It's alright. 3/4 of the show is rock solid space war drama, then it gets REALLY stupid towards the end. But not quite stupid enough to sour the entire experience. My only real beef with the show is that it relied too much on the characters introduced in arc 1 since they added nothing of value later on and made the setting feel incredibly small.
Yeah, by the time they show up in the third arc it feels like they're making excuses to stalk Chirico across the universe. At least with Rochina that was his job.
>My only real beef with the show is that it relied too much on the characters introduced in arc 1
I think Gotho had pretty good reason to be in most places, but when he showed up on that planet with the scrap hunters it felt like it had gone a little far.
I thought that it was meant to be unusual coincidence like that to show wisemans manipulation.
Them showing up in Sunsa is a little shaky but for the fourth arc there just wasn't much for them to do besides watch Chirico carry out his plan. I wonder if Big Battle was set during the fourth arc just to give them a chance at redemption post Wiseman.
>My only real beef with the show is that it relied too much on the characters introduced in arc 1
I think Gotho had pretty good reason to be in most places, but when he showed up on that planet with the scrap hunters it felt like it had gone a little far.
>made the setting feel incredibly small.
that adds to how unsociable Chirico is. He's travelled and waged war across multiple planets, but only ever connects with very few people on anything deeper than a "asking where the toilet is" level, in a sense, they're only there so he has someone to bounce his thoughts off of, lest we're stuck with thought narration and explosions exclusively (not something entirely bad though).
The end is a welcome change of gears for me, some big weird plot point was in order, just a cathartic showdown with Ypsilon would feel like the series didn't progress.
I don't mind the epic scale and all the plot twists but basic logic was thrown out the window for the sake of spectacle. I really enjoyed the show up until Quent but the ending was so disappointing I can't get myself to start with the OVAs.
>I don't mind the epic scale and all the plot twists but basic logic was thrown out the window
I don't remember anything particularly illogical or plot-hole-y in the final arc.
Only thing that comes to mind is Wiseman having to send Chirico to some space temple in the middle of nowhere to tell him he's the chosen one, when Chirico was already on his doorstep...and the final battle where Chirico and crew basically suicide hell run through the galaxies entire army to get to Wiseman.
The former I think is fine, can just take it as a plot device to set up Chirico having to travel back to Wiseman. The latter is pretty crazy but I don't think it's too bad considering Chirico is at that point an Overman with super reflexes AND he's being partially protected by a causality manipulating machine god AND the army just got there and was also racing to catch him AND everyone with him died anyway. Visually a bit over the top but overall I thought it was fine.
Maybe it was also an easier pill to swallow for me because I had been spoiled (by a friend accidentally) that the end of the series would go cosmic with some sort of machine god watching over Chirico, I just didn't know the details or the extent/nature of it. So discovering it all was a fun ride but didn't feel like something I hadn't signed up for.
9 months ago
Anonymous
I'd have to go back an rewatch for the details, but the sudden assembly, scale and speed of travel of the fleet sent to intercept Chirico didn't make sense to me. The biggest turn off was him ditching his friends. That made me want to stop watching.
It was probably just an animator doing a cute cameo. If you wanted to fit it in the story there's no shortage of times when Chirico was jailed and beaten by men in the regular series.
It was probably just an animator doing a cute cameo. If you wanted to fit it in the story there's no shortage of times when Chirico was jailed and beaten by men in the regular series.
Rocky from Dougram is also at the recruitment station during Kunmen.
Sone of the newer OVAs began to falter. Some a bit (Pailsen Files, Shining Heresy) some a LOT (the nostalgia trip ova, the edgy teens murdering each other)
But the TV series, as well as the first barrage of OVAs? Classics.
I finished Votoms yesterday. Overall I enjoyed it a lot but some decisions were pretty questionable, the whole overman thing was pretty moronic and spurious.
Also the whole PS thing doesn’t make a ton of sense to me tbh, like okay you might have super reaction speed but theres a hard threshold on what the ATs can actually do. They can only move so fast, have a large profile, l are pretty fragile (a shoulder mounted rocket or even a well placed pistol shot can BTFO an AT), and are pretty bulky and unwieldy, so a PS really shouldn’t be able to get away with some of the stuff we see (Even of they do have near telepathic powers). In a lot of large fight scenes the choreography got kind of lazy, and instead of using wits and terrain to outmaneuver and fool opponents there was a lot of “I’m moving which means you can’t hit me” stuff. It’s not like they can matrix dodge bullets.
Nah, she's watching it the correct way. Grannies aren't setting VLC to 1.5x speed and scrolling their phone at the same time. Grannies are the people who are watching it from start to finish.
>speedwatchers are comparable to a grandma watching cable TV while knitting and taking 3 micro naps per episode
In all my years of hating binge watchers I never realized this comparison was so adept, I kneel.
it would be easier to name fiction that doesn't have those kind of narrative conveniences, it's just not a realistic depiction of a firefight by design.
Yeah uh that doesn't make you invulnerable lmao, especially when your profile is massive. sometimes in the show you will have a situation where an AT is bum rushing an enemy position but despite all the fire nothing even comes close to hitting it, pretty absurd tbh
Votoms can get a little silly with how much of the action is people running around with their bullet hoses while firing from the hip. Some parts of Kummen got especially repetitive with how squads of Standing Turtles would pop out like a shooting gallery with their odd rocket guns that never ran out of ammo and didn't look like they'd cause much damage if they even hit. The PS2 game tried to replicate this feel to a hilarious degree and ended up with weapons that can barely hit anything.
