Feel the Burning #5: The Return to Burn
As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by myself, the late ’90s were a dark era for fans of giant robots, mecha, and general Burning. Shows were dark, brooding, incomprehensible, and largely unsuccessful – a backlash was inevitable, and mostly welcomed.
One of the shows that started the anti-angst movement was Gate Keepers, by GONZO. Gate Keepers was a direct response to the Eva Effect, returning to the simpler sensibilities of the ’60s and ’70s. It was about as straightforward and old-school as you can get – Ukiya, the hero, is a hot-blooded young man with a strong belief in the fundamental goodness of mankind. He’s surrounded by cute girls who all love him in various ways, but he’s too thick to notice. There are a lot of attack names shouted out by the characters, and really, beyond a few of the villains, no one spends too much time pondering the meaninglessness of existence. While not a giant robot show in the purest sense of the word (the Gate Robo doesn’t really get much screen time), Gate Keepers marked a major turning point with its return to older, simpler, and lighter sensibilities.
The biggest sign that the Age of Angst was over was the release of Gundam SEED in 2002. The Gundam juggernaut returned to its own roots through the series – in many respects, Gundam SEED is considered to be a reworking of the original Mobile Suit Gundam story, with ZAFT taking the role of Zeon and the Earth Alliance being equivalent to the Earth Federation. With Gundam back on the airwaves for the first time in 3 years (6 years, if you choose to ignore Turn A Gundam like many other Gundam fans do) and becoming wildly popular without the help of cryptic plot twists and overbearing darkness, studios pulled themselves out of the post-Eva funk and started returning to the roots of their giant robot and mecha shows, making them fun to watch again instead of post-modern wastelands.
At the same time, there were attempts to add more moe of the sprouting kind to the previously testosterone-dominated genre, but that’s a subject for another time.
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