Gundam Vs Modernity

Gundam Extreme Vs. absolutely does not give a shit about the modern world. Let’s go back: before Japan’s superfuture tech got caught pants-down by the smartphone era.

This is a VOOTish robo team fighter series that came out in 2010, offering players mech customisations for a ¥300/month registration fee – via a mobile phone website accessible only on Japan’s assorted proprietary Wireless Application Protocol services.

You may not be aware that Japanese mobile phone users were accustomed to internet and email way before smartphones came along. This was achieved through some kind of hobbled sub-web designed to accomodate mobile pixel counts and dialpad interfaces.

First-time Tokyo, 2008, a guy on my train slipped out a slender, shiny flip-phone. Metallic and fine, long and slim with square corners. I bet his other pockets had a monogrammed cigarette case and lighter – the phone matching. He flipped it open and it was real long. He then twisted the screen 90 degrees and pulled up an aerial. He was watching TV. Not streaming; not a video file: watching an actual TV.

iPhone looked like a dud. No TV, and Japanese phoneweb was so ubiquitous, developed and embedded that internet-in-your-pocket was no revolution.

So it’s not utterly mad that Gundam Extreme Vs. clung for so long to the linklists and tiny images that were the Japanese mobile web.

Not utterly mad but a little bit mad: the first major version after Extreme Vs. was Full Boost in 2012. Which suggests that for a full 5 years post-iPhone, it was not possible to register for Gundam’s additional arcade features with a smartphone. Get out your flipper.

But why modernise with the world when you can do a decade no sweat, only growing the upper end of your demographic to loop in ex-schoolkid salaryboys?

At this point there’s a whole generation where Gundam is more relevant than the modern world anyway.