I disliked it more specifically for the reason it killed her off. If she were to die from a lack of jijirium on hand after awakening, I would have been more fine with it, but the fact that PSes have a natural lifespan of 2 years and the fact that she and Chirico both knew she was going to die when she woke up ruins what would have originally been a happy ending to the original show.
yeah but after killing god he got a semi-happy ending so bringing him back to make him suffer more was pointless. the Child of God CHILD book has him taking care of the space baby from the end of Phantom Arc and he's happier there.
And what didn't help if you saw Phantom Arc without watching Alone Agian was that the latter was originally a novel that was published before the former came out. You were supposed to read the original Alone Again novel BEFORE watching Phantom Arc.
Sho Hayami played Hy Shaltalt. He just looks like Chirico. Also Shigeru Chiba plays Vanilla and like every other voice actor he's been every ethnicity. Even Saiyan.
Loved it and it set me on a path where I also found and loved Xabungle, Dougram, Ideon, Dunbine, Dancouga and Dragonar which I might not have tried out otherwise.
The final arc of the original series seems to filter a lot of people because it essentially reveals to them that VOTOMS is a pastiche of pulp sci-fi elements, but I think this is really one of the most exciting and compelling things about it. It seems to have this status as being the "hard tactical military" anime, which is a bit lofty to live up, when it has more roots in Action-focused media that was coming out at the time (one only needs to look at that promotional piece of artwork which is heavily modelled on the poster for The Wild Geese, a film which was undoubtedly an influence on the style and make-up of the show). It's why so many of the action set-pieces are these flurries of machines firing from the hip on full auto.
Regardless, I like so much in this final arc how the focus shifts to this cult, who wear the swastika and have been machinating in the background, who believe in the power of the "overman" and worship an ancient supercomputer. It's around this part of the story too that a lot of the action and visuals have a likeness, but not a mimicry, of 2001: A Space Odyssey. VOTOMS, in short, doesn't hide that it's influenced by western media.
Pailsen Files fricked things up even more because Chirico both knows about the idea of a supreme survivor and starts believing it himself. Maybe he dismissed the idea after his squad finally died but it's just more prequel shit ruining the series.
Uodo City and Kunmen Jungle War are the best arcs. Dead World Sunsa we OK. God Planet Quent was kind of meh.
Armor Hunter Mellowlink was OK.
Nothing about the other OVAs really stands out, except for the one where the gang is trying to figure out why Chirico disappeared. I remember liking that one, but can't remember too much about it.
I don't get why everyone on this board has a resounding "N/A" opinion about the OVAs, they're really slick and have some well-choreographed action in them. They've also got the best quality mecha animation of the whole series.
I love them because they take the best aspects of the series and expand on them, that being Chirico piloting/killing thousands of ATs and side characters like Vanilla and Coccona orbiting this immortal war god while trying to have a good life.
The first 3 OVAS have some pretty good parts, especially the last red shoulder. But they frick with the continuity and lean too much into chirico is immortal xD meme territory. Still pretty good thoughbeit. The Big Battle feels kind of pointless, its the only part of votoms I’d call filler. Then everything else refuses to retcon shining heresy so its garbage. Votoms ends with Chirico and Fyana being shot off into space
For me (the anon you were responding to) it's because I honestly can't remember all that much about them. I watched them a long time ago, and haven't got around to rewatching them on the blu-ray collection yet.
VOTOMS is very cool.
I like the AT-05, but I'm glad they went with the Scopedog. It really stands out from other mecha franchises aesthetically.
It's the moronic "Chirico is immortal" thing, the ovas would be great and highlights of the entire series otherwise but instead they retroactively shit on the original series.
Right but Roots of Ambition starts to stretch things too much like a machine gun jamming right as it's fired on Chirico and then Pailsen Files seems to make him aware this is happening. The TV show never hints he knows something is up until the fight against Ypsilon where Chirico burns out his Mission Disk because he's better than the machine.
Yeah I agree, my favorite part of the show was like halfway through Quent. It felt like literally anything could happen, you have the Melkians and the Balorant closing in, tensions within the society, Ypsilon getting progressively angrier every episode, the mysterious force that put Chirico and Fyana on the ship, Gotho’s gang, the one seething female, Chirico schizzing out a bit, etc. so many moving parts. honestly the ending of the Quent arc felt a bit underwhelming considering what was in play. Still a 10/10 masterpiece though
I tried the Uoodo PSX game last night and wow, what a disappointment. It's an Armored Core clone, except it's slower, has no verticality, the customisation is barebones and you start with a manual aim and it's impossible to tell if any of your hits are registering. I was pretty excited too because the cutscenes were very cool.
The music on Blue Knight is really good, I might check that one out. The Uoodo one let me down a lot because I was in the mood for an old school, single player-based action game and it couldn't really do that.
Actually leaning into the lore about Polymer Ringers solution (their weird hydraulic fluid) as a gameplay mechanic is one of the strangest decisions. You know what's great? A cooldown meter on walking.
Actually leaning into the lore about Polymer Ringers solution (their weird hydraulic fluid) as a gameplay mechanic is one of the strangest decisions. You know what's great? A cooldown meter on walking.
Jesus christ, the controls completely filtered me, couldn't even beat the first guy.
