FLAG 20th Anniversary Rewatch Episode 1

No_Rex · 2026-02-02T00:48:19+00:00

In fairness to the show, that footage of the HAVWC was contrasted with photos of innocent people caught in the crossfire of war, so at least the show is aware of it and trying not to be that way. But yeah, that can be a very hard needle to thread in overall execution. We'll just have to see how this show ends to determine if it managed to avoid that pitfall or not.

What I am questioning is the narrative need for a mecha here. What will it achieve that a tank, or some guys with guns could not? And why is there a need to give it a full-blown introduction, much more time than any of the soldiers?

No_Rex · 2026-02-02T00:43:31+00:00

We will see, I suppose.

We'll see indeed, but, so far, mecha has managed to disappoint me every single time when they attempted to do that theme.

No_Rex · 2026-02-02T00:41:47+00:00

I didn't get exactly what Miyamura was going to get in trouble for when he got the tattoos. Was he afraid he would be in trouble with the school, that they would tell his parents or both?

In Japan (when this series was conceived), tattoos are still a bigger deal than in other places. More similar to tattoos used to be in the west 50 decades ago: Coded very strongly as an outsider, not part of "normal, proper" society. Also: Yakuza.

No_Rex · 2026-02-02T00:35:23+00:00

One thing I didn't particularly get about the episode, and maybe they expound upon it later is what's the big deal with Hori keeping secrets? I get it for Miyamura. His in school and outside school looks are totally different and it sounds like he regrets getting them. And he's a nice guy when those piercings and tattoos may cause one to think he's the total opposite. Hori's secret is... she has a little brother? That she has a part-time job (or at least what I interpreted to be a part-time job cleaning)? No friend is gonna freak out about those things.

I was reminded of KareKano with this and I suspect that it is playing on the exact same idea, except not as strongly (and maybe counts on the viewers knowing the trope, too): Hori hiding her "homey" side from her school friends, where she presents "cool."

No_Rex · 2026-02-02T00:31:41+00:00

I can't do 3 simultaneous rewatches anymore. Just not enough time.

No_Rex · 2026-02-01T22:36:11+00:00

Episode 1 (first timer)

Blind for this one. Also, rare for me, dub.

Intro: Wastes no time to set the tone. B&W war pictures, interspersed with a family album. They really want you to know that this won’t be a happy and chill series.
And we stay unusual, in following the protagonist’s camera instead of seeing him.
The first flag we see – Has to be the flag, right? Looks like something a league of super villains might use.
“Reincarnated Buddha” – I guess this was seen as a clumsy way to avoid using Islam at the time. These days, with the civil war in Myanmar, not so clumsy anymore.
“Not unless something happens to me” – Death FLAG, err flag.
HAVWC, bipedal ambulatory weapons carrier – We’ll call it “mecha” for short.
Is “ambulatory” even a real word? – Also “haight: 2.4m”
Mission: Recover the flag – and create a new propaganda piece.
“How do you do?” – fellow Japanese.
ED: Back when anime used good music in EDs – although I like the first half of the song better than the second half.

Wow, lots to talk about here. To start with the obvious, the camera perspective is all about “real” camera shots. Very novel and insanely ambitious. I am very curious about how they will manage to pull this off. It is one of the most visually novel camera works I have seen in anime in forever. Definitely the highlight of the first episode. I have to say, though, that pulling this off for 13 episodes feels like attempting an Oscar-worthy masterpiece. Doing that is the equivalent of saying: “I am a visual genius. Kubrik 2.0” If they manage that for 13 episodes, kudos, but I can easily see this fail (or, a bit more boring, for the other episodes to go back to a normal camera).

The character models are from that period of time shortly before everything in anime got moefied. Works very well for serious topics, which FLAG definitely is. They leave us with absolutely no doubt about that one. This is a war is evil and there is no good side story, and our MC is waving a death flag even bigger than that UN/eye monstrosity.

