Gundams (Giant Robots) Battle It Out In Edmonton

Wow.  Gundams battle it out in Edmonton, the capital city of the Pacific spanning nation state of Arbrau.  The news is out thanks to Nopybot.com (who does an awesome job of nailing locations from the episode in real life), and then the Metro newspaper, followed by the Edmonton Journal, and even Forbes magazine.  All in a 24 hour period.  I'm a big Gundam fan myself, and have gone to Tokyo to see the life-sized 1:1 scale Gundam at the Diver City mall, but I'm pretty stoked about this myself.  I'm also working on my second original mecha novel too as you can tell from the other posts on this site.

The original Gundam RX-78-1 in Tokyo taken on my last trip to Tokyo in 2015.

• My first trip to the Giant Gundam in Tokyo at my Tokyoexcess blog.
• All about Gundam at my Tokyoexcess blog.

Who knew so many people would write about a medium sized city like Edmonton having Gundam battles.  I woke up on Thursday morning thinking the news in the Metro newspaper was pretty cool, and then realized that my blog post on this same topic would be coming kind of late to the party.

The battle in Edmonton happens in episode 24 of Gundam, Iron Blooded Orphans, which is also set over 300 years in the future after the Calamity Wars.  You can stream the show on Crunchyroll or Daisuki.net.  Here, Tekkaden, a child-warrior mercenary company, is escorting the former prime minister of Arbrau to an election being held in the capital.  Obviously they're going to have opposition.

Hints about Edmonton being in the show were being dropped in episode 22 and I really wondered how much of the city I'm living in would appear in the show.  Based on Nopy's blog, it looks like plenty of Edmonton is going to show up, so I'm happy about that.  Anime series often use real world locales and plenty of mecha fans will now see Edmonton looking real good before robots smash up parts of it.  On a side note, the first Gundam pilot Amuro Ray was also a Canadian!

The Associated Engineering Building on the left on the corner of 109 St and Jasper Avenue.  Just shot this yesterday.

Another view of the corner where the Gundams duke it out.  I work on this block so it is a pretty cool coincidence.

Iron Blooded Orphans was one of those Gundam shows that I wasn't too sure about at the beginning as it was about child warriors.  This concept isn't new to Gundam as many Gundam heroes have been teens, but this show took the concept further in having some mercenary organizations exploiting orphans on Mars and in space.  Anyhow, the kids revolt and take over the company.  They then meet Martian Princess Kudelia Aina Bernstein who needs their help to get to Earth to negotiate with the Earth power blocks for a better future for Mars.  They meet space pirates, interplanetary cartels, and make some arch-enemies on their journey to Earth.  They finally cut a deal with the former prime minister of Arbrau who needs their help to get back into power, which is where our story ends.

Despite the doubts at the beginning, the story telling was pretty top notch in this series with many great characters, interesting plot developments (like how Kudelia's legend grows), tragic back stories, and you really got to know the kids.  I'm looking forward to see the episode on Sunday March 27th.

One last thing.  Why would Edmonton be the capital of Arbrau?  Edmonton is only the capital for the province of Alberta.  I would take a guess that the Calamity War must have been pretty devastating and a smaller city like Edmonton would have survived where larger cities were nuked or destroyed in massive battles.  Or someone on the production team at Sunrise visited Edmonton in the summer and thought it was a pretty nice place to live!

Was the Arbrau Parliament modeled on this old federal building in the city?

Edmonton City Hall.

The river valley from an light rail transit train (LRT) going over the North Saskatchewan. 

Also, if you are train otaku, the historical rail society here has a collection of antique working street trams, including one from Japan.

This tram was from Melbourne.

The trams still run across the High Level Bridge in the summer.

Here are some posts about Edmonton that I have previously written if you want to know a bit more about the most northerly large city in Canada.

• http://tokyoexcess.blogspot.ca/2014/06/a-tokyo-excess-guide-to-edmonton-canada.html
• http://peterlok.blogspot.ca/2014/10/using-tokyo-as-future-model-for-edmonton.html

The Common For Downtown Dining Week

I managed to get out once for Downtown Dining Week awhile ago and had dinner at The Common on 109 St, a couple of blocks south of Jasper Avenue.  They had a pretty good looking menu and I wanted to see if their "hipster" vibe lived up to the hype you read in some of the reviews.

When we arrived, there was not seating so we had a couple of beers at the bar while waiting for a table.  The atmosphere was nice.  Casual, the decor was nice, and you could tell the restaurant was full of the after work crowd at 6 PM still.  Everyone seemed to be having a good time and soon enough, our table was ready.

We had a booth at the back of the restaurant and a big white chandelier hanging there which I hit on the way out of the restaurant with my head.  It was pretty funky, but I needed to ducky.  We both chose a mushroom risotto to start, followed by the steak frittes, and a dessert of poached pear and lemon pound cake.  The risotto was nice and creamy with plenty of mushroom flavour, and the rice wasn't crunchy so it was a really good start to our meal.  The main course of steak frittes was a  crusted Quebec veal tenderloain with an arugula salad and some nice skinny fries.  The veal was nicely done at a juicy medium rare, and dipped into the bernaise sauce if you wanted for a nice creamy hit on top of that, and it went really well with the crispy fries.  Finally, there was the dessert of poached pear and lemon pound cake with a creme anglais.  This was a tasty dessert with many textures and sweetness.  The only thing you had to look out for were the decorative (and harmless) strands of baby corn husk which sure looked like white chocolate shavings in the dim light.

Risotto

Steak Frittes

Poached Pear and Lemon Pound Cake

All in all, this was a great dining experience and I'd go back there again!