I went back and managed to beat the first level by some freak chance, and got a D rank for the trouble. The second stage is a bit more straight forward, but it still feels extremely strict. They basically decided to up AC's energy meter by giving you two, except the other one is for walking and other basic movement, and they gave you the option to juggle them to try and balance their consumption. I don't know how they thought this was fun but G-Saviour PS2 plays more like a VOTOMS game once you unlock Ground Attack Mode.
I've played all the VOTOMS games, and yeah, UOODO-KUMMEN is really, really bad. I believe there are only two duels in the game, and I've beaten them by pure luck. Just dashed to the enemy's face and tried to bash it in via Arm Punches.
For the normal stages, you should take it really slowly, because your AT will die really fast even against ground troops, your ammo is finite and everything is just stacked against you.
A small review of each:
Battling Road(SNES): it uses Mode7 (like Mario Kart). It's an arena fighter that has some auto-scrolling stages. Rather short, 7 stages only. Protip: Arm Punch all the way.
Uoodo Kummen (PSX): utter crap.
Steel Force (PSX): Front Mission 3 clone.
Berserga Monogatari (PSX): the focus is on Battling (the dueling sport from VOTOMS). Very good.
Lightning Slash: a better Berserga. You can now dash and roll away with abandon, and the story mode is still based on Battling, but there's a lot of nice stuff.
Real Battle (PC-98): a character raising sim. Interesting, but too complicated. Chirico is the final boss.
The only games where you play as Chirico are Uoodo-Kummen and the PS2 game.
In Lightning Slash, you can use the mech from Battling Road (the blue mech, forgot the name), and Keek Carradine (from Mellowlink) appears during the Story Mode.
8 months ago
Anonymous
There's also Black Unicorn (PC-88), which is a very barebones sidescroller.
It appears in the Super Robot Wars series, Brave Saga series, Sunrise Eiyuutan series and also Harobots.
Same here, I was not surprised to learn in the end why one of the videos of it being played through on YouTube involved the player getting the enemy caught on geometry and firing at them while stood still. Normally I like very clumsy, clunky PSX mecha games, but this one didn't seem like it could even get the basics right.
There's an ancient review of this game from the series translator that has the bit about Polymer Ringers solution.
"AN INTRODUCTION TO BASIC AT SERVICING The AT uses a fluid called Polymer Ringer's Solution (PRS) to drive its mechanical muscle cylinders (MCs). PRS is pumped at high pressure through the AT's body and any action you take will break it down. The AT's cardio-pulmonary generator will regenerate the PRS as it breaks down, but it doesn't do it fast enough to allow continuous action. What this means is that you have to watch PRS levels as you try to complete a mission. Overwork a particular system and you'll trigger an overheat, and that can really ruin your day when your enemy is, say, shooting at you. Think of it like Battletech's overheat meters, or like X-Wing's power management system."
This is actually pretty cool, it was nice when the Internet was just websites like this.
Needless to say, I made it to the first Proto-1 fight, and managed to enjoy the game a lot more. I think my mistake was assuming this was a straight action game, and completely ignoring that the simulation aspect essentially creates a puzzle on each stage. With that in mind, I think it actually does a good job of depicting the Scopedog as a tin can that is easily torn open if you don't know what you're doing (I really didn't).
Apparently, the manual has a big misprint in that it mentions a "Beginner Mode" which has an auto-target, and gives you more juice for basic movements, but this is nowhere to be found in the game, and the game instead plays how the manual describes "Advanced Mode".
Not the first implementation mistake I've seen in a Japanese PSX game. Pic related, the manual lists Start being the Pause button, but there's no actual pause function, and as a result the official strategy guide omits it.
There's a part that does give you auto-aim, but you need to finish the game first for that.
Look up those games on GameFAQs, I recall an anon from /m/ posted a lot of info for them in the Cheats and Boards sections.
I just finished watching the Kummen arc, I'm excited to see what happens next. I always wanted to get into VOTOMS but I never watched it aside from Mellowlink because it's easier for me to get into shorter OVAs.
I always take a while to get into different shows idk, just never gets easier for me. I don’t really watch much anime in general, and usually I like to go for movies or ovas first. The last times I watched longer shows were logh during the summer and patlabor years ago.
He should go for Dougram next.
That’s also been on my list for a while but I know very little about it or even the watch length.
Mellowlink wasn't very good.
I don't think many VOTOMS spin-offs are.
I really enjoyed mellowlink, but it felt kinda stale and predictable midway until the ending had some interesting events happen. The scene with the AT pilot yelling at mellowlink about avenging his dead friends hit me surprisingly hard, esp with mellow trying to save him afterwards.
Oh and I thought the whole smearing blood on his face thing was dumb tbh.
It's kind of bittersweet seeing how much more well-animated mellowlink or the initial ovas are compared to the main series. I know that's pretty much inevitable for a 52-episode run from 1983, but still.
Uoodo-Kummen Hen is starting to click more, and being able to beat its steep difficulty is really satisfying. I went back and could beat the first five missions without continues, which is a far cry from how each of those missions went originally. It can't be stressed enough how you need to really master the roller dash to literally get anywhere in this game, especially the turning. I discovered that you can dash forward, turn, then suddenly dash backwards, with the only thing limiting you being your PRS fuel.
have a nice day template poster.
Wrong board
>Calling Votoms TV
He's calling the template of the post spam from elsewhere, which is accurate.
