It’s been about 9 months since I last did one of these as there just hasn’t been much in the way of motivation. In this installment, we have a Kawamori vanity project that was seen as one of the best shows of 2012 at least within the Anime Power Rankings blogging community. For everyone else, it sits at a fairly pedestrian 7.5 on MAL. What drew me into doing this series is first, the series is pretty well known for being incredibly nuts both in direction and in story, and second was the fact that this is a second season. I didn’t watch this because I still haven’t seen the original Aquarion series.
Now to the episode itself. It feels very much like a last episode of a mecha series as far as the story was concerned. That was a little disappointing as I was expecting it to try to carve out something new, but it felt like it was trying to be flashy while really being conformist. To use an analogy, I think of mecha anime as the serious business genre of anime, where the work environment is stuck in the 1950s where everyone wears suits and works long hours. Here comes Kawamori working his long hours wearing…a suit, but with sneakers (meanwhile harem anime staff dress like hipsters). This isn’t necessarily a criticism of him, he’s probably one of the few people who has a singular focus when making new anime. He’s all about making sure the audience has fun.
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy watching this episode, even though it was pretty obvious where it was going when I figured out what was happening. I mean, how could you not enjoy super robot attacks becoming ever more absurd as the minutes pass in this episode. I suppose the obvious shipping angle this episode seemed to present that had long since passed would be a disappointment if the relationships didn’t turn out the way one would have liked. I still think this episode was more about spectacle than anything else.
Now onto the part where I always fail in these posts; where I try to guess the plot based that lead up to this episode. As far as I can tell most of these characters are reincarnations of characters from 12,000 years previous when a terrible betrayal happened and there was much sadness. That led Toma, our villain of this piece, to try to get revenge by destroying humanity. That same incident also led to love being if not banned, at least frowned upon on Earth, but it didn’t stop the self-discovery teenagers of this series from going down that route anyway. Eventually Toma gets his means of revenge by using both Mikono and Zessica in different ways before this last episode where he discards the latter. I hope that’s somewhat close.
Now for the scores:
Character Development: B+ These are fully formed characters for the most part. The only issue I really had was Amata suddenly having the 12,000 year old romantic revelation at the conclusion which was needed for shipping completion I guess.
Plot Comprehension: A- There are really few surprises when it comes to understanding the plot. I think it’s pretty easy to understand once you’ve watched enough mecha series.
Unintentional Comedy: F I don’t think Kawamori is capable of doing unintentional comedy. Every little absurd thing about this episode was clearly intentional. While you may think that “Evol is Love backwards” was funny, it was designed to be cheesy.
Deus Ex Machina: No I may be jaded by super robot anime, but they almost all work out like this anyway. I didn’t really see much that was horribly contrived in the ending, though Zessica nearly being choked out by Kagura was pretty close.
Sequel Potential: Minimal I suppose there’s always the possibility they could prequel this to the same reincarnations only failing, but that’s not a sequel. This was a rather clean ending, fortunately.
Lower Mid-Table 