Bulletin: A Return to the Superversive Livestream!

Yesterday I joined Anthony Marchetta on the Superversive Livestream to discuss anime, the Pulp Revolution, and the pulp tales of yore. We spoke about many other topics as well. It was a fun two hours, readers! There were some technical difficulties with the stream, and we went silent or at least too low to hear …

Mobilize! The Return of the Zoids Continues

Are you a Zoids fan? Do you like Gundam? If so, then the game below may be the gift you didn’t know you wanted! Presenting Zoids vs. Gundam, a tabletop game that pits these two Japanese mecha franchises against one another. For those who know nothing about either series, think of it as Pacific Rim, but …

The #ReturnoftheZoids Has Begun

Zoids Wild Zero – It Has Begun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-H8_WqBM9w It looks like Japan’s artists may have beaten this author to the punch on #ReturnoftheZoids. For the twentieth anniversary of the franchise, two new Zoids series were released in 2018 and 2019. The first of these, titled Zoids Wild, did not seem to really fit the mold …

Need More Zoids…

Despite the Top Gun reference, this is decidedly not a post about the famous Tom Cruise film. It is, instead, a piece about my favorite mecha anime – Zoids: Chaotic Century. Part of the reason for this author to revisit Chaotic Century is that the series has a brief cameo in my story “All the …

Invasion of the French Mecha!

Yes, technically, the Machines of the Isle of Nantes (Les Machines de L’île in Nantes) are not real mecha. But they do resemble zoids to a certain extant – especially the elephant. It reminds this author strongly of the Elephander from Zoids: New Century Zero and following titles. Les Machines de L’île in Nantes has …

Build. Customize. Mobilize! – The Inspiration to Be Found in Zoids: Chaotic Century

“Build. Customize. Mobilize!” That was the tag line for advertisements featuring toys from two anime series I loved and watched regularly when they were on television. The first of these was Zoids: New Century Zero, the sequel to Zoids: Chaotic Century. Somehow Zero played in the U.S. ahead of Century; I have no idea how …

Conflict – How I Learned the Art of Combat in Fiction from Hasbro’s/Takara Tomy’s ZOIDS

Clint Eastwood once said that you cannot have a story without conflict. Whether your tale has the hero fighting to survive in a hurricane or trying to master his passion for a married woman doesn’t matter. Whether he is dueling with his arch-nemesis or being fired upon by alien crabs intent on turning humans into …