True, VOTOMS is not tv, it is cinema, maybe even kino.
Nice moody show. I would prefer a more down to earth show set in that universe though.
It's alright. 3/4 of the show is rock solid space war drama, then it gets REALLY stupid towards the end. But not quite stupid enough to sour the entire experience. My only real beef with the show is that it relied too much on the characters introduced in arc 1 since they added nothing of value later on and made the setting feel incredibly small.
I like the end. It's "trippy".
Same. I frickin' love Takahashi's trippy cosmic finalies. They feel like fever dreams in the best way possible, genuinely "epic" feeling.
how "trippy" is dougram?
Not at all, it never diverges from that straight ground warfare theme.
Destin might have tripped and fell a few times on his way to save Deloyer from Lecoque.
Takahashi did that in a lot of his shows. Only Dougram avoided it.
FLAG had a pretty straightforward ending
Yeah, by the time they show up in the third arc it feels like they're making excuses to stalk Chirico across the universe. At least with Rochina that was his job.
I thought that it was meant to be unusual coincidence like that to show wisemans manipulation.
Them showing up in Sunsa is a little shaky but for the fourth arc there just wasn't much for them to do besides watch Chirico carry out his plan. I wonder if Big Battle was set during the fourth arc just to give them a chance at redemption post Wiseman.
they're likeable characters so I don't mind
>Big Battle was set during the fourth arc
You're not wrong there. It takes place during the gap between Quent's destruction and Chirico deciding to enter cold sleep with Fyana.
>My only real beef with the show is that it relied too much on the characters introduced in arc 1
I think Gotho had pretty good reason to be in most places, but when he showed up on that planet with the scrap hunters it felt like it had gone a little far.
>made the setting feel incredibly small
Yeah dumbass thats the point. Its about Chiricos PERSONAL war
>made the setting feel incredibly small.
that adds to how unsociable Chirico is. He's travelled and waged war across multiple planets, but only ever connects with very few people on anything deeper than a "asking where the toilet is" level, in a sense, they're only there so he has someone to bounce his thoughts off of, lest we're stuck with thought narration and explosions exclusively (not something entirely bad though).
The end is a welcome change of gears for me, some big weird plot point was in order, just a cathartic showdown with Ypsilon would feel like the series didn't progress.
The ending was a complete and utter mess though.
Ryosuke Takahashi either does something grounded and sensible or he's cramming in a few decades worth of classic sci-fi stories into his endings.
I don't mind the epic scale and all the plot twists but basic logic was thrown out the window for the sake of spectacle. I really enjoyed the show up until Quent but the ending was so disappointing I can't get myself to start with the OVAs.
the first batch of OVAs take place during or before the series started and only make Chirico's origins that much stranger
I was told to by another anon to skip the Pailsen files and watch the rest.
Pailsen Files has a movie if you want the cliff notes version. It is kind of a weird prequel in a series that already has them.
Imagine skipping anything just because some moron told you to do so, are all zoomers this cucked?
Imagine someone going to the bat for Pailsen Files of all things.
>I don't mind the epic scale and all the plot twists but basic logic was thrown out the window
I don't remember anything particularly illogical or plot-hole-y in the final arc.
Only thing that comes to mind is Wiseman having to send Chirico to some space temple in the middle of nowhere to tell him he's the chosen one, when Chirico was already on his doorstep...and the final battle where Chirico and crew basically suicide hell run through the galaxies entire army to get to Wiseman.
The former I think is fine, can just take it as a plot device to set up Chirico having to travel back to Wiseman. The latter is pretty crazy but I don't think it's too bad considering Chirico is at that point an Overman with super reflexes AND he's being partially protected by a causality manipulating machine god AND the army just got there and was also racing to catch him AND everyone with him died anyway. Visually a bit over the top but overall I thought it was fine.
Maybe it was also an easier pill to swallow for me because I had been spoiled (by a friend accidentally) that the end of the series would go cosmic with some sort of machine god watching over Chirico, I just didn't know the details or the extent/nature of it. So discovering it all was a fun ride but didn't feel like something I hadn't signed up for.
I'd have to go back an rewatch for the details, but the sudden assembly, scale and speed of travel of the fleet sent to intercept Chirico didn't make sense to me. The biggest turn off was him ditching his friends. That made me want to stop watching.
Sasuga, Takahashi-san
No it was 80s weird 2001 star trek kino
Frick off tourist.
Obsessed philistine crybaby
in one of the prequel ovas they confirm that quirico is immortal, they shoot him at point blank in the heart and he revives from that
Good morning bloody basterd.
top of the morning to you too
That OVA is made after the show.
yeah but he was still immortal in the actual show you just didnt know
You posted the wrong picture
Does anybody know what Chirico was doing in the beginning of the prison episode in Mellowlink?
It was probably just an animator doing a cute cameo. If you wanted to fit it in the story there's no shortage of times when Chirico was jailed and beaten by men in the regular series.
Rocky from Dougram is also at the recruitment station during Kunmen.
VOTOMS has had a solid reception since forever.
Sone of the newer OVAs began to falter. Some a bit (Pailsen Files, Shining Heresy) some a LOT (the nostalgia trip ova, the edgy teens murdering each other)
But the TV series, as well as the first barrage of OVAs? Classics.
Whats so special about that zaku
HIBIKU ORUGORU
I finished Votoms yesterday. Overall I enjoyed it a lot but some decisions were pretty questionable, the whole overman thing was pretty moronic and spurious.
