In the summer of 2009, I was about to begin college, specifically art school, living away from my family for the first time in an apartment with two upperclassmen. (The art school I attended was too small for its own dorms.) Before the semester began and after I settled into the apartment, I had more time than I knew what to do with. I owned Gundam Wing and G Gundam on DVD so I decided to rewatch them. As a kid, I was aware how vast the Gundam franchise was and lamented how little I could watch of it. Now as an young adult living in the age of digital fansubs and torrents, I could access the numerous other titles. Reading up on other series, I found a lot of people online praising three series in particular: Gundam X, Victory Gundam, and Turn A Gundam. I had minimal knowledge of X and Turn A already: I had MP3s of X’s two openings that I enjoyed along with the music from G and Wing, and I’d seen some artwork from Turn A so I was aware of it being the “weird” Gundam in terms of setting and aesthetics. I don’t remember why exactly I chose to watch it as soon I finished rewatching Wing, but Turn A would be my third-ever Gundam series and it would change my life forever.
Going into it, I had next to no expectations other than it being unusual, and Yoko Kanno being responsible for its soundtrack. I didn’t even know an artist I already liked, Syd Mead, was involved until sometime later. I had yet to watch any Universal Century titles either, so I committed the grave sin of watching the “distant finale” of Gundam before watching everything that was produced before it. But anyway, the first several episodes were mesmerizing. I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but I still enjoyed an anime atmosphere that was so drastically different than anything I’d seen before. Visually, everyone stood out to me, but in terms of personality and behavior the character that truly piqued my interest at that point was the series’ resident masked man, Harry Ord.
Throughout my life I’ve had a penchant for masked or sunglasses-wearing male characters. This included Schwarz from G Gundam, but I didn’t even think to make the connection between him, Zechs from Wing, and Harry until reading online banter about “Charclones.” The masked man, who is often a mentor, antihero, long-lost brother, or all of the above, is a trope that extends beyond Gundam. So my perception of Harry was not informed by having already watched the original Mobile Suit Gundam and its sequel, Zeta Gundam, and knowing who Char Aznable, aka Quattro Bajeena, was. My initial impression of Harry based on the first 7 or so episodes was that despite being the queen’s bodyguard he had his own agenda and was going to betray her and the Moonrace in some way later in the series. I could tell this just from the fact that he’s always wearing sunglasses, and acts very calm and collected but has a lot of passion boiling beneath his usual demeanor. It turned out I wasn’t completely wrong, though his development was even more interesting and endearing than I anticipated. It was his intriguing aura and the fact he’d be full of surprises that attracted me so profoundly as I watched Turn A throughout my first semester of art school.
I had a really slow internet connection at my apartment, and I was drowning in coursework, so I only got to watch a couple episodes a week. Turn A is a series that shouldn’t be binged in one’s first viewing of it anyway, so watching it at a slower pace allowed me to become more deeply invested in its world and in Harry. Watching him protect Dianna, who was really Kihel in disguise after episode 10, from multiple assassination attempts, and effortlessly flooring the main character Loran (despite Loran piloting the most powerful mobile suit ever!), kept me on the edge of my seat. What really blew my mind was episode 22, when Harry goes undercover to retrieve the real Dianna and the audience could see his eyes for the first time, albeit behind a different pair of sunglasses. I wasn’t even phased by the ridiculous outfit he’s sporting in the episode because I was so transfixed on his eyes and his build, which was covered a little less by his more causal clothing. Not only is this guy a cool, slightly mysterious and highly skilled pilot, he’s also hot. I was already having trouble focusing on all my assignments, and now I was constantly daydreaming about a new fictional crush. My infatuation would only intensify as the series progressed, especially after episode 27, when we get to see him in a tank top. (It’s been 15 years and I still get a bit flustered by that whopping minute or two of “fanservice!”)
