"Isami, I love you!"

-

(The signatures are supposed to be a joke in the sense that both Isami and Bravern hand wrote their own signatures, except that Isami's looks handwritten, meanwhile Braverns looks like a font because he can write VERY precise 😂😭)

I finally finished this drawing!

What is with this guy and waterboarding people??

Don't think I've seen someone post the full set of Death Drives references, so here they are!

Superbia's fine, Actually.

Watching Bang Bravern feels like the show runners’ homage to sex. Those big words “bang,” “explode,” “bravery,” “harder,” and death as sell-fulfillment. La petite mort. Two men. Giant robots. The bravery to explode. And literally being inside each other. Heh.

Suspicious mind.

isami please, youre scaring the hoes

Death Drives - Bravern

Just realised you could take the flashy name of the 'Death Drives' and take them literally as being 'death drives'. As in going through a spiritual death or literal by being anything like the antagonists. They are embodiments of self destruction. That the world has to fight with.

HUGE BANG BRAVE BANG BRAVERN SPOILERS (Hopefully I put the read more thing on right, i still don't 100% know how to use tumblr)

So I just sat and binged watched this entire show, I have NEED to just talk about it because it's just so good.

Ok i went into this calling it the gay robot show bc i had seen so many people talk about it like that (they’re not wrong) but it was so much more than just a silly little mecha show. I totally called the save in ep1 where braven appeared. Like once the huge attack started i said “oh the main character is gonna get hurt and about to be killed and the giant robot is gonna appear and save him” and i was totally right. Then in ep2 (i think) when superbia showed up, i really just thought “oh cool this guy looks sick, sucks that he's gonna die and never appear again” BUT I WAS THANKFULLY WRONG. Up until smith's death, i was totally under the impression that smith would be the one to bond with superbia, like i was thinking “oh this deathdrive is gonna attack smith and almost kill him then superbia is gonna show up and save him parallel to braven and isami” but i was caught SO off guard by the plot twist. I was analyzing the break animation and thought “oh both smith and isami are (nakey) that means smith is gonna pilot a bot,” but NO, i'm so glad it ended up being that braven is future smith. Which huge credit to the writers for putting foreshadowing FROM THE BEGINNING. Like they pulled it off so well. A proper reveal HAS to be foreshadowed, and having bravens FIRST convo with isami mention how he already knows isami’s name is perfect. AND how when braven encountered superbia, HE KNEW HIS NAME. BECAUSE HE'S SMITH. AND BEFORE FUTURE SMITH DIED HE KNEW SUPERBIA. It genuinely surprised me. And even once it was revealed that smith WAS braven i literally lost my mind. I did not expect it, but it makes so much sense. Then once it was revealed that lulu was from the future, i actually started to care about her character. Before that reveal i really hated her, like she was just straight up annoying, but after future lulu arrived she became a WAY better character. Especially with the “flashbacks” (if you can really call them that since they’re a future from an alternate universe) of lulu and superbia having an adorable familial relationship.

AND this was foreshadowed too. THE STUPID LITTLE GAGAPI THING LULU SAYS? THAT'S THE DEATH DRIVE LANGUAGE. LULU IMMEDIATELY LIKING SMITH? BECAUSE SHE KNEW IT WAS BRAVEN. While I do love braven and isami, something about superbia just scratches my brain. I kinda just saw him and decided “yeah this dude's my favorite.” I doubt the show will have a s2 because of the ending, but I'd love a short series about the future lulu came from and how things went down there. I want to know more about a future where superbia became the remaining hero, and I NEED to just see how it would play out. I love the parallels between superbia and braven too, like visually, where superbia does the same pose as braven after he destroys the tower.

Even though the episodes were only about 25 minutes long in length, the show felt long, and the episodes didn’t feel disconnected from each other. I never felt like the transition from episode to episode was unnatural, and the pacing was mostly good. I understand that as the show went on and braven/isami became stronger, it was easier and easier to defeat the death drives, but there was some disconnect from how long the Pessimism/whatever the other guy's name was fight versus how long the Ira fight was. And yes, it did feel longer because it kept cutting to smith, but the double death drive fight felt so easy? Like they did not seem to pose as much of a problem as superbia but the fight took forever. The ending did feel a little rushed, and would have benefitted from a longer season or runtime, but what we got was good. Before this, i've never really seen a show of this type (a gundam/mech pilot show) i really only watched it because the TF accounts I follow were talking about it, so maybe it's a common thing in these type of shows for the characters to basically go super saiyan, but it felt weird. WHY DID THEY BECOME GOLD??? They could’ve just gotten brighter colors. Speaking of the ending, I love that lulu had no idea about vita purely because in her future, superbia never died, which yes i know that was intentional, but its just cool to me. This show makes me want to watch more of this genre, even though the rep might not be present in a lot of the older shows.

I feel like I was the only one kind of disappointed with The Reveal and The Thing that happened after.

HUGEASS SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

Yes, I know the "Bravern is Smith" theory was basically foreshadowed to hell and back but I still think it's kind of a lame twist.

I would've liked it more if Bravern was wholly his own character. His quirks and his strange way of expressing his love for Isami being the result of him being a literal alien robot who is unfamiliar with humans and human relationships is just infinitely more interesting than the whole "secret fusion of Smith and a horny robot" thing.

A huge part of what drew me into the show was the unconventional and rocky but still genuinely sweet developing romance between Isami and Bravern. I wanted these two to come to a point where they truly understood one another, Isami defeating his internalized homophobia and Bravern learning to let Isami come to him instead of always being forceful. To see them figure out how a relationship like theirs could even work.

But nah, easy way out: Bravern is just Smith from the future and he also dies so we can have an uncomplicated human relationship between Smith and Isami instead.

Neat. /s

robot fuckers unite!!!!

Bravern episode 11 moodboard

i fucking love this show

i wanted this to happen in the finale

This series has elements of a love story that if they pull their cards right with Smith being reborn we are seeing their subverted version of “I’ve crossed oceans of time (and space ) to find you.” A Shakespearean or gothic sort of narrative with horny super robots peppered with sexual undertones.

Isami’s piercing anguish calling Smith’s name.

Four episodes to go, I hope we’ll find answers along the way. Tomorrow they will hold the second part of creative and technical staff’s q&a.