Also the whole PS thing doesn’t make a ton of sense to me tbh, like okay you might have super reaction speed but theres a hard threshold on what the ATs can actually do. They can only move so fast, have a large profile, l are pretty fragile (a shoulder mounted rocket or even a well placed pistol shot can BTFO an AT), and are pretty bulky and unwieldy, so a PS really shouldn’t be able to get away with some of the stuff we see (Even of they do have near telepathic powers). In a lot of large fight scenes the choreography got kind of lazy, and instead of using wits and terrain to outmaneuver and fool opponents there was a lot of “I’m moving which means you can’t hit me” stuff. It’s not like they can matrix dodge bullets.
either way its a great show 8/10
Snappinh turtle, Rabidlydog, brutishdog and strikedog are all specialized ATs meant to be used by a PS
Even those shouldn’t make that much a difference
dumb speedwatcher
Every time I see someone complain about speedwatchers I picture a guy who busts in on a grandma watching an NCIS marathon and berates her.
Nah, she's watching it the correct way. Grannies aren't setting VLC to 1.5x speed and scrolling their phone at the same time. Grannies are the people who are watching it from start to finish.
>speedwatchers are comparable to a grandma watching cable TV while knitting and taking 3 micro naps per episode
In all my years of hating binge watchers I never realized this comparison was so adept, I kneel.
it would be easier to name fiction that doesn't have those kind of narrative conveniences, it's just not a realistic depiction of a firefight by design.
>“I’m moving which means you can’t hit me”
Have you ever tried shooting a moving target?
Yeah uh that doesn't make you invulnerable lmao, especially when your profile is massive. sometimes in the show you will have a situation where an AT is bum rushing an enemy position but despite all the fire nothing even comes close to hitting it, pretty absurd tbh
Bait thread.
its good brah
This is a good place to ask, but does the show itself say what race Wiseman was before he became an Overman? Was he a Quentian?
i dont think they specify but it might be safe to assume so
I think it's implied that he's not just one Quentian but a whole bunch of 'em.
This, Wiseman is a collective conciousness
Votoms can get a little silly with how much of the action is people running around with their bullet hoses while firing from the hip. Some parts of Kummen got especially repetitive with how squads of Standing Turtles would pop out like a shooting gallery with their odd rocket guns that never ran out of ammo and didn't look like they'd cause much damage if they even hit. The PS2 game tried to replicate this feel to a hilarious degree and ended up with weapons that can barely hit anything.
I just watched Case: Irvine a few days ago as my first exposure to the show. Good stuff.
I liked Shining Heresy and I don't get why people pretend it's bad.
You want a cookie?
it's a great ova, alone again too.
hate for it is newbie 'muricans b***hin'.
I think people dislike it for killing off Fyana
I disliked it more specifically for the reason it killed her off. If she were to die from a lack of jijirium on hand after awakening, I would have been more fine with it, but the fact that PSes have a natural lifespan of 2 years and the fact that she and Chirico both knew she was going to die when she woke up ruins what would have originally been a happy ending to the original show.
It undoes a perfectly fine conclusion to Chirico's story all so we can see him miraculously not lose to anyone again.
If all you get from Votoms is "wow he is unkillable huh" then you are a fricking moron.
If all you get from Votoms is "wow cool robots" then the amateur is you.
That seems to be your problem.
motherfricker in one of the prequel ovas they outright state that he is unkillable they even shoot him in the heart at point blank and he revives
Hi murican b***h.
Wrong continent.
If there's no Coconna, it's 0/10
If it has Coconna, then it's 11/10
That's all I need to know.
>Based
on your argument, I'd be inclined to agree. I love Coconna.
>I prefer to call her Coconner.
for me, it's the jodhpurs
You know she and Vanilla end up having 6 kids, right?
Good i was happy to see that. Hated that she lusted after chirico it felt forced. Vanillas a good guy to.
It does seem like they finally got the happy ending they deserved.
Hard disagree with the 0/10 part. Hard agree with the 11/10 part.
i liked her but i thought it was annoying that they kept bringing her back in every arc
Museru
I just think it's hilarious the black character with a dyed blonde afro was called "Vanilla".
that hair is all natural baby
>dyed blonde afro
>dyed
>blonde
He won pretty hard in the end.
I get that Alone Again wanted to tie off some shit from Shining Heresy but Titania dying made her whole character seem even more pointless.
The whole point of the entire series was Chirico has to suffer.
yeah but after killing god he got a semi-happy ending so bringing him back to make him suffer more was pointless. the Child of God CHILD book has him taking care of the space baby from the end of Phantom Arc and he's happier there.
>bringing him back to make him suffer more was pointless
Getting a happy ending or the sweet release of death was never was never his fate.
And what didn't help if you saw Phantom Arc without watching Alone Agian was that the latter was originally a novel that was published before the former came out. You were supposed to read the original Alone Again novel BEFORE watching Phantom Arc.
>He won pretty hard in the end.
Just as planned.
>Wealthy
>Happily Married
>9 children
That's a good ending if I ever saw one.
>9 children
zounds
Vanilla and Cocona got Busy.
Six, actually.
>chirico has bright blue hair
>coccona had bright red hair
But Vanillas natural looking ginger hair is the dyed looking one lol
You ever met a black man who grew blonde hair?
