12 Days of Aniblogging, Day 5Writing about Heaven Will Be Mine is so so hard because any level of engagement with this game reduces me to warm melty sludge, so I’m going to keep this one short.Mecha animes always get so close to having something interesting to say, but they can never quite get it out smoothly. Macross has something to say about how human society will always try to make art and love even in the most dire of wars, but the balance of war to art never sits right. Macross 7 has something to say about how the power of diverse new music can force you to reconsider your identity and perspectives, but this gets muddled after 49 episodes of alien hijinks. Macross Frontier… okay maybe Macross is my only strong frame of reference for the genre, so I’ll eschew the specific examples. What I’m trying to say is that mecha anime really does have a Wow Cool Robot problem.This meme places the blame squarely on the fans for failing to notice the actual message the show is blasting outwards, too distracted by the medium of cool robots. But I think that’s a little disingenuous. Fans suck, but also most of these shows are padded to hell and do a pretty murky job of actually shooting out that “war is bad” missile. Subtlety is nice and all, but in a world where a lot of war media is literally military-funded psuedopropaganda, if you’re sincere about being anti-war, it means a lot to really make that clear.Heaven Will Be Mine is kinda rooted in Cold War politics, but that’s not the focus. Its actual meaning and value is rather nested and personal. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a subtle game! It’s blunt and direct and horny in only the way a bunch of gay girls writing about gay girls mech fighting could be. But the problem’s not finding the messages, it’s decoding them. This is a game that’s running on dozens of layers at once. It’s hard to keep track of everything, and I think that’s the point. There’s the ambitions of the factions in the past and present, the ever increasing archive of memos and emails, the chatlogs, the current political situation, the history of each girl, who’s fucked who and when, what the future could hold, the power levels of each Ship-Self, what was going on behind the scenes of the space program, what each girl wants personally compared to their faction, the effects of Gravity, the effects of Culture.But when all else fails, you’ve always got one layer you can return to: the spectacular trio of characters fighting and loving each other in their Cool Robots. And sometimes, that’s all you need.here’s a template please use with reckless abandon

Floating Catacombs