oneblacklily:
I found the concept art books to be interesting! But then again, that’s because I know absolutely nothing about OJR Battle Story. D: I was just captivated by pretty pictures.
I think what I liked though is that it they do adress the relationship between the Zoids and the humans. D: There are the wild Zoids working together with the settles to fend off the carnivorous Zoids, and the whole thing with the Zoid Tamers (is that what they were called?).
Battle story has more of that (though I did like the oh crap, predators bits in the concept art books, becuase a giant metal predator would be SCARY okay), pluuuus the humans there have differing views, mostly seeing Zoids more as machines. Apparently Blox are a point of contention, being entirely artificial/AI. (Storch fanbooook. Sorry the wiki’s ugly right now, I kind of broke some stuff I need to fix…)
I really liked the idea that while the human settlers might have had better tech, they weren’t the dominant cultural force on account of having crashlanded into someone else’s society. That’s gone without the Zoidians there, plus good Republic evil Empire bleh. I haven’t read the later concept art books, but the first didn’t give me hope for nuanced characters and factions. The art looks really pretty, though, so I’ll probably get them eventually! (That and I liked that they had racing events, because dangit Zoids can do things other than fight in war. The details like that were the cool onesss.)
The good Republic/evil Empire setup irked me about the late OJR too, the Guylos lot were just ~evil~ and the Republic was good even though they were the ones invading Guylos territory. Okay, the Guylos Emperor attacked the Central Continent first and probably would have invaded eventually himself, but somehow I doubt that made it any better for the civilians there whose homeland was being stomped all over. The story at the time claimed they were all bloodthirsty evil pilots woooo scary (marketing trying a new twist to simplify things, maybe), but we see later they weren’t and that doesn’t sit well with me morality-wise either way. There’s a reason I’ve written a couple things from Nyx peopleses POV and want to do more. (Given Karl’s family doesn’t like Prozen’s lot much, I suspect he may count there too? NJRrrr I need to learn you more.)
It also set me off when they deleted all that stuff for Riese. (I’d originally watched the dub when I was re-familiarizing myself! When I saw the Japanese version, I was outraged!) It just. That’s so much of her character right there and you know what, she was an amazing villain. I’d like to pretend all of that RAAAAAVVEEEENNNNNNNN crap at the end didn’t happen.
But what can you do. I’m going to blame it on a mental breakdown after Hiltz betrays her, and in sort of a period of lost and confused-ness, she just latches onto one of the only things she has left.
I headcanon the Riese thing as a breakdown moment too. Because I could totally understand one there with all that happened, I’d probably crash too! It’s how they wrote it, not that she broke, that gets to me. Shounen, I love you, but sometimes you fail so badly at treating your awesome lady characters well…
I would read the UK Comic if I could find it! D:
I CAN E-MAIL YOU THE COMIC as nice CBR archive files, just poke me. Unless you don’t mind reading it with a Flash viewer that’s tricky on small screens, in which case it’s all here. Maybe someone else but me and my SO will ship Rolo and Heller someday um you didn’t hear that.
Sorry for all the Zoids headcanon/feelings spam, everybody. I um, may have missed talking about it.