Now halfway through Turn A Gundam, I wanted to try and find other Gundam fans. At school, there were a couple, but they had no interest in Turn A, so all we could do was make jokes about Wing since I’d yet to watch any of the UC series. So I had to gush over the Moonrace dreamboat all on my own, at least offline. Online, I found anyone who liked Turn A tended to also hold Harry in high regard. Finding more discussion and artwork of him, Kihel and Dianna fueled my excitement to finish the show and see what happens to them. The semester was just about over when I reached the episode when the cast goes up to space, so I binged the remaining 15 or so episodes over winter break (since I was home and had faster internet!). Watching Kihel and Harry’s romance blossom, and learning more about Dianna’s sad circumstances, as they all faced even bigger dangers on the Moon served as an escape from my own pain of having failed a class for the first time in my life. This was the beginning of a very rocky part of my life as many of my mental health problems that my family and I thought were solved in high school were in fact becoming worse and interfering with my goal of becoming a professional illustrator. Nonetheless, I was determined to do better once my break was over. I now had a massive surge of inspiration for my art after I finished watching Turn A and was about to dive headfirst into the rest of Gundam. Harry, Kihel and Dianna were now my muses.
Another reason I became so attached to Harry (and remain attached to this day) was that he subverted my expectations (yes, I know, how cliché). He ended up having his own agenda and betraying certain Moonrace factions after all, but it was for a selfless cause: Dianna, and by extension Kihel. What could have been a bitter rivalry between him and Loran instead developed into a alliance built upon respect, and the mutual goal of helping Dianna carry out her mission of a peaceful unification of the Earth and Moon. His feelings for Kihel was another thing that burrowed itself deep into my mind as they weren’t obvious and it is still unclear how exactly he feels about the permanent switch at the end. But after my first viewing of the show, I was just so happy he and Kihel more or less ended up together and neither of them died. As far as I was concerned Harry was the Moon’s first king, Moonrace traditions be damned! That said, my perception of Turn A would mature considerably as I rewatched it multiple times throughout the following decade. At this point in time though, I was too excited to think more critically about this beautiful anime and its wonderous characters. I even began envisioning what a sequel would be like. To me, Loran and Dianna’s story ended with Turn A, but Harry and Kihel’s was just beginning. I wanted to see more of the Moon. I wanted to see Harry again.
Harry, and Turn A as a whole, were also refreshingly different from many of my previous favorite characters and their media of origin. I spent most of my teens hyperfixating on Siegfried/Nightmare of Soulcalibur fame, a very angsty character suffering from PTSD and delusions who was forced to isolate himself to atone for mass-murder until he received the opportunity to redeem himself (with mystical talking swords!). Not long before I got back into Gundam I was obsessed with Metal Gear Solid, with my favorite being Raiden—another traumatized, mentally unstable man coping with a lifetime of warfare and deception. The same year I first saw Turn A, the Watchmen movie came out and I was head over heels for it and the original graphic novel (and an extremely problematic character we won’t talk about in the year of our lord 2024…). Turn A is already a vast departure from usual Gundam fare, and it was the light that I didn’t know I needed in my life after consuming a lot of dark media. It provided me a new knight-like figure to rely upon that was free from painful baggage.
Life got worse as I tried to progress through college. The desire to escape reality grew stronger. I was also very alone despite trying to make friends at school and at conventions. Eventually, I suffered an artist’s block and completing drawings became more difficult than ever. I turned to other creative outlets like cosplay and karaoke, which is largely why I tried to attend at least one anime convention a year. Turn A slowly became more popular in the West as more people watched the fansubs and a few new gunpla were released (such as the MG Turn A and Turn X), but it was still hard to make friends with these other fans because I was so unstable, especially after dropping out of art school and moving back in with my parents. I also got the impression that people only liked Harry ironically, thinking he was just a meme, and I was the only one who genuinely loved him. I began feeling bitter towards Loran and even Dianna and Sochie because I got so sick of only seeing fanart of them, of people only talking about them and neglecting the rest of the cast. But in reality, I was displacing all the stress and trauma I was dealing with throughout the early 2010’s into trivial things like fandom. I took on cosplay projects that were too difficult and stressed me out beyond necessary because it felt like that part of my life was the only thing I could control, and I felt similarly about the otherwise microscopic Turn A fandom. At this point I rewatched the show at least 3 or 4 times, and did a lot of research, mostly looking up stuff on Japanese websites regarding Harry and attempting to machine translate it all. I may have been a failure at life, but I was on my way to becoming an expert on all things Harry Ord.
