Zegapain Episode 2 - Cerebrum
The OP is much better than the made-up ED from last week’s episode; much more of the CG dissolving and stuff. It’s awesome.
ED - Little Goodbye (Rocky Chack) - very Hisaaki Hogari-esque, and the ED actually has lots of animation! Me likey.
It’s Celeblum according to the Engrish, but come ON, Cerebrum is an actual WORD…
Shizuno disappears post kiss, and Ryouko can’t find any information on her as being in any of the other year groups; time is going screwy around Kyou anyway, though, as he finishes tests with plenty of time to spare and people keep vanishing around him; plus we get portentous clock shots all the time. It’s RahXephon Lite!
Kyou goes to burn off some steam by swimming, but his “friends”, led by Kawaguchi, decide to beat him up for all his weirdness about Shizuno; they used to be best friends, but Kyou’s single-minded dedication to swimming has broken up their friendship group in recent years. Angrily, Kyou lies in the pool and calls out to Shizuno, who is in the midsts of monitoring a battle between Zegapain Garuda (piloted by Lucien, the Paku Romi-voiced silver haired bishounen, and Mei Yen, the Chinese girl) and the Deuterans (bad guys) so doesn’t exactly do much about it… well, she pops up again while Kyou’s in the shower (why she’s naked as well I have no idea) and transports him to the Oceanus base (home of the good guys, led by the student council president and vice-president). A bunch of technobabble later and Zegapain Altair is teleported out into the battlefield; Kyou is amazing in that he can beat the Deuterans with his bare hands, yadda yadda yadda, the enemy is defeated. It’s a decent battle, but it goes on for ages, and the only plot-worthy thing about is that Shizuno is a bit cryptic about her connection to Kyou before they phase out.
Shizuno does a dive and gets filmed by Ryouko; the student council have modified everyone’s memories so they now know exactly who she is, much to Kyou’s annoyance; the president dodges Kyou’s questions, however, and we are left with Ryouko filming Shizuno and noticing that her eyes linger a little too much on Kyou as time starts to move freely…
Hmmm. Ryouko gets much more screen time (and I mean MUCH more) than Shizuno in the OP, but she’s barely in this episode at all; admittedly she’s got very little to do with the main story at the moment, but I hope we see more of her even if she is the stereotypical Childhood Friend character.
Otherwise, I can’t say there’s an awful lot to say about this episode; it probably established the status quo for the filler episodes to follow, but I don’t feel that there’s anything especially significant to really talk about. Production wise the show’s still stellar, and I really enjoy the atmosphere the writing gives out when it’s not dealing with flashy mecha battles; the school scenes aren’t particularly juvenile and none of the characters are over-the-top exaggerations, and it’s a much more mature series than you sometimes get in TV Tokyo dinner time timeslots.
So while there’s nothing especially memorable to recommend Zegapain for at this stage, it’s still enjoyable, and that’s what counts.
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