conflict and stakes. There's no stakes in Build Fighters because it's just a game about toys. You don't have to have constant fighting or death to have stakes or conflict, but real people with real problems are generally far more relatable than children playing with toys.

Making Gudnam a toyline in its own universe makes it mundane. It's a very cynical, thoughtless way to create a story with audience surrogates for the kids.