Friday, July 1, 2011

Walter Walther Walzack and Serious Walther Walzack

In The Brave of Gold Goldran, perhaps the silliest Brave series (albeit the one with the coolest-looking lead mecha, Goldran), there's a completely inexplicable nation called Walzack whose royal family members act as the primary recurring antagonists. (Wikipedia actually remarks "There is no information on the origin or location of Walzack in the series.")

The first of these characters is perhaps the best character from the series, "Walter Zack" Walter, or more properly Walter Walzack. (I like to call him Walter Walther, for obvious reasons.)

Walter Walther's life is, despite his wealth and power, a long series of events that make him react something like this.

This particular face, by the way, is his reaction to his own fiance trying to kiss him. Yes, he's that much of a man-child. (He was apparently raised by his butler, Colonel Sangross [who is apparently a joke on Colonel Sanders-yes, really], and other servants, who as his employees apparently weren't very good at bringing up children.)

Apparently, aside from being Royal Prince of Walzack, Walter Walther is also his nation's ambassador to Japan (!) and also a world-famous movie director (!?!). Despite being first in line to his nation's throne, having what would be a cushy job for any other person, and also having another job that could probably make him all the money he could ever want, he's decided to embark on the highly expensive and arduous task of being a villain in a mecha series. (Fortunately for him, apparently his country developed really good escape pods, because they only failed to save him once that I've seen, and that time he wasn't injured because of the rule of funny-he actually swam away through the air instead. Also, to be fair, his family believed that if they could get all the MacGuffins [which naturally are the Pokeballs artifacts that contain the ultra-powerful Brave robots], they could rule the world, so...)

A big chunk of his troubles comes from the fact that he's trying to defeat super robots with relatively more ordinary mecha, but his solutions are often hilarious, such as using concrete to keep a mecha that magically rises out of the ground when called (even on other planets) from joining the battle, or using wheeled feet to retreat from a finisher attack with limited range. Eventually, he realizes that he's terrible at this, and so he eventually changes sides and allies himself with the strongest Brave robot from this series, Captain Shark (who is not only a robot that transforms into a spaceship that looks like a shark, but is also a pirate). After that, he tends to have a much higher success rate, and also dresses as Captain Harlock.

Then there's Serious/Sirius Walther Walzack, who as the name implies is a much more effective villain.

Serious kind of upsets me, because the character is drawn as a pretty person in an animation style that makes everyone look pretty much the same (kids and adults are nearly indistinguishable from each other), has a sexy voice actress, gorgeous long hair... and is a twelve-year-old boy.

You can imagine that, as I am an adult straight male, this kind of mixed signal is rather, well...

It makes me want to do a Walter Walther face, I guess I could say.

Honestly, I thought Serious was pretty cool when I thought he was an adult woman. (The character was apparently raised by robots, and is very, well, serious, and nearly emotionless. A female character like that can be interesting; it's certainly rarer to see someone like that in anime.) Now, I can't look at him for very long without pulling an Ackbar.

-Signing off.

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