Reideen Episode 1 - The Legend Reborn
The original Yuusha Reideen is the series that “inspired” RahXephon; Rah actively pilfered its piloting mechanics, Mu civilisation and bow weaponry from Reideen. As RahXephon is one of the best shows, well, ever, this made me very curious to see this remake from Production IG.
The story, as much as there really is in this episode, follows Junki Saiga, a normal highschool student who dreams of giant robots battling (like out of a manga! Snore). His father was an eminent archaeologist who went missing in mysterious circumstances ten years ago, but his family gets a call that his father has been found dead in some ruins at Kurokami Mountain (aka The Black God Mountain), a mysterious pyramid-shaped… mountain.
Upon arrival, they meet a prettyboy archaeologist who claims to have known Junki’s father and Junki wanders into the ruins to discover a mysterious message reading “The Great Reideen”. He blacks out and dreams of the badly animated mecha again before waking up to be given a big gold bracelet found near him. At this point, the evil shiny mecha from his dreams appears and attacks, causing a dam to burst; as Junki is swept away, he shouts “Reideen, fade in!”, gets naked, and pilots the mecha to an impasse with the evil thing attacking him - just like out of a manga!
Snore, again.
It’s not just that Reideen is unoriginal in its execution. It’s also just not that great, really. The 2D animation is good, the character designs appealingly non-stylised, and the music fits really well. Unfortunately, these can’t make up for the dreadful slow motion CG mecha fights and leaden pacing and script; virtually nothing really happens in this episode, and none of the characters are at all interesting. Big whoop about the shiny golden bracelet and the mecha; Junki is just plain dull.
I’ll watch the second episode to see if there’s an awesome OP (I like Tomiko Van) but I can’t say I’m particularly excited about Reideen any more, which is a pity really.
January 31st, 2007 at 11:53 pm
You know, when I watched the trailer, I laughed like there was no tomorrow. The animation tries to look cool but it fail miserably, I think. They try to make this show realistic, which, I see no point in doing so. If you think old-school mecha where a pilot fight with passion and scream out his attacks is silly and doesn’t sell nowadays, then go and make a new anime, why even bother do a remake? No, should we even call this a REMAKE? Where’s my Akira!? And OMG, that’s Reideen!? nooooo
February 9th, 2007 at 9:18 am
[…] (having watched the first episode of 2007 REIDEEN raw), I didn’t find it as bad as BluWacky did. To be entirely honest I simply adored the character designs because they were excellent and […]
February 9th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
i thought rahxephon was inspired by NGE or something…
March 11th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Well, I expected it to be unoriginal, since it is a remake afterall. They’re just going to rehash the original story anyway.