Rites of Spring – Chapter 8, Act 2, Strip 89

Okay, so this is no longer completely analogous to what was going on in the case of 8-Megadork-8. Still roughly analogous, but no longer completely. >_>

As in the case of 8-Megadork-8, Tetsujin’s abdominal cavity (or whatever you’d call that when you’re talking about a robot) concealed a giant weapon…and not much else of all of the many different structures and parts logic would require it to contain, by the way. But that’s where similarities end, for the weapon in question is not some giant ray-gun…but instead of that, an old-fashioned cannon* firing, via spring-operation, a giant boxing glove with blades attached. ._.

Quirky. But then, I guess the twins have been displaying something of a quirky sense of fashion all along. Apparently, that extends to weaponry choices for their giant mecha. Commendable in terms of consistency, perhaps…but probably only in those terms.
Although you can’t fault the weapon for its effectiveness – which appears to be higher than the effectiveness displayed by 8-Megadork-8’s otherwise far more impressive weapon. The amount of damage it deals to its target is not nearly as high as the amount of damage which that gun dealt to poor (ex-)planet(oid) Pluto…but the glove-gun dealt that damage to its actual target, not some innocent planetoid just passing by in the (quite considerable distance).

So this is definitely a point for the twins, and both 8-Megadork-8 as well as Mopey seem to acknowledge that with their facial expressions…

More on Monday.

* Normally I would have said bronze cannon, but it looks too golden for that, in harmony with the rest of the robot. Gilded bronze, perhaps? Gold is not as unsuitable a material for a cannon as Toblerone chocolate, but it comes close…

10 Replies to “Rites of Spring – Chapter 8, Act 2, Strip 89”

  1. Okay, but a spring loses momentum the further out it goes, so this is more of an annoyance than anything, I should say…

  2. I noticed Tetsujin suddenly goes from the air to the ground and 8-Megadork-8 suddenly goes from the bottom of some body of water (doesn’t this all take place in an onsen?) to in the air.
    If I were to take a guess, I’d say it’s because Nolan realized too late the shots taken for Tetsujin’s attack requires 8-Megadork-8 to be above it and tried to cover up the mistake with convenient green screen background transitions.

    1. That’s a possible explanation. Another one would be that the scriptwriter copied a part of the description of the fight scene from some earlier fight, and just was too lazy to fix the continuity. And since there’s nobody at any later stage in the production who gives a damn about continuity, it made it into the finished product. And the third explanation would be that there was a shot of 8-Megadork-8 emerging from the ocean in the script, but it was cut because the SFX were too expensive…or just went wrong during shooting. A slight miscalculation of the forces involved, and 8-Megadork-8 might have slowly floated to the surface like a dead fish…or shot right into the studio ceiling…

      1. I’m going to say it’s the last explanation, it was the “shot right into the studio ceiling” outcome, and Lee was the only one inside at the time of shooting.

        1. Yeah, it’s kinda canon that Snuka is the one inside of all the rubbersuits the production uses, no matter whether kaiju or mecha. Which is often hard for him, especially when he has to depict two kaiju or mecha fighting each other, at the same time. XD

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