Xabungle: Difference between revisions

[[File:AW-XabungleCast.jpg|frame|More like a [[Real Is Brown|Brown Gale]], apparently.]]

 

 

 

On the distant [[Desert Punk|desert planet]] of Zora, two distinct civilizations of humans exist: the Innocent, who pioneer culture and science from the safety of their domes, and the Civilians, who live beyond the domes yet rely on the Innocent for the provisions necessary to survive - especially the [[Humongous Mecha|Walker Machines]] and battleships that allow them to traverse the land. The Innocent have long ago decreed that any crime committed among the Civilians is automatically forgiven if the perpetrator isn't brought to justice in three days.

 

Compare ''[[Overman King Gainer]]''.

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* [[Abusive Precursors]]: The Innocent want the Civilians to become the new inhabitants of Zora, and so most of the series is a sort of test to see if they are truly worthy. The "Abusive" part comes into play when some of the more entrenched Innocent don't want to lose their positions of power...

* [[Ace Custom]]: Timp's "Government"-type Walker Machine seems to be the only one of its kind with missile launchers mounted on the forearms.

* [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]: Subverted, a little. The Innocent are incapable of surviving on Zora outside of the domed habitats, and so create a few races to do so. Which means that, by the usual logic, it's the ''Civilians'' who have this.

* [[Bokukko]]: Tron Miran, a member of Sault - it's through her actions that the Iron Gear eventually joins with Sault. She also beats Jiron in a fair fistfight - the beating she gives him is almost completely one-sided. {{spoiler|Sadly, she dies in her debut episode. Jiron keeps her WM-sized bazooka as a memento.}}

* [[Brainwashed and Crazy]]: {{spoiler|Elche}} for a chunk of the latter half of the series.

* [[Bratty Half-Pint]]: Chiru... by Civilian standards, anyway - meaning her firearm is a measly Scorpion vz. 61 and she can only pilot a Hobuggy or ride shotgun at most. In practice, a capable cross between this and [[Tagalong Kid]].

** Wonderfully inverted towards the end: Rag ends up as captain of the Iron Gear, and Elchi's in the Xabungle.

* [[Chicken Walker]]: The prevalent design amongst Walker Machines, in fact.

* [[Combining Mecha]]: The two Xabungle units (and later Walker Gallier) are formed from two truck-like vehicles each.

** Somewhat [[Deconstructed Trope|deconstructed]] by the Xabungle's design - the pilot(s) in the WM's midsection can't get out or contribute to the battle.

* [[Cool Ship|Cool (Land)Ship]]: The Iron Gear. Although it was originally intended to be a Cool ''Star''ship during the earliest planning stages.

* [[Crystal Spires and Togas]]: The Innocent, or at least Elche's image thereof.

** Hahaha! Because it's an ''[[Medium Awareness|anime]]''!

* [[Decontamination Chamber]]: Gas and light. As it's something they always have to go through to enter a dome, the Civilians think that it's part of the pomp and circumstance of the Innocent.

* [[Determinator]]: Jiron, full stop. In-story, Maria is referred to as this for her dogged (some would say blind) adherence to [[Actual Pacifist|pacifism]].

* [[Dodge the Bullet]]: Jiron is ''really damn good'' at this... And everyone else to some extent or other.

* [[Elaborate Underground Base]]: A necessity for the Innocent - domes can only be so big.

* [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"]]: Medic Helt is... [[The Medic|a doctor]]. On his own at first (he shows up in the first episode and fixes Jiron's arm), then for Sault, then finally for Iron Gear.

* [[Fridge Horror]]: A probably intentional example: in the earlier parts of the series Fatman is a source of humor, with his grunting way of speech and his singlemindedness. Then we find out {{spoiler|that he used to be a slave, and those two traits are undoubtedly because of his horrible upbringing}}.

* [[Handguns]]: Most of the main cast uses one - Daiku (shotgun) and Chiru (sub-machinegun) excepted.

** Make a fortune in a Blue Stone mining operation?

** We'll find out soon enough. Xabungle and [[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]] are both slated to appear in [[Super Robot Wars Z|The second Super Robot Wars Z]]. [[So Cool Its Awesome|Prepare yourself]].