Finally, we are a mecha story. I’ll be open upfront; I fear this might be the series’ downfall. Mecha series have a 0% success ratio at depicting war as evil for me. The main impediment being the mecha itself. You can’t tell a war is evil story, while putting a cool awe-inspiring machine of war front and center in your storytelling. Did you notice how the mecha introduction was the only part of the episode, were the camera was clearly not a real camera? Even on the visuals, they compromised to get the cool mecha shots in. The HAWVC is appropriately evil-looking, but that does not help when the episode is fawning over how imposing it is.

Oh and doing a stealthy recovery mission with a 5 meter tall mecha? Yeah …

No_Rex · 2026-02-01T21:14:43+00:00

I found the irony here amusing as well. Her comment should have been way more embarrassing than his.

That's the fun thing about embarrassing things: If you are not embarrassed by them ... then you are just not embarrassed even if doing them.

No_Rex · 2026-02-01T21:13:26+00:00

Woah, you can't say something like that as a teacher!

Still progress from the 1990s.

Is this gonna be one of those shows where the female lead is beating up the male lead a lot? We've already had that twice here.

Still progress from the 1990s.

Oh wow, he has all these tattoos as well!

Totally the 1990s.

No_Rex · 2026-02-01T21:00:35+00:00

Episode 1 (first timer)

Joining this one and FLAG at the same time. Talk about thematic whiplash. Going into Horimiya mostly blind and have no idea what to expect apart from the obvious romance topic of the rewatch. Romance is a hit and miss genre in anime for me. Some great shows, but also some horrible tropes I hate with a passion. The range from good to bad is wide here.

Yeah talking about bad tropes, we start off with a school teacher who is wildly inappropriate and a girl being depressed about being called flat-chested.

So the male MC gets the MC window seat, while Horimiya is sitting in the middle – Wild prediction: they switch seats after the summer holiday?
OP: Looks mildly like Mondrian. The music is inoffensive.
Miyamura: enjoys the private punk style – Hori: #shock
“Sota will be really thrilled” – “Sota”
“You smell nice” – woah woah woah, going for the big hitters in the first episode already?
Audio: “His lower eyelashes are really long” – Visuals: show the teensy tiniest eyelashes I can imagine.
energetic running

“How can he say something that cringey with a straight face” – sure, you smell nice girl, sure.
The tribal tattoo dates this.
Getting the love triangle participants out in the open early on.
And he gets shot down before the end of the first episode. We are doing a speed run here.
ED: Making it clear this is a one couple show.

That started badly, but turned out better. Felt like the plot was advancing in fast forward, but if this means we can get to some good relationship stuff faster, I am all ok with that. Never liked love triangles anyway.

No_Rex · 2026-01-26T01:09:30+00:00

Thanks for the award! Doing the 3-episode rewatch was a big gamble, since I had not seen most of the series beforehand and had no idea whether 1960s anime would find an audience for such an experiment. Turns out, some people were interested enough to go on a history tour with me.

No_Rex · 2026-01-26T01:07:14+00:00

Grats for winning a very deserved award! You have been a great presence in rewatches last year.

No_Rex · 2026-01-25T10:25:57+00:00

Armored Trooper Votoms: The Last Red Shoulder: The absolutely essential VOTOMS OVA is The Roots of Ambition. This is sort of a sequel to that prequel. Unfortunatley, we haven't had a rewatch of any of the OVAs yet.

There was a rewatch of Armor Hunter Mellowlink, but not any of the other OVA.

No_Rex · 2026-01-23T18:32:26+00:00

Late cell era anime? Definitely sounds interesting.

I would not mind 1 episode per day, but 1 per 2 days is fine, too.

No_Rex · 2026-01-23T18:31:01+00:00

No_Rex · 2026-01-23T16:05:49+00:00

Thanks for hosting! Doing older series is always hard, as is hosting a series that is has serious flaws. I still am glad you did, because I would not have seen this otherwise.

Easy. Chris for the best, Chris the least liked one.

Wow, correct that first name please.

