Simoun Episode 1 - Fallen Wings
OP - Utusukushikereba Sore de Ii (Chiaki Ishikawa) - wow, Chiaki obviously took notes while she was in SeeSaw! The chorus is kickass, and the rest of the song isn’t bad. I don’t really like the OP sequence, though; too little of it is synched properly to the animation, so it looks a bit odd. I’m hoping it’s only temporary because there are a few shots which come from the episode, but I don’t hold out much hope.
ED - Inori no Uta (savage genius) - not one of their best songs, but still pretty good, and a CG-tastic ending; spin, Simoun, spin!
A hidden ancient kingdom called Helikal Mortris (I think, according to the official website) relies on the power of Simouns, gyroscopic flying machines, to protect it against invaders; these are piloted by Simoun Sibylla, young girls especially chosen for the duty, pairs, and the Simouns are powered by the relationship between the girls, i.e. they have to snog to make them work.
We mostly focus in on Nebril, a pink-haired rather stoic Sibylla, and her co-pilot Amulia, who is a bit obsessed with getting stronger and is obviously deeply in love with Nebril, as well as the other members of Tempest Core, the platoon they’re part of. The Sibylla make their way to combat an invading force to discover the previous Simouns have all been destroyed (save one, to whom they grant a mercy killing); the magnitude of the invaders is far greater than they had realised, and one of their powerful Ri Masion attacks (whereby they draw magical sigils in the air with their Simouns) is not enough to wipe them all out, and they lose one of the Simoun outright.
In desperation, Nebril and Amulia create the sigil for one of the most powerful Ri Masion attacks, the Sapphire Ri Masion, which acts as a black hole to suck in their enemies; however, they come face to face with one of the attackers (who have somehow managed to create ships without Ri Masion) and Nebril’s concentration is thrown, sending the Sapphire Ri Masion out of control; while it destroys all their enemies, it also damages the Simoun and kills Amulia.
On their return, Nebril holes herself up in her room and refuses to come out; later, it is discovered she is missing, and has apparently gone to a place known as the Fountain; in Helikal Mortris, everyone is born a girl and their gender is determined by diving into the Fountain and picking when you reach the age of 17, although Sibylla are exempt from this as only girls can pilot the Simoun and they get to choose when they want to give up. The Sibylla end up with three new recruits to replace those who are dead; two young girls and the Pacifica Casull-lookalike who will be our main character, Aael, who immediately zooms off to find Nebril and waffles about wanting to fight. You so know she’s going to have a horrible crisis of faith when she sees the effects of war in a few episodes time…
What a pleasant surprise! True, I shouldn’t jump to conclusions that yuri=stupid/boring, but it’s generally a rule I can follow fairly successfully. However, the first episode of Simoun turned out to be pretty engaging, and the lesbianism isn’t the whole hook of the show; the world design is brilliant (I LOVE what they’ve done with the Simouns themselves, the whole Ri Masion thing is awesome) and I think there could be some interesting political plotting going on.
The background art is a bit sketchy but well-designed; it’s like Erementar Gerad with imagination, really. Music-wise, it’s all sweeping strings and epic stuff like that; I like it a lot, but it’s not overly innovative or anything. The character designs are growing on me, although the loli one with blue hair looks really podgy for some reason…
So, yeah, I actually quite like Simoun based on the first episode, and am looking forward to the next episode; the blessing of the Monday night TV Tokyo timeslot is upon this show!
April 4th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Watched it. My guess is the main character will be able to do the reimaging technique with the training gyrocopter, but yes, will see the horrors of war soon.