Innovative mecha depiction of "Bren Powered" nullifies the differences in robot design between friend and foe, have you noticed? [Nostalgic Anime Retrospective #60

This month, on Friday, November 29, 2019, director Yoshiyuki Tomino's latest film, the theatrical version of "G no Reconguista I" "Go! Core Fighter" will be released in theaters. Among Tomino's works, "Bren Powered" (1998) is a TV animation that is unrelated to the Gundam series and rarely looked back on.

How do you differentiate between Gruncher and Bren, who look exactly alike in color and shape?

Enemy robots appear in the midst of our peaceful lives."
↓↓.
"Allied robots intercept and painstakingly defeat the enemy robot."
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
"The immediate threat is barely over and we prepare for the next battle."
...... This three-act structure was also used in "Mobile Suit Gundam. The first battle of the allied robots and their awakening as heroes were depicted in a memorable manner.

In the case of "Bren Powered," the first episode depicts, above all, Japan being struck by a natural disaster. In the second cut, two grunchers fly between the plate and the volcano. (Yu), the female partner, and on the other plane is Kanan, the female partner. Seeing the two grunchers retrieving the plates, the soldiers say, "It's an anti-body. Gruncher type.", "Did that thing really come out of the ocean?" and "They're carrying plates, man," and "What a bunch of guys," they converse.
In other words, the composition suggests that it is the plate (not the gruncher) that is associated with natural disasters such as erupting volcanoes, and the conversation further suggests that the public entity retrieving the plate is the gruncher. In other words, the glancher is not portrayed as an "evil robot that destroys peaceful daily life. This is probably the primary factor that makes it difficult to see the confrontation between friend and foe.

Now, another night. A plate comes bouncing over the surface of the sea, destroying a ship and a bridge. The protagonist, Hima, flees the plate with his fellow orphaned children. The other evacuees are also frightened, "It's a plate!" and "How can a plate appear in a place like this?" They are frightened. Because Bren Powered emerges from this dangerous plate, Bren does not look like a "good robot who protects peaceful life.

Hima, who had been running away from the plate, asked, "What are you going to do if you come any further?" and rebels, and as if on cue, the plate collapses and Brenpowered's torso is configured. The conversation between Himaru and the children becomes one of differences from the gruncher, with Himaru saying, "A thing called a gruncher has been created," and "It's not like a gruncher," and Yuu, who visits the place where the blenpowered appears, also emphasizes in a trenchant manner that it is different in appearance, saying, "It's not a gruncher.
The information that viewers need to keep in mind here is the fact that the gruncher and the blenpowered, which look exactly alike in color and shape, are "different," and the abstract notion of confrontation characteristic of robot animation, such as which one is good or which one is the enemy, is not present in the first episode.

Why do Himal's Brenpowered and Yuu's Gruncher have the same color?

However, when Hima gets into Brempowered, a crisis arises.
A fireman warns him to "get away from that anti-body," and a gruncher tells him to "get off right now," as Kanan tries to break the close relationship between Himma and Bren. Hima, who defies them, calls Bren "kind eyes" and "a newborn baby," and describes the feeling of its interior as "poka-poka. It's so soft and slippery. These lines are all subjective to Himaru. What is at stake here is the favorable feeling of "gentle" and "softness" that Hima has acquired, not the righteousness and goodness of the robot anime.
The blenpowered vehicle carrying Himama and the children knocks over a lamppost while in transit, and the refugees nearby run around saying, "Here they come," and "Don't make a sound, voice. From the point of view of the general public, who are supposed to be protected, both the gruncher and the blenpowered are just as much a threat. However, Hima has a one-sided affinity for Bren, and protecting her favorable touch is a top priority in the first episode.

Furthermore, the blurring of the ally-enemy picture in the first episode is also a function of the series' structure. Isamu and Kanan, aboard the Gruncher, turn to the aircraft carrier Novice Noah out of distrust of their own Orphan, and each gets his own personal Brenpowered. Because of this development, the first episode cannot portray Yuu and Kanan as villains, and thus a decisive battle between the robots cannot occur.
In other words, for reasons of design and production, the first episode of "Bren Powered" lacks the exhilaration of a "head-on battle between robots on both sides of the enemy. However, in episode 3, Isamu's blue Bren Powered stops the tsunami and saves the children. Isamu, who had been a member of an enemy organization, acts alone and performs heroically with the power of the Bren. In the story structure of "Bren Powered," the differences in political positions and obvious differences in specifications, such as between Gundam and Zaku, are meaningless. Therefore, the first episode is a story about the "Brempawd".
Therefore, the fact that the same beige color was used in the first episode for the Gruncher that Yuu was riding and the Brempowered that Himaru was riding was not a mistake but intentional, but what do you think?


(Text by Keisuke Hirota)