>... and the other one is called
>Upotte!!. I can
>summarize this no better than the wikipedians already did:
>
>"The series takes place at a school known as Seishou Academy. Unlike
>an average school, all the students are actually anthropomorphized
>guns, training to one day become a useful weapon."
>
>That... what? Really, what? I think I have to track this down.

Wow.

I just... wow.

OK, this show is weird, but I have to say, there is some Grade A firearms nerdery involved in it. As the Wikipedia page implies, the girls have traits and personality quirks that are based on tongue-in-cheek personifications of qualities the firearms they're based on possess. The girl who is a Steyr AUG (which has interchangeable barrels) has two personalities, one timid almost to the point of paralysis and the other almost uncontrollably rash. The German guns are fantastically precise and accurate, but a bit cold and hard to like. M14 is loud and obnoxious but sturdily reliable and weirdly lovable. And so on. There is an entire story arc based on the facts that: the M16 was a bit crap when first introduced, but has seen much incremental improvement; and the L85 is fragile junk, but inspires a curious loyalty.

Unlike many niche products I enjoy, I can totally see why this show is not better-known and only ran for 10 episodes, but damn. For such a completely demented concept, Upotte!! is bizarrely endearing, at least if you're enough of a military firearms geek to get the jokes. (If you aren't, there's a lot of helpful exposition, but it would probably still be pretty tedious. Explained jokes just aren't jokes any more.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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