* [[Improbable Weapon User]]: The "Boomerang Idiom" within Walker Gallier's Full Armor complement. Then again, it's tough to see what the word "Idiom" has to do with stuffing a [[Precision-Guided Boomerang]] full of enough rockets to clear out a 180-degree radius of enemies.

** "Boomerang ''[[Ideon]]''"?

*** They're Earthlings - why else would they have an Apollo Lunar Lander as a museum piece?

** This is recognized in [[Super Robot Wars]] Alpha Gaiden with the "High-Efficiency Gasoline Engine" item, which improves the equipping unit's mobility and agility a bit. Try not to think about how that works in space.

* [[Justice Will Prevail]]: As Jiron says, "What's wrong with wanting to settle things?" (The three-day rule effectively prevents justice that takes too long.)

* [[Limited Wardrobe]]: Almost all the main characters. Somewhat justified for Jiron and the Sand Rats, as they seem to have boarded the Iron Gear with only the clothes on their backs, and given the show's setting this is understandably the norm.

** Exceptions: Jiron gets his ...''iconic'' brown gear during the first episode and Fatman (of all people...) has a Calvary officer's outfit he likes. Elche changes several times over the course of the show, as befitting someone of *cough* "high culture".

* [[Lost Technology]]: There's the stuff the Innocent made after coming back to Earth... and then there's the stuff that seems to have been in museums while they were gone. The infamous ICBM is one of them.

* [[Love Triangle]]: Rag and Elchi both have a thing for Jiron. Jiron himself doesn't show a preference until about halfway though the show, when {{spoiler|Elchi gets brainwashed. THEN he starts trying to talk her out of it with love, eventually getting through to her for long enough to run a reversal procedure. When she loses her sight, he decides to live with her.}}

** Chiru also has a thing for him (which explains a ''lot'' when you think about it), but Jiron only sees her as a reliable friend, nothing more. There's a piece of artwork released with the soundtracks that's a bit more obvious about this.

* [[Made of Iron]]: All the Civilians, like you wouldn't believe. Explicitly created that way by the Innocent, so they could survive in the harsh Zora landscape.

* [[Mecha Expansion Pack]]: "Full Armor" ensembles for the Xabungles and Walker Gallier; the former really just consists of all the one-off weapons that model had been equipped with up to that point (and is enough for Jiron to single-handedly destroy a domed trading Point), while the latter adds a five-tube missile launcher that was never used in-show.

** [[Getter Robo]] -> Getter G is about the only other clear prior example in mecha anime as a whole. [[Great Mazinger]] doesn't count because it AND its pilot are cases of [[So Last Season]].

* [[No Export for You]]: This article brought to you by the Aeon Genesis [[Fan Translation]] of ''Alpha Gaiden'' and the efforts of several fansub groups.

** Many people have actually found this rather surprising in retrospect, as one would think that the Old West-inspired setting and characters would've made this a shoo-in for export in the 80s. For whatever reason, though, the show never made the jump across the pond.

* [[Non-Action Guy]]: Although he's clearly Elchi's right hand man in the first couple of episodes, Fatman doesn't seem to do much else for the first third or so of the series.

* [[Nuke'Em]]: The Innocent try this on the Iron Gear late in the series. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vVauhgm06k It doesn't take.]

* [[Oh Crap]]: The Iron Gear (WM) already has a reputation for being nigh-invulnerable by the time it reaches X-Point, but the defenders know what to expect. And then they watch it ''jump''. It just ''smashes'' onto X-Point, with one guy basically commenting "yeah, we're completely screwed".

* [[Only One Name]]: Quite a few characters. For example: Chiru, Burume, and Daiku.

* [[Panty Shot]]: Elche tends to provide plenty of these.

* [[Rebel Leader]], subverted: Sault originally has Katakam Zushim who, while actually pretty good at rallying people and supplies behind him, varies from okay to terrible at the actual "bringing down the empire" part. Jiron takes over after his death {{spoiler|(sorry, his "death")}} but isn't much better, with his attack plans basically working out to "blow up (letter) Point", but with him fighting on the front lines.