You ever met a japanese man who grew bright blue hair or a white woman who grew bright red hair?
Chirico isn't japanese.
My point still stands everyone who has a haircolor that doesnt seem natural to us is natural to them vanilla included
What makes you think Vanilla is black?
He gets tricked by a israelite that he later works for and lusts for a white woman.
They're white, also Chirico is played by the same actor who portrayed Hei Schaldat and Eiji in Galient and Layzner respectively.
>white
No.
Eiji is an alien half-breed mutt unworthy of the Grados Empire.
Ru-Kain you're only saying that because his sister won't frick (You)
Sho Hayami played Hy Shaltalt. He just looks like Chirico. Also Shigeru Chiba plays Vanilla and like every other voice actor he's been every ethnicity. Even Saiyan.
Sho who? I'm talking about the actor playing Chirico, Hei and Eiji.
wait Eiji is played by Kazuhiko Inoue. How did you get literally everything wrong?
Maybe he thinks cartoons are actors too.
It's Hozumi Goda's birthday. Just a reminder he has a Youtube channel where he talks about being in Votoms a lot in between the usual old man stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOlf9Xiv9WLYBRBUsR3ncOQ
I linked his car channel by mistake.
This is the real Chirico.
Happy belated birthday
Thanks for the link and happy belated birthday, Hozumi.
Just leaving this here.
do you like bottoms child too
https://hobby.dengeki.com/bottoms_child-2/
I like it too
I enjoyed the original run up to episode 49. Chirico abandoning his friends without leaving them a way out completely destroyed his character for me.
He flipped it around, though.
bretty good, wish the 1/20 scale scopedog would actually restock though
Loved it and it set me on a path where I also found and loved Xabungle, Dougram, Ideon, Dunbine, Dancouga and Dragonar which I might not have tried out otherwise.
Mellowlink is so good bros
The final arc of the original series seems to filter a lot of people because it essentially reveals to them that VOTOMS is a pastiche of pulp sci-fi elements, but I think this is really one of the most exciting and compelling things about it. It seems to have this status as being the "hard tactical military" anime, which is a bit lofty to live up, when it has more roots in Action-focused media that was coming out at the time (one only needs to look at that promotional piece of artwork which is heavily modelled on the poster for The Wild Geese, a film which was undoubtedly an influence on the style and make-up of the show). It's why so many of the action set-pieces are these flurries of machines firing from the hip on full auto.
Regardless, I like so much in this final arc how the focus shifts to this cult, who wear the swastika and have been machinating in the background, who believe in the power of the "overman" and worship an ancient supercomputer. It's around this part of the story too that a lot of the action and visuals have a likeness, but not a mimicry, of 2001: A Space Odyssey. VOTOMS, in short, doesn't hide that it's influenced by western media.
>settled
Ryōsuke Takahashi is still alive
>Votoms Catalogue
Is there a better pic of this, preferably digital?
Sorry it's not a better pic of that specifically but I dug this up and it has a bunch of other cool pics in the article from the same place
https://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999905/20230831056/
It's just a bunch of stock pictures of ATs put together. There's whole books like that already scanned.
Yeah but that's already pieced together and has color
>nothing for Votoms 40th anniversary
>annoucement for a Zegapain's sequel
>sunrise = homosexuals factory
>nothing for Votoms 40th anniversary
Wow, that sucks.
Hi flip!
>New HG Scopedog kits
>"Nothing"
Either you're clueless or just exceptionally whiny.
The in person anniversary event where they announced a bunch of merchandise is supposed to be the thing.
happy anniversary you're wego now
Pailsen Files fricked things up even more because Chirico both knows about the idea of a supreme survivor and starts believing it himself. Maybe he dismissed the idea after his squad finally died but it's just more prequel shit ruining the series.
So ugly looking
Dude, I started this thread almost a month ago. HOW IS IT STILL ALIVE!?
Abnormal Survivor
Makes as much sense as anything else.
Uodo City and Kunmen Jungle War are the best arcs. Dead World Sunsa we OK. God Planet Quent was kind of meh.
Armor Hunter Mellowlink was OK.
Nothing about the other OVAs really stands out, except for the one where the gang is trying to figure out why Chirico disappeared. I remember liking that one, but can't remember too much about it.
I don't get why everyone on this board has a resounding "N/A" opinion about the OVAs, they're really slick and have some well-choreographed action in them. They've also got the best quality mecha animation of the whole series.
They make Chirico's origins very strange and undo his hard earned happiness.
I love them because they take the best aspects of the series and expand on them, that being Chirico piloting/killing thousands of ATs and side characters like Vanilla and Coccona orbiting this immortal war god while trying to have a good life.
The first 3 OVAS have some pretty good parts, especially the last red shoulder. But they frick with the continuity and lean too much into chirico is immortal xD meme territory. Still pretty good thoughbeit. The Big Battle feels kind of pointless, its the only part of votoms I’d call filler. Then everything else refuses to retcon shining heresy so its garbage. Votoms ends with Chirico and Fyana being shot off into space
>Votoms ends with Chirico and Fyana being shot off into space
It's the best ending for it.
I like them in spite of their issues. Except Case;Irvine and Votoms finder, those two blow
For me (the anon you were responding to) it's because I honestly can't remember all that much about them. I watched them a long time ago, and haven't got around to rewatching them on the blu-ray collection yet.
I like the AT-05, but I'm glad they went with the Scopedog. It really stands out from other mecha franchises aesthetically.