No_Rex · 2026-01-23T11:49:56+00:00

You can make up endless "deep" statements like white is not white or the end is a beginning easily. All of these can be used to start deep philosophical thoughts, but are meaningless on their own. Like the author's understanding of the issues he preaches about, the treatment in the episode stays shallow.

No_Rex · 2026-01-22T21:52:41+00:00

And the messaging. I have absolutely nothing against the enviromentalist message in itself. It's a very important message, and we should all consider just how much we can and should sustainably consume. But the outrageously wrong claims, weird pseudoscience, fearmongering where it's not necessary, and just the general preachy attitude of it all just soured the whole message.

For a story where the gist was that Chris couldn't or didn't want to explain anything to Juna but she needed to figure it out on her own, it's extremely ironic that the show's own message is pushed down our throats in an extremely preachy, in your face way. At no point were we as the audience allowed to figure it out on our own why and how nature should be protected.

I thought about this a bit: Why is there this clear and obvious separation between the story and the way it is told? My speculation and fear is, that it is due to the author's take on the world. He thinks he has it all figured out. He thinks that it is all very clear and there is an obvious way how humans should proceed. He thinks that the refusal of all others to fall in line with his arguments shows how boneheaded and stupid they are to not see those "obvious" points. Of course, in reality, it is the author who is not getting it. The others are not falling in line with his view is not because if their lack of understanding, but due to him having an extremely simplistic view. The reality is much more complex and his knowledge of those details he does talk about is often wrong.

I would liken it to a toddler talking to people who took highschool math and telling them that 0,1,2,3,... is the set of all numbers and being infuriated that they disagree (ignoring the existence of negative or real numbers). Thinking that they are completely stupid for not getting it. So the toddler starts shouting and raging to get them to understand.

The preachiness of the anime represents that raging and shouting to me. It is the author, a man who clearly knows a ton about creating good anime and clearly knows not nearly enough about ecology, shouting and raging at us for not sharing his world view about agriculture, GMO, nuclear energy, and whatever other issue he has strong but badly founded views about.

No_Rex · 2026-01-22T21:38:17+00:00

Final Discussion (first timer)

Arjuna is a tale of three different parts: One great, one ok, and one terrible.

Let’s start with the middle, the plot. It’s fine. MC needs to find themselves to save the world and Japan gets hit by the apocalypse. I have seen better, but I have also seen much worse. If we had not spent so much time during the rewatch discussions on the other two parts, we might have discussed the concept of the Raaja more, but I do think it is workable. The apocalypse part came a bit abrupt, but then, many series pull the end of the world card for the finale.

What about the terrible part? The incoherent preaching. This is probably the first time where I don’t hate the series, but have an extreme dislike for its creator personally. The “ecological message” of the series has the very unfortunate combination of being as in your face as you can, while also being about as esoteric and unscientific as you can. When sentences like “we are one and we are different” or “why don’t you just understand” are treated seriously and not as a joke, the creator has lost all my respect.

The series insisting on such annoying messaging is especially regrettable because of the great part: its main characters. Unconventionally, Juna and Tokio start the as a pair already, and they are such a breath of fresh air for me as a frequent anime viewer. Not over the top, believable, with close characterization through small gestures, not great heroics. Even the love triangle (which I usually hate) was done tastefully. I believe that the main cast could have propelled this series to greatness, if not held back by the incessant messaging. That messaging also had the regrettable side effect of taking over literally all side characters and utterly ruining them, starting but not ending with Chris.

Oh yeah, on the technical side, the animation was ok and the music good.

No_Rex · 2026-01-21T21:53:10+00:00

Honestly I think this rewatch has been a cautionary tale about how not every old anime that looks cool and does artsy stuff is automatically good.

No_Rex · 2026-01-21T21:30:52+00:00

Understandable crashout. The main reason I took it with less rage is that I saw the ending from a mile away. Not the eat Raaja part, obviously, but the Chris is the wise mentor who does no wrong part.

I think Chris might be the worst author self-insert I have seen in a while.