* [[Red Herring]]: The Blue Stones that are so important to everyone? That are the equivalent of Gold during a goldrush? Worthless and mundane, and different materials are used as actual money.

** There's another possibility for what they are, too. It's said that the Innocent can survive in places that have been cleared of Blue Stones, which implies that they're some kind of pollutant. The Innocent just told the Civilians that they were valuable so that they'd collect them so the Innocent could dispose of them (at least some of the "Ascension of Light" rocket launches from the payment point domes may be them shooting the stuff into space). This leads to some Major [[Fridge Horror]] when you think about it. What's a dangerous pollutant that's blue? Radioactive cobalt. The reason the world is in ruins could be due to the effects of a [[wikipedia:Cobalt Bomb|Cobalt Bomb]], a hypothetical type of nuclear weapon that was never built because the fallout would kill nearly everything on Earth.

* [[Red Shirt]]: Subverted - while there are plenty of [[Mooks|nameless Breakers]] on all sides of the eventual conflict, due to a number of factors (Tomino giving the finger to his nickname, the story taking place on Earth, the durability and cockpit locations of Walker Machines, etc.) they all have an unusually high chance of survival.

* [[Rule of Three]]: The Three-Day Rule!

* [[Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness]]: Usually one or the other. At one end, it makes Gundam look childish (Chiru, 8 years old, whips around a submachine gun; the women are universally tough without sacrificing femininity) and breaks new ground; at the other, it's absolutely unafraid of breaking your screen with humor.

** So seriousness of a series is influenced by its women being tough or not? I sense [[Unfortunate Implications]] here.

** ...and there would be if they didn't [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade]] it so damn often (example: Chiru notes once or twice on the seriousness of the situation). The point is more that, oddly for a mecha anime, there really isn't a gender gap amongst the Civilians.

** [[Rule of Funny|...Then gets knocked out by one last rock the size of his head.]]

* [[Super Prototype]]: [[Averted Trope|Averted]] with the two Xabungles, played straight with Walker Gallier and the Iron Gear to an extent (it's new enough that the 120-some meter tall Walker Machine mode is demoralizing).

* [[Super Robot Wars]]: ''[[Super Robot Wars Alpha|Alpha Gaiden]]'', ''[[Super Robot Wars Z|Z]]'', and ''[[Super Robot Wars Z|Z2]]'' (The Nintendo 64 flop ''Super Robot Spirits'' and obscure ''Super Robot Pinball'' don't count because they're both off-formula and the first was awful.) Note that they follow [[Everybody Lives|the movie ending]] rather than [[Bittersweet Ending|the TV ending.]]

* [[Techno Babble]]: Considerably lighter than even most [[Super Robot]] titles, the only really obvious example being the Potan Cannon's proper name (see [[Forgotten Phlebotinum]] above, 'cause damned if we're typing that again).

* [[The Gunslinger]]: Timp ''thinks'' he's one of these... but he screws up a little too often.

** While the older members fulfill this by being a tight-knit group, Chiru appears to consider them (Rag and Jiron particularly) older siblings.

* [[Tsundere]]: Rag - blowing up Landships with a pistol-sized grenade launcher one minute, blushing and demure the next. Elchi, ''maybe'' - "cultured" and polite one minute, blowing up Landships as the captain of a 120-meter-tall Walker Machine the next.

* [[What Could Have Been]]: Before [[Yoshiyuki Tomino|Tomino]] joined up as director, the Iron Gear and Xabungle were supposed to have been the [[Cool Ship]] and [[Combining Mecha]] of a serious, outer space show called "Exploiter" (which helps to explain why they look so out of place on Zora, [[Chicken Walker|mechanically]]). Amazingly, the character designs apparently weren't changed much from that period and the finished show.

** Although given the three-day-rule, it's quite possible it was an extremely trivial reason in the first place, and Timp's simply trying to rile him up by being vague. Jiron himself seems to care to care more about avenging them to find out why, anyway.

* [[Wise Beyond Their Years]]: Chiru is this frequently, which helps to mitigate the fact that carrying and using a sub-machine gun is [[Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour]] at best.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Anime]]