It's the moronic "Chirico is immortal" thing, the ovas would be great and highlights of the entire series otherwise but instead they retroactively shit on the original series.
to be fair though this was hinted at in the show with le wiseman influencing chiricos life
Right but Roots of Ambition starts to stretch things too much like a machine gun jamming right as it's fired on Chirico and then Pailsen Files seems to make him aware this is happening. The TV show never hints he knows something is up until the fight against Ypsilon where Chirico burns out his Mission Disk because he's better than the machine.
Yeah I agree, it's over the top (also it was stupid in the show as well)
He's just lucky.
VOTOMs is so good
Quent and Sunsa go hard
Yeah I agree, my favorite part of the show was like halfway through Quent. It felt like literally anything could happen, you have the Melkians and the Balorant closing in, tensions within the society, Ypsilon getting progressively angrier every episode, the mysterious force that put Chirico and Fyana on the ship, Gotho’s gang, the one seething female, Chirico schizzing out a bit, etc. so many moving parts. honestly the ending of the Quent arc felt a bit underwhelming considering what was in play. Still a 10/10 masterpiece though
It settled almost 40 years ago. And it's good. A bit slow, but it has cool aesthetics and the soundtrack is lit. Also Chirico is literally me.
VOTOMS is very cool.
Chirico Cuvie is 18 years old.
How old did you think he was?
Western fandom thinks he's the epitome of mecha manliness.
He is
Chirico Cuvie now there was a mecha protagonist...the strong silent type he did what he had to do.
I tried the Uoodo PSX game last night and wow, what a disappointment. It's an Armored Core clone, except it's slower, has no verticality, the customisation is barebones and you start with a manual aim and it's impossible to tell if any of your hits are registering. I was pretty excited too because the cutscenes were very cool.
The other two games are much better. Lightning Slash plays more Armored Core while Blue Knight is more Virtual On.
The music on Blue Knight is really good, I might check that one out. The Uoodo one let me down a lot because I was in the mood for an old school, single player-based action game and it couldn't really do that.
Actually leaning into the lore about Polymer Ringers solution (their weird hydraulic fluid) as a gameplay mechanic is one of the strangest decisions. You know what's great? A cooldown meter on walking.
I went back and managed to beat the first level by some freak chance, and got a D rank for the trouble. The second stage is a bit more straight forward, but it still feels extremely strict. They basically decided to up AC's energy meter by giving you two, except the other one is for walking and other basic movement, and they gave you the option to juggle them to try and balance their consumption. I don't know how they thought this was fun but G-Saviour PS2 plays more like a VOTOMS game once you unlock Ground Attack Mode.
You should probably just play the PS2 game for one that follows the anime story directly (and is actually really good).
I suppose you already have though.
Don't think there's any PS2 emulators on Mac, unfortunately.
I've played all the VOTOMS games, and yeah, UOODO-KUMMEN is really, really bad. I believe there are only two duels in the game, and I've beaten them by pure luck. Just dashed to the enemy's face and tried to bash it in via Arm Punches.
For the normal stages, you should take it really slowly, because your AT will die really fast even against ground troops, your ammo is finite and everything is just stacked against you.
Which would you consider the best, other than the PS2 game?
Lightning Slash is the best PSX game, by far.
A small review of each:
Battling Road(SNES): it uses Mode7 (like Mario Kart). It's an arena fighter that has some auto-scrolling stages. Rather short, 7 stages only. Protip: Arm Punch all the way.
Uoodo Kummen (PSX): utter crap.
Steel Force (PSX): Front Mission 3 clone.
Berserga Monogatari (PSX): the focus is on Battling (the dueling sport from VOTOMS). Very good.
Lightning Slash: a better Berserga. You can now dash and roll away with abandon, and the story mode is still based on Battling, but there's a lot of nice stuff.
Real Battle (PC-98): a character raising sim. Interesting, but too complicated. Chirico is the final boss.
The only games where you play as Chirico are Uoodo-Kummen and the PS2 game.
In Lightning Slash, you can use the mech from Battling Road (the blue mech, forgot the name), and Keek Carradine (from Mellowlink) appears during the Story Mode.
There's also Black Unicorn (PC-88), which is a very barebones sidescroller.
It appears in the Super Robot Wars series, Brave Saga series, Sunrise Eiyuutan series and also Harobots.
Berserga Monogatari is great.
Jesus christ, the controls completely filtered me, couldn't even beat the first guy.
Same here, I was not surprised to learn in the end why one of the videos of it being played through on YouTube involved the player getting the enemy caught on geometry and firing at them while stood still. Normally I like very clumsy, clunky PSX mecha games, but this one didn't seem like it could even get the basics right.
Anyone have that video of the guy with a mellowlink style pile bunker?
VOTOMs really blows Gundam out of the water
You the spammer?
No?
Japanese VOTOMS plamo accounts are very active, the scene puts out some crazy shit.
One thing I will say about the second wave of OVAs is the CG was actually decent and mixed well with the 2D most of the time
There's an ancient review of this game from the series translator that has the bit about Polymer Ringers solution.
