>From: "Kirt Dankmyer" <xiombarg@...>
>
>(all
>three of which were combined into a single American series known as
>Robotech), as well as Space Battleship Yamato, which was released in
>the US as Star Blazers.

What about Battle of the Planets (AKA G-Force AKA Gatchaman)? :-)

So...I'm thinking about this, and there's something about anime that nobody
has ever touched in a RPG, that I think Unsung maybe could tackle. That is,
there's this set of rules in Anime about escalation. Things always start at
a personal level, and then get larger and larger. Till, ultimately, the
ultimate weapon has to be unleashed. This rarely ever makes sense to the
plot. Instead it's something ineffably Japanese that I only understand
second-hand.

For instance, why don't they just go to Firey Pheonix form in G-Force right
off the bat? Why don't they always just fire the Yamato's spinal weapon? Why
don't they always just form Voltron? And why, then, not immediately FORM
BLAZING SWORD? (In fact the whole Sentai tradition seems to almost be based
solely around this particular convention - power rangers have to start with
martial arts, then they can escalate to ranger form, then they can pull
melee weapons, then they can pull ranged weapons, then they can pull
super-ranged weapons, then they can pull group super-ranged weapons - and
all the while they can always leap forward to the Zord escalation track if
and only if the opponent goes giant).

It's because of the kewlness factor of these things, and the absolute
dramatic requirement in the show for the team to have overcome their own
personal problems before being able to come to the cataclysmic conclusion
that these "laws" exist.

So I'm looking at Unsung, and I'm thinking that somehow the Gift mechanics
can be leveraged to mechanically deal with these conventions. Any chance
you've done some work of that sort?

Mike