In my quest to cosplay Harry, I spent years studying and attempting to replicate Akiman’s designs to little avail. Most of my twenties were spent in semi-poverty while I lived with my parents, unable to get and keep a job due to both the aftereffects of 2008 recession and my psychiatric issues having escalated into a disability, and trying to use the cheapest materials I could get while teaching myself how to sew, fabricate and style with no guidance beyond online tutorials. Harry’s glasses would prove to be the most impossible feat as to this day I have not made a pair that fits my head correctly and doesn’t obstruct my vision. On the other hand, cosplaying Harry and most of his wardrobe throughout the past decade taught me how to draft patterns all on my own along with some advanced garment making techniques.
In addition to cosplay and gathering trivia, I also spent a lot of time thinking about my sequel idea and sketching concepts for it. Of course, Harry and Kihel are at the center of my ideas, but early on I knew they could not be the main characters. I conceived numerous characters that would be the main cast, while Turn A‘s characters, now older, would play supporting roles. While my sequel initially sprung from my daydreaming of the Moon’s new royal family, it soon grew into an expansion upon Moonrace culture and history, as I was deeply fascinated with both despite the show only providing brief glimpses into them. What I found in my trivia research ended up serving as huge inspiration for my concepts as well: ideas from the two novelizations regarding mobile suits not shown in the TV series. While these novels have yet to be fully translated in English, some of their major themes are still understood: Harutoshi Fukui’s darker take based on Director Tomino’s early drafts for the series, and Shigeru Satou’s more romantic take that confirms Harry and Kihel to be a couple–including having a child together. (whoops, spoilers?) This child (as an adult) would be the secondary protagonist to my sequel story, with a character totally unrelated to the existing cast serving as the actual protagonist, and the two would solve the mystery of what led to the decline of the Moonrace’s ruling class once mass-emigration to Earth was permitted.
A major part of my Turn A trivia-gathering ended up being learning the mostly scrapped lore for Harry. I certainly didn’t want to write a story about his future without knowing as much as possible from the official material. Problem is, the definition of official or canon became quite muddled (and I’m now learning that Victory has the same problem) the more I dug up on Harry specifically. Even his age (18?!) is treated as some kind of in-universe secret and joke. Much of it isn’t vital to understanding his character as it’s presented in the anime but it adds a bit of context to his behavior, especially in the latter half of the show.
Back to reality, my search for Harry’s background eventually led me to the prequel manga penned by character designer Akiman, Tsuki no Kaze (or Wind of the Moon). I excitedly found scans of the Taiwan-Chinese edition in 2012 to see this manga features what is supposed to be a 14-year-old Harry on an undercover mission to thwart assassins from Queen Dianna. That same year, I had the fortune to import a few more Turn A goods which included the tankoubon edition of Wind of the Moon. I slowly began scanning it and posting excerpts of it in the sad little corner of the internet I dwelled in at the time in hopes one day someone would take interest in translating it to English.
My dream would come true in 2015. At this point in my life, I was between spaces. Offline, I was about to finally finish college after six grueling years of having to withdraw and retake classes while having multiple mental health crises. Online, I was severely disappointed by the two sites where I spent most of my free time, searching for friends or at least others I could chat about Turn A and share my cosplay with. However, I managed to make a friend on one of these sites after we shared photos of our Turn A collections at the time. This friend was the aspiring Turn A scholar Feez. We ended up finding each other on Twitter later that summer and soon enough Moonlight Scanlations was born for me to provide scans and image editing of supplementary Turn A material.
With WotM being translated and access to so much more production material, I finally felt validated in my love for an obscure anime and it’s weird-looking not-quite-rival character that most people reduced to memes.
2015 was also an extremely important year for Gundam in North America. After Bandai Entertainment dissolved in 2012, there was no American licensor and distributor for Gundam except for Bandai Visual (and their ridiculously priced Unicorn releases). Sunrise finally granted Right Stuf/Nozomi Entertainment the rights to the entire animated catalog of the franchise. One of Right Stuf’s first Gundam “rescues” was Turn A. Easily the highlight of an otherwise miserable year for me.
Meanwhile, I was slowly emerging from my artists’ block. Throughout the year I regained the ability to draw again after that part of my brain had been suppressed by trauma and medications I shouldn’t have been prescribed. I also slowly worked up the courage to post my art online again after nearly five years. In the spring of 2016, I decided to go by a name I coined1 when I thought of a word to best describe the Moonlight Butterfly attack that ended the Dark History: “Nanopocalypse.”
