Let Panzer World Galient show you how to prepare a proper artillery barrage:

This is a level of realism that I haven’t seen before in any mecha anime. The way in which these artillery panzers deploy their support pylons before firing to guard against recoil for example, giving a good idea of the heft and weight of them even if they seemingly fire bolts of light. Or how we see them correct their range and angle by first moving the missile pod they’re firing with and then correcting their mecha’s position, all using mechanisms that a real artillery piece could’ve used. That we see them firing ranging shots and have them corrected by an artillery observer actually using a stereoscopic rangefinder. A level of (correct) detail that lends verisimilitude to a scene with shows giant robots launching bolts of light from their shoulder pads, bolts that only explode a second after they land.

The irony is that Panzer World Galient is a super robot show at heart. The titular Galient is an ancient mecha, an Iron Giant that will manifests whenever evil rules over the world, to cleanse it again. Once it’s discovered in the second episode, it’s piloted by the twelve year old Jojo, the only son of the slain king of Volder, a country conquered by the evil Mardoul on the same day Jojo was born. A faithful retainer escaped the palace with the baby and trained him to fight while searching the world for Galient. Now it’s been recovered Galient and Jojo are the only hope for the world of Arst to be free. Arst being one of those medievaloid worlds with inexplicable pockets of high-tech littering it science fiction is fond of. Mardoul’s goons use blasters while their opponents use swords and spears. Mardoul has artillery mecha, the rebels have to use catapults and other ancient siege weaponry. Only Galient and JojJo are able to fight on an equal footing. If that isn’t a super robot setup I don’t know what is.

But there’s a grittiness to it that I haven’t found in other such shows like Giant Gorg, which came out the same year, 1984. Mardoul may use more advanced technology than the good guys have at their disposal, but the way his army uses it is still rooted in Medieval thinking. Those blasters are shaped like halberds and used as melee weapons as often as they are as rifles. They have artillery mecha but no APCs: their infantry either walks or has to ride some sort of giant lizard thing. Their cavalry mecha are giant centaurs using jousting lances as their main weapon (though they do have a laser mounted in their stomach too). You get the feeling these people only barely understand what they’re using. And this is partially explained in episode 5 when it’s revealed that their mecha aren’t build, they’re excavated from the ruins of a previous civilisation. In general, there’s an utility and logic to how these mecha are used that’s missing with e.g. Doctor Hell’s mechanical monsters in Mazinger Z. Each has a function and is used like such. Nobody just goes on a rampage, there’s always a reason they fight the way they do.

Ten episodes in so far and I love this series. Like Giant Gorge, which I watched before this, this is a kids’ show from the same era as a G. I. Joe, but it’s much more honest about the cost of battle. People die when they are killed, even people who pilot cool robots. A super robot show with a real robot mentality.

This is what fansubs used to look like:

This is what we lost once fansubbers stopped subbing shows and started to just rip them directly from Crunchyroll. Just look at the artistry in having English subtitles, romaji karaoke titles and the actual kanji on screen simultaneously, without it feeling crowded. That’s what I want to see in my openings and endings. (I’m not sure which group did this, but it was properly the now defunct Eclipse).

Sadly though these days none of the legal streamers, with the limited exception of Hi-Dive, bother to create subtitles so the pirate rips don’t have them either. And even Hi-Dive only provides either the karaoke or the English subtitle track, switching from episode to episode. The rare times anybody else does bother what you get is just the English translation. No karaoke track, let alone having the actual Japanese text on screen.

I see the same thing with the few pirate groups still bothering to do everything themselves, rescuing old, never before translated into English releases. I love and admire them but they too mostly stick to just providing the translation of an opening or ending, nothing more. The proper subtitling and typesetting of anime songs therefore looks to be a lost art.

UPDATE: I got a bit of pushback on this post when I tweeted it on Bluesky, with Daiz gently chastising me for confusing fansubbers with rippers:

You’re mixing up rippers and fansubbers. Fansubbers were still doing typesetting et al even if they were sourcing translations from official streams. The reason why EN fansubbing declined is mainly because the pirate watchers over time stopped waiting for fansubs when direct rips always came first.

And true, annoyed as I am at not having the OPS and EDs properly subbed, I still want to see the shows I follow when they come out, if only because then I can talk about them on Bluesky or here without risking spoilers. The only recent series I did have the patience to wait for subtitles was Medalist, where the experience is so much better compared to the commercial subbing. Similar for the Blue Archive anime of a few years back, where the commercial subs lacked all flavour so I got fansubs instead when I finished up watching it.

Apart from Daiz, two active fansubbers, Mary and LightArrowsEXE, also responded, taking me to task for believing there are no groups working on new titles anymore, with the latter delivering an impressive list of recent fansub projects:

To name just a hand-full of fansubs from this year:
– Fate/strange Fake (Kaleido)
– Frieren 2 (9volt)
– Jigokuraku 2 (Vodes)
– Princession (WakuWan)
– Bookworm 4 (GJM)
– Last Boss (WrathMonth)
– Kamiina Botan (sgt)
– Koori no Jouheki (Washed)

There are many fansubs out there still kicking, my guy!

LightArrowsEXE also mentioned the Fansub database which attempts to catalog (recent) fansub projects, sorted by anime season. While this isn’t as up to date as you might like and lacks non-English fansubs as LightArrowsEXE mentions, it still looks like a good start in finding fansubbers for newer releases. So if you’re not afraid to sail the seven seas, this is a good home port…

Let’s go back to the relative golden age that was 2013 and look at how good a terrible anime could look:

Yes, Walkure Romanze is a series about girls doing jousting. Based on an erotic visual novel, it’s very much “the only boy in magic school” harem series, as the protagonist is Mizuno Takahiro, who wants to become a squire (or begeleiter as the show’s jargon has it). He has a Tragic Past and a childhood friend mIO who believes in him; she’s the one winning the duel in the clip above. This being a harem show there are of course other girls, like Bertile, the girl who ends up being lifted out of her saddle above. She’s the haughty ojo-sama type. There’s also Cecilia, the student council president, the tomboyish Noel, the obligatory lesbianesque Akane with the hots for Cecila, etc. etc.

This is not a good series, let’s be clear. Everything you’d dread to see when hearing “based on an eroge visual novel” is sadly present. In episode two our protagonist gets into lucky pervert situations multiple times, gets slapped for it equally as often and a lot of background girls get their skirts flipped or entirely taken off by Mio running amok trying to handle a jousting pole. Worse is the dumb innuendo. Oh Mio is going to handle a jousting pole for the first time? Let’s dim the lights, cue the sexy saxophone and let her describe it as it’s a penis. What japery!

What struck me though watching episode two (and don’t ask me why I did) is the relative care and attention that went into its production. A bog standard harem show this might be, mostly forgotten once it finished airing, but the animators and other staff seemingly did their best to make it look as good as they were able to. The character designs are decent, the jousting scenes are handled well in a blend of traditional and CG animation and it all feels a little bit better than it needed to be. If i compare it to the endless drudgery of narou inspired fantasy anime of the best five years it’s a masterpiece.