'I'm looking up Yoda's skirt. Oh my God, he has red panties.' by Kara
Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at 12:43 AM

Wait, what do you mean it was only a temporary vacation? Feh.

So my most recent anime-thonning project has been catching up to Taiyou no Yuusha Fighbird, which was the second yuusha series from Sunrise and significantly more together than Exkaiser.

The main character of Fighbird is Yuutarou Katori, an android possessed by an alien energy life form that has come to earth as part of an intergalactic police force to destroy another alien energy life form. Except that that one's evil, naturally. The various aliens have taken over -- wait for it -- transforming/combining vehicle robots. This includes Fighbird -- which is apparently Katori's actual name. (Ka-tori ... fire-bird ... you see ... DAMMIT IT'S CLEVER.)

Yes. Katori is, in fact, the luckiest sentient mecha ever because he has an alternate bishonen form he can use during his off-hours. And don't try to find loopholes, because every other dude who becomes/merges with a mecha in these series is at least partially human. Katori can be a big robot or a small robot, and basically it was the luck of the draw. If that crap non-functional android hadn't been lying around, Fighbird woulda been a big transforming jet sitting around doing naff-all like his buddies.

To me, this is actually incredibly sad. I mean, Katori and his buddies are partners. They do everything together. Imagine what it must be like, watching your pal from the force get all the earth girls. Meanwhile, what are you? A firetruck. No one gives a shit about a firetruck. Not even little boys, we learn at one point.

A friend of mine did, however, argue this point with me. Katori does indeed get all the chicks. However, not counting the rather promising doctor-lady, 'all the chicks' consist of a whiny reporter and a ten-year-old with a monkey fetish. But hey, Katori has his pick of those, and that's more than you can say for the construction vehicles. To be fair, the doctor may eventually get a thing going with her ambulance, but that remains to be seen.

Reader's Digest version of all that? This show is hilariously cool and I sorta wish I weren't caught up. I'd really love someone to guro* the hell out of Kenta, though. He's miracle annoying.

The other thing I've noticed watching this, when I'm not busy musing on the unfortunate non-sex-lives of the mecha in this show**, is the one thing this yuusha-inspired webcomic is missing.

Not enough random stuff that says SUNRISE on it.

I swear, you could make a drinking game with that one rule and get trashed on two episodes of Fighbird. Easily.

To my credit, there is one instance of it (in katakana) in the very early days of the comic. I'm not telling you where. Find it yourselves.

If you have been, too much.

* In my world, 'guro' is now a verb. And not a very nice one.

** Apparently I need to watch J-Decker.