Your Anime Sucks – Armored Trooper Votoms: The Pailsen Files

Some notes to accompany the review. Basically just links, trivia and anything else that didn’t quite fit into the video.

• You probably already know this, but Votoms creator and director Ryousuke Takahashi is a big name in the mecha genre, responsible for several pioneering real-robot series in the early ’80s.  He’s also been involved in a lot of other interesting works over the years though (including working as an episode director on Moomin of all things) – check out his filmography over at ANN.
• Regan from the Anime 82 podcast did a pretty good run-through of the Votoms franchise as part of his Mecha-Madness special. Check it out here.
• Mecha Anime HQ entry for the Scopedog.
• Aside from Saving Private Ryan, war film buffs might note an interesting similarity to Sam Fueller’s intensely personal WW2 film, The Big Red One (1980). Both narratives follow a small squad with a curious knack for survival as they find themselves right at the front for every major theatre of war. If the Pailsen Files is borrowing from it, it’s a shame they couldn’t have aped the incidental anecdotes about each of the main soldiers – it would really have helped the characterisation.
• While definitely not the case across the whole Votoms franchise, The Pailsen Files is another series with a weird lack of female characters. Even in the background, I don’t remember a single woman in the series at all. It rather makes you miss Gal Force.
• If you like the Hollywood war movie vibe, you might also want to check out Battletech (1994), an animated adaptation of the Mechwarrior franchise. If you can ignore the jingoistic opening narration, this uniquely all-American mecha series is surprisingly well written for a ‘kids’ show.
• That opening sequence in full