I would also gain more appreciation for characters other than Harry and Kihel, now having rewatched the show multiple times. My bitterness towards Loran, Dianna, and Sochie was quickly dissipating now that I was hanging out in less hostile spaces online. I had a tenuous view towards the character of Poe Aijee, but after barely scraping by in the first several years of my adulthood, I embraced her more and more as I came to terms with my own inadequacies and “quirks.” I even toyed with the idea of shipping Poe with Harry, but he and Kihel were inseparable in my mind and it felt wrong for him to cheat on his (new) queen with a “lesser” woman (or anyone for that matter). Before taking on the handle Nanopocalypse, I named myself after the neurotic lady soldier for a brief period of time online.
Another activity I took up in my free time besides cosplay and illustration was finally watching the rest of Director Tomino’s filmography outside of Gundam. Doing so reinforced my love of Turn A not because Tomino’s other shows are of a lower quality (well, a few are…) but because I recognized many of the ideas in Turn A are present throughout his work of 90s, 80s and even 70s, further proving Turn A may in fact be his greatest work. After toiling for decades, he could finally tell the story he wanted and many of the themes and concepts he explored in the past all culminate in his 1999 work. It is more than “For All Gundam” and is perhaps “For All Tomino” too. Nonetheless, it was actually watching Gundam Reconguista in G while it aired in 2014-15 that was the catalyst to becoming a devoted Tomino fan after enjoying most of his Gundam works, along with Space Runaway Ideon blowing my mind when I first viewed it in 2013.
It is also around this time I fully realized how controversial Tomino is among Western anime fans. I knew Turn A (and Reconguista in G, Victory Gundam, Gundam ZZ, Brain Powerd, etc) were all loathed at some point or another for mostly superficial reasons. I didn’t fully grasp the accusations of misogyny and other problematic attitudes towards the creator because in my mind, how could a man who hates women create a female empowering show like Turn A? This was also something I wanted to pursue in my “Tomino Quest” of the later 2010s: the truth behind the moody, eccentric old man behind the shows I love so much. And little would I know how much of Feez’s research into the production of Turn A would end up shining a massive light on so many of the rumors and misconceptions of Tomino himself.
At this point I had been sewing and styling wigs for six years, so I became more ambitious with my costuming. As I mentioned before, cosplaying Harry taught me a great deal about drafting unusual sewing patterns. I pondered if I could pull off cosplaying Kihel Heim. Having always been an awkward tomboy with angular features, I found it easier to cosplay as male characters than female ones. Kihel (and Dianna’s) massive hair and much more elaborate costumes were also intimidating as someone with little money and only so much skill. However, doing tons of research via tutorials and studying what other cosplayers of this character did to achieve her look motivated me to take the leap. Around the time I was working on Harry’s pajamas from episode 45, I decided that the outfit Kihel wears in the latter third of the show would be the least stressful to make.
While I debuted Kihel at Philadelphia’s cherry blossom festival in 2017, it was Otakon of the same year where I got to make two exciting encounters while wearing this costume. First, I got to meet Feez in person for the first time. Later, without realizing he had worked on Turn A, I was asked for a photo with Sunrise producer Hideyuki Tomioka by his representative. Twice, in fact, as I also wore Harry’s pajamas on the final day of the same con.
Back home, life would become even more tumultuous. My degree was completely useless with zero connections to any other graphic designers, so I was forced to work a minimum wage retail job so I could start paying off my loan for art school. My father’s alcoholism and narcissism reached new lows. I still had nowhere to go to seek respite from constant verbal abuse and emotional manipulation other than one or two conventions a year. I got fed up with the abuse I faced at work as well and quit after two years once I was enrolled in vocational rehabilitation services to find a better job. By 2018, Gundam & Tomino, my arts & crafts, and my cat were all I had. I had no other family besides my mother and younger sister, who were also trapped in this dysfunctional household. With this, I realized why I was so attached to Harry: he was my protector when no one in my life was capable and willing to be. Through all the darkness of feeling worthless, powerless, and unloved under the thumb of my father’s rage, I could see a shining figure beckoning me back to the Moon again and again.
Because I endured the final years of living with my abuser, continuing to use anime to cope, fortune would begin to favor me soon enough…
- Apparently “Nanopocalypse” is also the name of a scenario for a tabletop game. I wasn’t aware of this until sometime after picking the name. No, I don’t play any tabletop games! ↩︎