Hello guys, Wolvenciel here with another mech anime review and this time its a super robot series called Aquarion. Before anything, I did say "series" but I will only be doing Genesis of Aquarion and Aquarion Evol (As Logos has not yet ended and I do not plan on reviewing that). And again. Please. Hardcore Aquarion fans... Stop reading now and go somewhere else. I'll be splitting the review into two parts. One for Genesis and another for Evol.
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| I can't seem to find a better picture for Genesis... |
First and foremost let me say that this is all solely my opinion. My point of view. Don't kill me for this (assuming that there are still hardcore fans reading). Don't take my word as law. Just advice. To those who haven't watched this yet. DON'T. I can't quite grasp the reason as to why this anime was SO critically acclaimed as a good, must-watch super robot anime (in the comment boxes that is).
Continuity
The anime as a whole lacks continuity in the sense that each episode was more like a filler rather than something that affects the story itself (except for, say the first few episodes and the two last episodes only). It felt more like the daily lives of the Aquarion pilots rather than about... well... everything else. There were also a lot of huge gaping plot holes in the anime that makes you wonder when they'll actually explain it to you and you wait twenty long episodes to find out they decided not to.
I know they may have planned on revealing some of the plot twists in Evol but at least explain about the origins of stuff. The story lacks any background and base except that TWELVE THOUSAND YEARS AGO some idiot angel betrayed his friends because he fell in love with a human girl and decided to help humans fight his former friends instead. How did he fall in love? Why did he change his mind? AND the most important question of all time. WHERE DID THE AQUARION COME FROM?
Forced Romance
See that picture above? Cheesy right? Well the anime isn't. Too bad, chumps. The characters in the anime themselves lack any sort of emotional interactions with one another (I don't think they even interact that much) especially the main characters which are Apollo and Silvia. The first few episodes they decided to fight with each other (and hating each other in the process) and after twenty long episodes of doing absolutely nothing, they decided that they had always felt love in their hearts for each other (mind you this is occured at episode 24~). Yeah right. The romance is anything but natural. It feels forced as hell. It made me hate the anime more than I ever wanted to.
PuniPuniPara Art Level (You can ignore this part if you want)
A while back, I watched Shirobako (an anime on anime producing) and I saw how some animes can go from bad to catastrophic. I HAVE A VERY STRONG FEELING THAT GENESIS IS ONE OF THEM. One of the studio directors in Shirobako made this anime called Puni Puni Paradise (I'm not sure, go check the anime yourselves) in the past and due to production problems they had to cut corners in the art processes and storyboarding to catch up to the show's deadlines. The result is an anime of grotesque art of hellish proportions (imagine moe girls turning into fat aunts wearing skirts).
I noticed the art quality degrading bit by bit in Genesis and at first I brushed it off, saying that it may be because they hired some other artists outside of their company to help them with the process or something. That was until I came to episode 19. Mischief without Malice. The anime's plot suggested that it "purposely made the art for the episode look grotesque as to portray that they're under the spell of some fallen angel's prank" but for the love of Jesus Yamato you should see for yourself how ugly it was. I really think that this episode was their way of getting them to actually finishing all the latter episodes with at least a passing quality. I mean... its... its too horryfying that it may have taken them a quarter of their usual time to actually finish this one episode.
Repetitive Soundtrack
A lot of people on the net says that it is Shoji Kawamori's style to put names in the moves of the robots and I do respect him for that. It gives super robots that overwhelming feel to them. A sense of greatness, if I may say so. However, that does not make it okay to just repeat two damn songs every time the the Aquarion pulls of its Final Attack. Both songs are the ones you actually hear during the opening (if you count in the half-english version then there's three) so it really gets to you. I mean... some people actually just skips the opening song. Now you actually put the same song EVERY SINGLE TIME the guy pulls off his final attack? Come on man. Just a different soundtrack would be fine. You don't even need a song for it.
Enter Fudo Zen
As the name suggests, this guy is pretty much a walking philosophical quote google. He's actually the one redeeming factor that I had taken quite a liking to as I watched this slice of life anime. He says cheesy stuff that are sometimes very useful for you watchers to actually listen to and some other awkwardly cringy stuff that just makes you want to laugh. He's also very calm even when in a pinch and never loses his cool no matter what stands in front of him. It gets pretty boring later on BUT STILL he's a lot better than all of the Aquarion pilots combined.
To Be Continued
I... don't want to write anything more on this one because I'd do more harm than good to both myself and this anime. Just... please... Don't watch this. If you're not into super robots, don't. If you do, I'll still say you have been warned. The next post will be about Evol. A bit more colorful by the looks of it. You'll have to wait until next time chaps. See ya.
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