"AN INTRODUCTION TO BASIC AT SERVICING The AT uses a fluid called Polymer Ringer's Solution (PRS) to drive its mechanical muscle cylinders (MCs). PRS is pumped at high pressure through the AT's body and any action you take will break it down. The AT's cardio-pulmonary generator will regenerate the PRS as it breaks down, but it doesn't do it fast enough to allow continuous action. What this means is that you have to watch PRS levels as you try to complete a mission. Overwork a particular system and you'll trigger an overheat, and that can really ruin your day when your enemy is, say, shooting at you. Think of it like Battletech's overheat meters, or like X-Wing's power management system."
http://insomniac55.www3.50megs.com/votoms1.htm
This is actually pretty cool, it was nice when the Internet was just websites like this.
Needless to say, I made it to the first Proto-1 fight, and managed to enjoy the game a lot more. I think my mistake was assuming this was a straight action game, and completely ignoring that the simulation aspect essentially creates a puzzle on each stage. With that in mind, I think it actually does a good job of depicting the Scopedog as a tin can that is easily torn open if you don't know what you're doing (I really didn't).
Make a playthrough, I can't bother learning the controls but I wanna see what happens.
Do you know of any english-language coverage of Lightning Slash?
Apparently, the manual has a big misprint in that it mentions a "Beginner Mode" which has an auto-target, and gives you more juice for basic movements, but this is nowhere to be found in the game, and the game instead plays how the manual describes "Advanced Mode".
Maybe there's a cheat code or a game shark code that does that. It seems bizarre they would mention it if it wasn't somewhere still in the game.
Not the first implementation mistake I've seen in a Japanese PSX game. Pic related, the manual lists Start being the Pause button, but there's no actual pause function, and as a result the official strategy guide omits it.
There's a part that does give you auto-aim, but you need to finish the game first for that.
Look up those games on GameFAQs, I recall an anon from /m/ posted a lot of info for them in the Cheats and Boards sections.
Shadowflare has a nice spin.
HOLY FRICK THE KUMMEN ARC WAS SO FRICKING GOOD
Not as good as the arcs after Kummen howbeit
I just finished watching the Kummen arc, I'm excited to see what happens next. I always wanted to get into VOTOMS but I never watched it aside from Mellowlink because it's easier for me to get into shorter OVAs.
I love all the arcs, but the way the Uoodo arc ends is insane.
Hope this eases your way into bigger shows.
He should go for Dougram next.
I always take a while to get into different shows idk, just never gets easier for me. I don’t really watch much anime in general, and usually I like to go for movies or ovas first. The last times I watched longer shows were logh during the summer and patlabor years ago.
That’s also been on my list for a while but I know very little about it or even the watch length.
I really enjoyed mellowlink, but it felt kinda stale and predictable midway until the ending had some interesting events happen. The scene with the AT pilot yelling at mellowlink about avenging his dead friends hit me surprisingly hard, esp with mellow trying to save him afterwards.
Oh and I thought the whole smearing blood on his face thing was dumb tbh.
Dougram is 75 episodes long
https://archive.org/details/Dougram-480p-EN/01.+Soldier+Of+Light.mkv
The blood wipe is based. Mid part is a bit sleepy doe
As cool as Mellowlink it kind of proved that Votoms is so closely tied to Chirico that its first animated spinoff had a guy who is very similar.
That's stupid.
Mellowlink wasn't very good.
I don't think many VOTOMS spin-offs are.
The models in Steel Force are nice at least.
That's Lightning Slash (says so in the title screen), Steel Force is the SRPG that's a clone of Front Mission 3. This one:
I guess there's worse things than being a FM3 clone. There's being an FM3 clone with a terrible gimmick like Leynos 2.
Don't you mean Valken 2?
Right whichever one is Cybernator's completely unfun sequel that is actually a remake of Target Earth's story.
Leynos 1/Target Earth - Sega Genesis
Leynos 2 - Sega Saturn
Valken 1/Cybernator - SNES
Valken 2 - PSX
Leynos 1 remake - PC
Just realised, this is the first VOTOMS thread in a while that fricking avigay hasn't complained about the torrent size.
It's kind of bittersweet seeing how much more well-animated mellowlink or the initial ovas are compared to the main series. I know that's pretty much inevitable for a 52-episode run from 1983, but still.
moron.
Worse: a redditor.
Still better than some homosexual who mass-necros threads with simple sentences or XXXXXXX[1].jpg images.
Are (You) OK?
The episode previews are a big part of the fun.
The illustrations for it look like the best coloring book ever.
Have you not seen anything printed in black-and-white before?
I'm talking about the quality of the art. Compared to some other mecha novels, this seems pretty amateurish.
I don't know if the kid grows up fast or if Chirico stopped aging.
Reddit
Did they finally release decent BDs for this series yet?
There is a BD rip out, the encode is a little muddy though.
just search "ボトムズ child" and you'll find most of the chapters they put up
Is there ever a reference point establishing where exactly the Astragius Galaxy is say in relation to a real-world location?
Not relevant.
Uoodo-Kummen Hen is starting to click more, and being able to beat its steep difficulty is really satisfying. I went back and could beat the first five missions without continues, which is a far cry from how each of those missions went originally. It can't be stressed enough how you need to really master the roller dash to literally get anywhere in this game, especially the turning. I discovered that you can dash forward, turn, then suddenly dash backwards, with the only thing limiting you being your PRS fuel.
multi-track drifting?
So, Votoms Child of God's anime adaptation when u fricking Sunrise ?
Should have continued instead of gundam.
it did and is now a shambling corpse
at least gundam eventually moved on from amuro
and it's worse each show since 30 years