I’m sure that if it was more like Gurren Lagann, more people would share my love. As it stands, it’s hard to think of two mecha shows which have less in common – well, OK, it isn’t really THAT hard, but the point is really that they are just very different. Whilst one is all about crazy, psychotically paced, GAR-laced action, the other has an approach about as, errr, “deliberately paced” as possible. Then there is the fact that one of the shows levels up its mecha with GUTS and PASSION, whilst the other attempts it with, errr, stripping…

Of course, I should probably point out that most of my love for iMAS comes from the game – in the four months since I’ve gotten the 360 version, I’ve played quite a bit of the game. Even now, I still tend to play at least a couple of hours a week, if not a day like I have been in the last fortnight. Exactly why iMAS is so addictive is really hard to quantify – it’s not exactly a very in-depth game, but ultimately I guess that’s part of why I end up playing it so often. Basically, it’s a low effort game, something I can have a bit of fun with without getting too annoyed or involved. Essentially, it’s something I can play whilst lurking in IRC and still follow both the game and the conversation to a reasonable degree.

That’s not to say that I don’t try hard on iMAS – indeed, I’m pretty obsessive when it comes to improving my game. My most recent play through landed me at a pretty good 2.83 million fans – it’s still short of the 3.7 million currently topping the Total Rankings online, but it was good enough to place me in the top 15. Annoyingly, your group drops off as soon as you play online with another, so that particular unit has disappeared into nothingness now. Next time, however, I’m determined to break that 3 million line!

By the way, Ritsuko is probably my favourite iMAS character in all it’s iterations. She’s cute and has glasses, which I think is more than enough to quantify liking her. I think she’s probably the only character to have a breast-reduction during the jump to TV-anime as well ^^; Ritsuko is what you’d probably refer to a low-character character in the game – she has killer starting stats, but she leaks Tension quite rapidly, Tension being something of a performance-multiplier in game representing the relationship between the player and the character. Essentially, it means that you get a idol with awesome stats who is horrifically difficult to manage. Thankfully, she doesn’t lose Tension quite as rapidly as Iori or, god forbid, Chihaya – Chihaya loses Tension constantly, and only tends to regain it after the best of performances. There’s a reason why they made her the badguy in Xenoglossia ^^;

Being one of the few Western iMAS players is kind of fun. I mean, it’s not particularly notable or anything, especially given that most players online seem to avoid auditions against other players, and even then there isn’t really much direct interaction between players anyway. Still, I do occasionally get amusing text messages like the one above ^__^