The ‘Dan Da Dan’ Finale’s Greatest ‘Gundam’ Reference Retains Us All within the Thrall of the Pink Comet

There’s been rather a lot to like in Dan Da Dan‘s sophomore season, however the late arrival of the most recent addition to Momo and Okarun’s oddball buddy group, Kinta Sakata, has been a delight. Manga readers already knew that the character’s debut would herald some wild moments from the sequence being tailored, however one of many absolute highlights of seeing Kinta’s transition from web page to display as an enormous mecha otaku is simply how a lot the anime has fully embraced the character as a automobile for Cell Swimsuit Gundam references.

Kinta has served as a mecha geek’s fever dream in his transient appearances on the present to date. However this week’s season finale, “Conflict! Area Kaiju vs. Large Robotic!” gave Kinta and Dan Da Dan alike their greatest homage to Gundam to date.

Early on within the battle between Kinta and the gang’s nanoskin-forged large Buddha robotic and the mysterious Kaiju that’s been threatening them, the mecha is badly broken and magically repaired by the nanoskin’s psychic skills into a brand new, shining golden type for spherical two. A distraught Okarun, who was promptly ejected out of the robotic because the battle started alongside Evil Eye, watches because the reforged mecha costs again into fight, flinging the kaiju round… after which abruptly, the present switches to sluggish movement, as we see, pale frame-by-frame, the golden Buddha stand up from its knees right into a standing pose.

Then, we lower contained in the cockpit to Kinta himself, who’s equally animated in that framey slo-mo as he arches his head again and a smile emerges throughout his face. It’s a tiny second, however anybody who’s as obsessive about the unique Cell Swimsuit Gundam as Kinta apparently is will acknowledge the homage instantly: he’s pulling a Char Aznable.

The second Dan Da Dan is creating comes from an iconic scene within the 1979 anime’s twenty ninth episode, “Tragedy In Jaburo.” Having expertly taken out a number of Federation fits proper in entrance of a shocked Amuro Ray, reeling as he realizes the pilot of the brand new crimson enemy unit have to be Char, we’re handled to the Z’Gok’s fashionable, slow-motion rise, the lower to Char within the cockpit grinning with assured glee, and his iconic theme music, “Gallant Char,” kicks in.

The episode marks the primary time Amuro and Char really went into battle with one another in over a dozen episodes, after Char largely exits the image of the present’s second act as soon as the Gundam and the White Base make their method to Earth.

Char had solely really returned from being off-screen a number of episodes prior (in an episode aptly named “Char Returns”), slowly making ready for his subsequent encounter with the Gundam and its mysterious pilot, so when he stands earlier than the Gundam together with his new cellular swimsuit, the aquatic-based Z’Gok, the second is stuffed with palpable stress. It’s a brilliantly stylized second, an vital chapter in Char and Amuro’s rivalry and relationship, and the precise sort of deep-cut reference a fanboy like Kinta can be dying to make whereas residing out his mecha piloting dream.

And it shouldn’t be shocking to anybody who’s paid consideration to the character to date that he’s within the thrall of the Red Comet, as Cell Swimsuit Gundam GQuuuuuuX so aptly put it earlier this yr. From arriving on the scene singing the insert music “Char ga Kuru” and recreating animation body poses from the 1979 basic to giving his summoned robotic a basic Gundam V-Fin head decoration, the fin funnels of the Nu Gundam, and even the shoulder armor of a Zaku, Kinta has been portrayed as a loving bundle of homages to the unique Gundam to date.

Though the second in Dan Da Dan doesn’t use “Gallant Char” itself (maybe a sensible lesson discovered after the season’s previous issues with musical homage), the backing does honor it, kicking in a short staccato set of brass notes as Kinta smirks which can be taken proper from the unique piece.

Giving him a nod to the foundational mecha anime in Dan Da Dan‘s all-out Kaiju/Robotic scrap was solely becoming. If you happen to’re residing your nerdy large mecha dream, why not observe within the steps of one of many best to ever do it?

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