In which Captain JLS expounds at length about the NEC TurboGrafx-16 and introduces you to half the lineup for Konami’s mini console version of same.
Author: captainjls
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Dragon Stars Super Saiyan 4 Vegeta
There comes a point in every long-running franchise’s lifetime where it comes time to either wrap it up or reboot it back to a default, classic state. For He-Man it was the sci-fi flavored The New Adventures, intended as a shot in the arm for the aging line, that marked the time to call it quits for a generation. For Ninja Turtles, Saban’s live action TV series The Next Mutation and the darker, seedier Volume 3 comics from Image were a last hurrah for two separate markets until the 21st century. Transformers threw a variety of figures and storytelling against the wall in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. following 1990’s non-transforming Action Masters until Beast Wars began a short-lived renaissance that crashed again with the bizarre techno-organic stylings of Beast Machines. In all three cases, when the early 2000s rolled around these franchises shed their ’90s evolutions and tried to revert to their 1980s glories, with varying degrees of success.
In which Captain JLS looks to the year ahead in the land of Robotech and sees it filled with comics, books, and toys, but offers little hope as far as movies and shows go. Features an eye-rolling rant about a thorny issue from six years ago and a few typical moments of Sentinels obsession.
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Movies 2019, Part 2
It’s part two of my round-up of all the movies I sat in front of in 2019, whether at home or in the theater. Ten movies, presented in release date order, starting off in the 1990s and making it into 2018 — which, as I said last time, just goes to show that I mostly saw stuff from 2018 & 2019 last year. (I’m really hoping to do better this year.)
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Gundam Universe RX-78-2 Gundam
It’s absolutely terrifying to realize in the awful dystopian future year of 2020 that it’s been about sixteen years since the end of Bandai’s big push to get Gundam toys into American toy aisles, an effort that ended with a last-gasp cough of 4″ Gundam SEED figures in the style of the Wing, Universal Century, and G Gundam figures that had previously littered Walmarts, Targets, and Toys ‘R’ Us stores nationwide. What a time that was — when you could walk into Walmart and come out with a sturdy plastic Zeon Gallop and a handful of Zakus and Doms! (Seriously, Bandai really wanted the original Gundam to be a thing in the early ’00s — it was nuts, but the good kind of nuts. The kind that got us a deluxe Zaku set that came with a Magella Attack Tank so you bash them together into a Zaku Tank. I miss those days …)