April 05, 2005
Sousei no Aquarion Episode 1 - Memories of an Angel
No OP and ED yet (I don't think, the ED has no music credit so I don't think it's permanent).
Genesis Year 11, after a great disaster of some kind. The Earth is under attack from "Fallen Angels", who use their hypnotic powers to harvest and control human beings. The only line of defense are the "Element Candidates", youths with special powers and a shield against this hypnosis. They work in groups of three, piloting Vector Machines which are able to combine to form an "Aquarion", a giant robot. After a mysterious prophecy that the "Wings of the Sun", the hero of Atlantis, has awakened in a town of ice, two of the Elements, Silvia and Pierre, check this out, and discover the feral Apollo, who scavenges on the streets. When the town is attacked by the Fallen Angels, however, his true colours are revealed in the nick of time, and together with Silvia and her older brother Sirius they fight back against the invading Fallen Angel. However, Silvia and Apollo appear to have some kind of special connection, and the Fallen Angels are aware of his existence...
Prior to going in to Aquarion, I'd already heard that it was absolutely terrible. However, since this was without doubt the one show I was looking forward to the most this season, and I am a huge Kawamori fanboy, I still was willing to give it a chance. While I fear it hasn't lived up to my (ludicrous) expectations, I certainly wouldn't say it was awful, although it has its share of flaws.
Basically, Aquarion is INCREDIBLY cliched. It really is just like every other mecha show imaginable, with lame cheesey attack names being called out all the time, an annoyingly cocky (yet amazingly talented) lead character, teenage pilots only suitable because of their "purity of heart, body and spirit" (*retch*), a cookie-cutter cast (Silvia has a crush on her brother, there's a goth loli vampire psychic, etc. etc.) and fairly standard angst and comedy.
Yet for some reason, these don't annoy me as much as they ought to. The animation is simply incredible throughout (it must be going to drop in quality from here, though), the music is pretty decent (unsurprisingly, and we haven't really heard the OP or ED yet!), and...well, I'm an absolute sucker for psychic powers, anything with angels and funky mecha combat. I may well change my tune upon seeing a subbed version of the show, I'm assuming the dialogue is pretty dire, but as it stands while Aquarion looks to offer absolutely nothing new as yet, the production values are strong enough that I can hope things will improve - the villainous Fallen Angels look promising, and I hope a decent plot will ensue somewhere along the line. Besides, I stuck through Fafner where most faltered from the cliches, and I was definitely well rewarded for the effort there. We'll see how it goes.
Let's see...... robots, angsty teens, angels and weird psychic people..... Looks like someone animated one of those crap fictionpress stories.
This show doesn't deserve to have such good animation.
Posted by: Iris at April 6, 2005 08:16 AMI honestly was laughing throughout the whole episode because it was such a cliche show... but anyway, while you can see the general plot like 5 billion miles away, I actually thought Zero's story wasn't too bad and ARjuna's had some good parts to it... so MAYBE there's a sliver of hope that the show might have some good bits...
I think it's only got such good animation because somehow everybody loves Shoji Kawamori. Reading the comments on the staff site it's as if half of em were bowled over by his sexayness and that's why they decided to do such a worthless show...
And you HAVE heard teh OP, by the way - it was that insert song during the incredibly silly Holy Trinity Gets Together and Fights (Kimochii!) bit.
Posted by: wao at April 6, 2005 09:08 AMHmmm, cliched, sure, but I thought the execution was well above average all round, and it has that consistant, well designed look most Kawamori shows have. It'll be interesting to see how episode 2 pans out, anyway.
Posted by: DiGiKerot at April 7, 2005 06:28 PMmmm... i must say o write that i watched the first ep and i really like it. I know it have many (MANY) cliche elements, BUT, I find that it have an outstanding animation, really developed, just like macross zero, though zero was an ova and ovas have another production level in japanese standards.
Besides, i found out something different in this animation, comparing it to evangelion or rah xephon, which are also about mechas and "strange stuff drama". Evangelion and rah-xephon and "others" always start with "the school boy in his normal life", many episodes go by and the storyline develops very slowly.
Therefore, when you watch rah xephon you might finish with a lot of doubts about what was the story really about. This kind of animation find its maximum expresion in evangelion where everyone understands something different at the end.
Well, about aquarion, its evident that since the beginning the plot is set, there are secrets in the story but the storyline is fast, sometimes too fast.
Posted by: nehelek at April 21, 2005 06:20 AMnice job. i'm planning to come back here in the future. so without further delays: http://burchkid.blogspot.com/2005/09/fool-for-love-robert-altman-1985.html , through others who went there
Posted by: samuel adams at September 16, 2005 12:22 AM