Count_Zero

I’d heard about the manga The Men Who Created Gundam a while ago from an article on TVTropes – and later had heard that the manga had been licensed by Denpa, though I found it was only available in a physical release, so that ended up serving as something of a hold-up on my picking up the series. However, at long last I’ve picked up up the omnibus release of the series.

As the title suggests, The Men Who Created Gundam tells the story of how the original Mobile Suit Gundam series (colloqually referred to as “First Gundam”) came to be – in a very tongue-in-cheek kind of presentation. The focus is on Yoshiyuki Tomino, who is presented as an almost Spider Jerusalem-esque figure. Not just in the sense of his bald head and ever-present sunglasses (and lanky figure), but his somewhat obnoxious and confrontational attitude, in a manipulative and obnoxious kind of way.

We have a few other supporting characters that provide point-of-view perspectives on the story, like the composite character of Momoe Kusakari, who represents much of the female production staff of the series. She also unfortunately often ends up on the receiving end of some of the regressive attitudes of the time when it comes to sexual politics, with her frequently getting groped (often by Tomino). Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (who is drawn like a rock star) also gets a fair amount of spotlight time, though never as a point of view character.

That ties into what probably is one of the biggest issues with the manga itself – Tomino’s letcherous habits and sexual harassment of women in staff is played for comedy at best or as a a charming element of his character at worst. It makes for a frustrating part of the story, where we see the build-up to the New Century declaration at the start of the launch of the Gundam Compilation movies, but we also see him harassing the staff, with that basically being treated as something of an endearing feature of him. Arguably this is a fictitious aspect of the character that’s being played up for exaggeration, but the problem is that it’s still mostly ever-present in the story.

In all, I enjoyed the manga, but I did always feel a bit of a sense of dread in the manga whenever Tomino and Kusakari were on page at the same time, for fear of what “comedy” beat would come next. I did enjoy reading the manga, and honestly it does make for a good jumping off point for later reading of what actually happened, but intentional groping, by adults, in the workplacek, played for comedy makes this a hard recommendation.

If you know anything about me at all, I have a passion for the history of tabletop roleplaying. One of the books that helped stoke my interest was the book Heroic Worlds, which I read when I was in middle school. That book was a high level overview of the roleplaying game books that were on the market at the time – like the tabletop RPG equivalent of all those Leonard Maltin books giving an overview, one-to-two sentence of a film’s plot, and a one-to-two sentence review combined with a score. Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground provides a more close in view, covering a selection of RPG books from each decade of RPG history to date, with more involved looks at the various games.

So, if there’s a major RPG title that came out over the medium’s history, it’s generally covered here. Dungeons & Dragons? Check! Runequest? You bet! The Fantasy Trip? Sure thing. Vampire: The Masquerade? It’s in there. Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark? Sure thing. Even (as the subtitle says) Mothership. These are included alongside various smaller titles and significant, if not as well known, sourcebooks for the various games that are covered. Stuff like some of the adventure collections for Call of Cthulu or Cults of Prax for Runequest. We even get a couple significant titles from Palladium – like Rifts and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles And Other Strangeness.

We get some very nice, involved looks at the games and sourcebooks, with the author’s serious thoughts on the books, along with how well they have or have not held up with time – such as with the Sanity rules casually shoehorned into TMNT or the entirety of Oriental Adventures. It’s not a full-fledged buyer’s guide, instead serving something of a critical overview.

It’s not without some problems. While the book is very much aware of some of the prejudices and biases in past works (again, Oriental Adventures), the book has a massive oversight issue. Specifically, the focus is very heavy on games from the Anglo-European zone – while some translated games are covered, they’re exclusively European titles like In Nomine or Kult. Games translated from Japanese (like Maid) or works inspired by Asian media – whether anime (Big Eyes Small Mouth), action cinema from Hong Kong and Taiwan (Hong Kong Action Theater and Feng Shui). The most we get is a passing mention of the Robotech RPG in the entry of TMNT.

This is particularly odd considering, for example, Feng Shui’s mook rules would help influence the Minion rules for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition (which is mentioned in the book). Robotech introduced the Megadamage rules which would carry over to Rifts. However, there’s no real mention or in-depth entries on either of those games. It’s kind of head-scratchingly frustrating (not helped by the fact that it also perpetuates the worldview that TRPGs are an Anglo-European (and predominantly White) thing. This is particularly weird because, again, the book does try to acknowledge contributions of Black and Asian creators in the book.

I did very much enjoy the book, and it makes for a very good starting point for people who want to learn more about historical titles in tabletop roleplaying history. However, I do feel like the book runs into some bugbears that are specific to me.