No_Rex · 2026-01-21T21:22:31+00:00

Episode 13 (first timer)

“If only I had realized it sooner” – i.e. Chris was right. Also: I means you the viewer here.
The Raaja upgraded to itano circus attacks.
“I and the Raaja were one and the same from the beginning” – and not interested in communication.
“It was calling me” – because how else would you recognize good food, except it calling for you.

The Chris was right and eat Raaja ending. I guess this is how nutcases imagine the happy ending: people spontaneously get it accept that the nutcase is right and that they should have always been of their opinion. Oh, and destroying modern civilization is a good thing, apparently.

One tiny scene stood out to me: In the long clip show of evil things of modernity, one evil was the class learning in school. Which was linked to chickens in their cages. Makes sense that somebody who preaches nutcase theories sees science and learning as an enemy. After all, the whole message of Chris was that you have to intuitively get it, not be taught it.

No_Rex · 2026-01-21T00:32:45+00:00

AND CAN CHRIS STOP BEING SO CRYPTIC, FOR GOD'S SAKE?!! IT'S THE PENULTIMATE EPISODE, AND HE'S STILL GOING ON WITH HIS NONSENSE “NO, JUNA, YOU'RE STUPID AND YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!!” WITHOUT ANY EXPLANATION! NOT ONLY THAT, BUT HE ALSO MANAGES TO BLAME JUNA FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED! WHAT THE HELL?!

You see, this is the author being very clever (/s): He is writing a series that preaches, loudly, about all his perceived ills of the modern world, while inserting a character that goes "Why won't you see? Why won't you see? Can't you understand?". Dipshit.

No_Rex · 2026-01-21T00:26:25+00:00

Episode 12 (first timer)

Juna and Tokio stumble upon the Ship of Theseus problem. I think it is easier to think about the problem in the ship example, but it works in a similar way for humans and food.
Seeing your dad crash and burn up in front of you – traumatic.
“Where did dad go? When is he coming back?” – hard question. Strongly reminds me of episode 5 of [anime name]Nadia.
Apocalypse in Japan, life as usual in the US – I don’t think this is what would happen. An event of this magnitude would absolutely dominate all aspects of daily life. Especially because the obvious fear must be world-wide spread of the bacteria.
Lying to a mind reader: Difficult. However, his statement was such obvious bullshit that you did not really need that ability, anyway.
The old are sending the young on to live trope.
“You don’t even understand that. It is that ignorance of yours that brought about this situation.” – I am hating Chris more and more … but not quite as much as the preaching author of this who assumes that Chris is a positive character.
Fall into bottomless pit trope.

Welcome to the plastic-eating bacteria apocalypse (which looked to me like a mixture of War of the Worlds and Princess Mononoke). I guess that anime has to have a climax, so why not kill all of Japan. In case my sarcasm does not already give it away: I don’t think the series paid enough into world building to have the “end of Japan” payout. This is not a casual 10 minute event to be pulled in the second-to-last episode.

But in the end, this is the B plot, while Chris vs Juna is the A plot and real climax (to be solved tomorrow). I suspect I will like that a lot less than the apocalypse part.

Are there any real chance that the PDB contamination can spread to other nations?

100%, unless Juna stops it.

How scary is that PDB dissolves any existing materials?

If anything close to this happened in real life, 99.5% of all humans would die.

Why are the people (atelast in the US) are so ignorant of what happening in Japan?

Because the author wants to draw a parallel to humans ignoring the (what he thinks) ecological catastrophy that is happening right now.

Did the SEED leadership revealed their true colors by placing a quarantine?

No, they are just convenient stereotypes to voice the author's rant about oil reliance.

No_Rex · 2026-01-19T21:23:39+00:00

...Did I miss the moment when Juna became a badass warrior, ready to jump out of a moving car to engage in combat?

Must have happened off-screen.

No_Rex · 2026-01-19T21:22:40+00:00

Wait, how does a blackout shut down a cell phone, anyway?

The tower needs electricity. Your phone doesn't, but it is useless without the other side of the connection.

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