Santa's been kind to me lately

Recently I’ve been getting the stuff on my Christmas list one by one.

A couple of weeks ago, my dad got ahead of me and bought a Sony external DVD writer. Well, it’s actually an internal drive hooked up to an external chassis meant to house a 5.25” hard disk, but for all intents and purposes it’s an external DVD writer. It’s proving a welcome addition to our computing at home. We can finally burn our own CDs and watch all those stubborn DVDs that don’t want to work on our standalone DVD player.

Around the same time I bought some computer goodies myself. After asking around and looking everywhere for a PC gamepad, I was happy to realize I only had to climb up one more floor on Festival Mall to get it. It’s a nice blue Logitech Precision Gamepad, shaped in the style of the classic PlayStation gamepad, and surprisingly cheap relative to their feature-packed and ridiculously expensive mice. Hey, given all this I might as well go buy a reputable brand if it’s not going to cost me an arm and a leg.

My Panasonic headphones were constantly giving my ears pain due to the hanging design, so I splurged on a nice pair of TDK neckphones instead. They’re not the DJ-style headphones I was hankering for, but they’re a nice substitute. They didn’t cost me an arm and a leg either.

I got both these goodies from Octagon. They really do live up to the moniker of being the computer superstore, simply by dint of carrying the only assortment of PC gamepads I know. Next up on my list is a new monitor (it’s about goddamn time), and I’ll have to save a little harder for one.

Sadly, there’s no news on the Jazz VTEC I wanted. Aheheheh. You can’t have them all I guess.
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The same day I bought my first set of anime DVDs in what seems like years. I went all-out this time, buying the complete set of “After War Gundam X,” “Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket,” a sadly malfunctioning copy of “Mobile Suit Gundam F91” and “Leatherman.”

“Leatherman” was the only regrettable purchase. Really, I’ve seen better hentai.

“War in the Pocket” is definitively the un-Gundam. There is very little emphasis on the Earth Federation and Principality of Zeon; instead we see how the war affects innocent civilians, particularly the children who think war is a big cool game. It’s a short 6-episode series, but it shames many of the long-winded Gundam TV series because of the poignant theme and brilliant execution.

Finally, “Gundam X” is not the black sheep of the franchise simply because of being cut by 10 episodes. If anything, it’s night-and-day-and-most-of-the-following-evening better than the popular but disappointingly brainless “Gundam SEED DESTINY.” There are no loose ends in the plot, the premise of the post-apocalyptic story is interesting, the action almost never stops, and everything else just contributes to a solid anime series. That it strongly roots itself with many concepts and parallels from the Universal Century saga is icing on a very fulfilling cake.
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Color me jaded but I think I’ve finally outgrown Gunpla.

There are a few model kits that still tickle my buying fancy, such as the just-released transforming 1/100 Saviour Gundam, the old MG Gundam GP01 “Zephyranthes,” the MG RX-78-2 Gundam “One Year War” version, the MG Nemo and the MG God Gundam. Overall though, I’m not as ardent a collector as I once was. I now see them for what they are: they’re essentially expensive toys that break too easily and lose their posability over time, especially because I haven’t gotten around to painting any of them.

There are some gems in the lineup though. My last kit, the MG Rick Dias, is a masterpiece of engineering and stability. The MG Wing Gundam ver.Ka I bought for my birthday last year is also one of the best models I have, surprisingly stable and forgiving for a transforming robot. Finally, there’s nothing more that can be said of the MG Zaku II F2, the best kit of the classic Zeon grunt mecha.

New MGs are generally disappointing though. I am not a fan of the new ball-jointed fingers on the hands because they aren’t any good at holding anything by themselves. The greater concentration of ABS used means that when something breaks, it’s broken for good—no more repairs via traditional plastic cement.

Besides, Bandai isn’t probably too keen on making some of my favorite mecha designs into kits because they’re from a forgotten era (read as “unprofitable”). If Bandai ever decides to make an awesome 1/100 kit of the RMSN-008 Bertigo from “Gundam X” I’ll be the first in line.