The latest episode of Bang Bravern deals with the aftermath of the arrival of the aliens and that of Bravern, but also does so with a clash of sub-genres.
To explain, the mecha genre is broadly split into two sub-genres: real robot and super robot.
Real robot is the military-esque approach you likely already know and that is very prevalent in the West. Super robots are something else entirely. Full of pathos as well as being overly ostentatious in terms of their presentation and design.
This premise of pathos is actually a key part of super robot anime and Bang Bravern is doing something interesting by having these two approaches exist in the same show.
In that, following the fight at the end of the first episode, Isami is now being tortured by the intelligence services to find out who he really is. Whereas Bravern is lecturing military officials about how much he enjoyed having Isami inside of him (yeah, that whole scene was also pretty hilarious).
The situation is clearly dire for humanity though and the regular military is seemingly powerless to stop these invaders. However, without Isami, Bravern is also by no means capable of standing up for himself.
Busting Isami out of the interrogation, he’s clearly in shock about what has happened but still manages to pilot Bravern, with a bit of friendly encouragement, and take down a new alien threat.
There’s also a good amount of humor in this show. Masami Obari is very well versed in mecha anime and knows how these real robot and super robot sub genres operate. He’s also worked on the Super Robot Wars games for a long time and saw firsthand how these sub-genres manage to co-exist withing a gaming framework.
The result is a show that is very knowledgeable about the history it is tapping into and, most of all, knows how to have fun with that.
As for how the aliens and Bravern himself fit into this whole story also looks like it will develop in an interesting way. Thus far though, this is a fun mecha show and one that I am keeping a close eye on.
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