A Mecha Hidden Gem
Ryosuke Takahashi is one of my favorite mecha creators. I discovered him through Blue Gender and Gasaraki a long, long time ago now. A time where I didn't even know as much of the mecha genre as I do now. My door to his work opened up when Armored Trooper Votoms first appeared on Hi-Dive and found out who he was. That is why I watched Dougram for last year's Mecha March and Blue Comet SPT Layzner before that. I love this guy's work because his vision is unique but so grounded that it feels so believable.
Flag was the hidden gem that I knew about, but never found a way to watch it. Mainly because of its nature because it is a limited series. If you look it up, it was originally broadcast on a pay per view web video on the Bandai Channel in Japan in 2006. This is also a rare at that time 13 episode mecha series from the time period where shows were two cours or longer. With that in mind, Flag feels so special. Like a blip in the mecha realm that is a complete story in such a small package. I'm glad that I found the english dub, which is very good, on YouTube one day.
The General Story of Flag
As a whole, Flag is a story that revolves around the capital of a fictional country in the middle east called Subasci, Uddiyana. It is a war torn nation in the middle of a civil war. But there is hope. One Japanese photographer named Saeko Shirasu took an iconic shot of the UN's flag with mother in the background which became iconic around the world. As in a way, it is the symbol of complete peace which the nation is currently trying to achieve. Of course one day the flag is stolen, so a special United Nations Forces unit SDC is formed to go after it.
As the famous photographer, Saeko Shirasu is asked if she wants to photograph SDC's day to day life from combat to everything else as they try to go after the flag. So there is that entire unit of a story from one operation to an in-between to another. At the same time, Shirasu's mentor Keiichi Akagi is the literal point of view from cameras to video of the situation in Subashi as well as showing the other press in the middle of it all. It is a very on the ground war series for this one flag. It's like taking Mr. Lertoff, who is in charge of the press in Dougram, and making a series out of a current, ongoing war from a journalism stand point. Honestly, it's brilliant.
Another Real Mecha Series
In my post on Dougram, I mentioned it being the realest mecha series that has ever existed. I still agree with that. Still, Flag takes place on Earth in the late 00's which puts it over the edge a bit. If anything, I feel like it is a much subtler Pluto situation because it is another Iraq war situation put into the world with different names and attempts at no connections to the US at all. Uddiyana is a fictional nation and the forces we see are not affiliated to one nation but the entire United Nations forces from countries across the world. So it steps over things that have issues.
There is also the fact that so much of the series is spent around the mechanics of the HAVWC mech systems. So many things are explored about it from how they are exoskeletons that connect to pilots. There is around the clock maintenance of these machines, we see them in battle, take damage, and then get repaired again. Even the mechanic mentioning how something needs to be flown in by Seattle on an express shipment was a huge detail that showed how grounded it can be.
If there is something that shows how much of a big detail it is, the show is shot through all sorts of camera footage. It is like a massive journalism aspect by Shirasu taking photos and video footage of people at their military base getting prepared for a mission and then seeing how they change after a massive defeat. The whole point of view is literally putting all sorts of camera footage from tactical screens to videos in a vlog to tell the story of the people of SDC and Subasci itself in the middle of a complicated war situation. This is the truth of what happened in Uddiyana before a questionable peace was formed and the UN tried to cover it all up.
Small Arcs and the Search For Humanity
I open this segment by saving how Saeko Shirasu has a very small arc in it. Walking in and out of the series, she is still the tomboy photographer that she started off with as. The difference is finding her love of photography. She did this by living and working alongside every single member of SDC as their journalist. Her cataloging these people and their journey wasn't for nothing, even if the UN thought it was convenient in the end, because we saw each of these people struggling to do the job they were assigned. She stayed up over 24 hours just like everyone else. Her seeing hope in people in difficult situations was where her love for photography came from.
Everyone in front of the camera showed their true selves. Not just some person in a uniform, but ones who struggled under machine maintenance and combat scenarios because they are people. Even the leadership let themselves lower themselves to Saeko's level on camera to show they are people under a ridiculous amount of pressure under the shortening time period of the UN peace meeting for the two sides at war in Uddiyana. The other side of the show with Keiichi journaling the press working together attempting to understand the war in Subasci and how the war was affecting the people was a huge deal too. It really showed how Saeko was in her little box while the reality was something deeper and more sinister. It is a show about humanizing a situation that the UN just wrote off in the end which is the true tragedy of it.
Conclusive Thoughts
I love the visual style of this anime because it feels so unique. As I mentioned earlier, this isn't a traditionally animated show. It's one that captures the human experience in a journalist vlog format. From camera views of all kinds from single point and shoot cameras to tactical war cameras to really big film cameras. So each scene transition is from one camera device to another. But it really does create a shortcut in animating it because it's a lot still with a filter over it, but each shot captures humanity from so many perspectives. The art style is very realistic to capture the worldwide nature of the conflict from people all over the world, the city and SDC base feel so lived in, and the battles are so amazingly realistic.
Usually this is a very hyperbolic thing to say, but FLAG is amazing. It is a huge, underrated classic that I think everyone should see. You are never going to see something like this ever again. That isn't hyperbole because there are shows that do something similar, like I mentioned from one character in Dougram earlier, but never something like the FLAG. This is a real robot series in all of its essence because it is showing a real, shooting war from the perspective of not a pilot but a journalist discovering her love of photography from her new discovery of her love of humanity itself. Absolutely solid series, I couldn't recommend it enough to everyone.
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