Sousei no Aquarion

Once upon a time, a race known as the Shadow Angels attacked Earth to harvest the life force of all those who inhabited the planet. Thanks to some outrageous miracle, the Shadow Angels went dormant, and humanity was able to live another 12,000 years without fearing their presence. But 11 years after a catastrophe dubbed the Holy Genesis brought ruin to the Earth, the Shadow Angels were stirred from their slumber and resumed the attacks once more.

To give humanity somewhat of a chance, an organization known as DEAVA was formed, and use of a robotic weapon named Aquarion has been authorized. In order for the Aquarion to be brought to full power, three pilots must combine their hearts, bodies, and souls into one—a feat few can hope to accomplish. Thus, the search for so-called 'Element Users' was prioritised, hoping to ensure humanity's future.

Sousei no Aquarion follows the story of Apollo, a near-feral young man brought up in poverty, who is believed to be a legendary hero reincarnated. After his best friend is taken by the Shadow Angels, Apollo chooses to become an Aquarion pilot. Will he be able to turn the tides of the war, and free humanity from the threat of the Shadow Angels for once and for all?

Apollo Main

Terashima, Takuma Japanese

de Alisia, Silvia Main

Kakazu, Yumi Japanese

de Alisia, Sirius Main

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Fudou, Gen Supporting

Ishizuka, Unshou Japanese

Toma Supporting

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Rune, Rena Supporting

Satou, Hiromi Japanese

Apollonius Supporting

Terashima, Takuma Japanese

Ko, Reika Supporting

Kobayashi, Sanae Japanese

Baron Supporting

Chiba, Susumu Japanese

Celiane Supporting

Kakazu, Yumi Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Harp, Clarine Producer

Kawamori, Shouji Director, Storyboard, Mechanical Design, Series Composition, Original Creator, Key Animation, Screenplay

Tonokatsu, Hideki Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Jan 26, 2025

SevensDran

Recommended

I love a good episodic monster of the week, and thank god Genesis of Aquarion is another one to add, and most importantly, is just very unique and cool form to it.

A story of ten thousand and two thousand years more

Watching the initial eps, it had a bit of an Avatar TLA feel to it, with the reincarnations and oh my god, that dude just bended air, that dude made fire, which makes sense as you get the sense that this series derives its inspiration from Hinduism and Buddhism as much as it does greek, like how the myth of the series goes and with ... names like Apollonius for the titular hero, and of course Apollo, our dog man main character and supposed reincarnation of Apollonius.

But Aquarion is not just one thing. The main characters are all a type of person called an Element with unique powers, however this isnt a super hero show, and with those powers they need to work together in one machine. And that's what makes this series so good.

Yes, Aquarion isn't one thing, the titular mecha is comprised of 3 planes, and so in order to form it and fight the Shadow Angels they must connect, both machines and as people. Any one of them falter, and the combination is a bust. And the characters react like they're about to bust when they combine, its kind of funny, yes sex is a form of connection isn't it. Aquarion has 3 forms, so the battle is always fresh with who's taking the lead. But of course you WANT Solar Aquarion, but who watches mecha to NOT see the main mech.

And so the show is about most of the cast trying to overcome themselves, and overcome challenges with each other led by one ridiculous and elusive leader Gen Fudo.

Almost every ep is some special form of training by Gen in order to fight off the Angels, an ep can go from fun to oh shit in a matter of seconds.

The OP and ED are certified classics. Its such a blessing that the op plays not once but usually TWICE an episode because our protagonists figure out how to beat the enemy with the OP playing in the background.

Aquarion should be more popular honestly, for me I was surpised how much I was enjoying the journey, save for like 2 eps in the middle of the show, there were like 2 episodic stories I didnt like. But the ending is great. What an experience.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 7, 2022

HidamariSeashore

Mixed Feelings

How would you feel if you could remember a past life? Would that past life have some kind of impact on your current life? Perhaps in a past life, I could have been more of a mecha fan than I am in this life. Even though I don’t consider myself to be a huge fan of mecha anime, I still happened to have a particular one on my to-watch list for years for rather stupid reasons; after finding a DVD of it at my local library, though, I finally got around to watching it. Now that I’m finished with it, though, exactly what do I ... think of it?

Merge one! Merge two! Go, my review of Aquarion! (Okay, that was terrible.)

Aquarion takes place 12,000 years after a war between the Earth and a race known as the Shadow Angels. The Shadow Angels went into slumber after the end of the war, but eleven years before the beginning of the series, a disaster brought the Shadow Angels back to Earth, with them resuming their feeding of humans’ life force. To combat this, an organization called DEAVA uses a mecha called Aquarion, which had been used 12,000 years prior and requires people with special powers called Elements to pilot three fighter planes called Vectors to combine them into Aquarion by “merging”. (A lot to take in, I know.) The series mainly follows Apollo, a boy who is believed to be the reincarnation of Apollonius, who played a large role in the war. He is recruited by DEAVA to become a pilot for Aquarion, and when his friends are taken by the Shadow Angels, he agrees.

It is difficult to explain what kind of story Aquarion is trying to tell, but exactly what kind of story it actually tells is even worse. A good portion of the anime’s 26 episodes contain filler that contribute absolutely nothing to the plot; filler episodes aren’t necessarily a bad thing if those filler episodes were entertaining to watch, but with Aquarion’s filler episodes, I would just groan out of frustration from how stupid they are. Fortunately, the series DOES try to tell a cohesive story, and I commend the attempts at telling that story. However, most of the plot twists are too predictable or just plain confusing; there were very few that I actually liked. Another thing that I must mention is the fact that it doesn’t try that hard to differentiate itself from other mecha anime; I have at least seen enough mecha anime to be watching this and thinking, “Yeah, that’s happened before.”

As for the characters, they’re honestly a bit of a mixed bag. All of the characters are cliché, but some of them are actually likable in spite of that. However, there is one issue that the characters share, and that is the amount of development. Most of the characters get one or two episodes of real development each, if any at all; after that, although those characters may get some time in the spotlight, any real development instead goes to Apollo, Silvia, and maybe Sirius. I must admit that it was kind of interesting to see the development of Apollo and Silvia’s relationship, but the other relationships in this series don’t get as much attention or development, which is a real shame.

The art and animation.... What can I really say about those? Well, the settings were decent, and some of the character designs were good. The CG animation wasn’t that good, but it may just be that this anime came out in 2005, when CG animation wasn’t the best. I really, REALLY want to praise the more 2D animation; Satelight and Production Reed have each done some decent animation, and in this series, some of the animation is actually good. The key word there is “some”; it may, again, just be the fact that this anime came out in 2005, but the animation quality is a bit inconsistent and falls at times. The biggest offender of this is episode 19; a majority of that episode was drawn in a different style altogether, and while I understand why the animators decided to go that route with that episode (although it did come off as rather jarring), the parts of the episode that returned to the normal style of this series were very poorly animated and came off as even more jarring.

One genuine praise I have for Aquarion, however, is the music. Both of the opening themes sound like they could be the opening themes for most other mecha anime, but they’re catchy enough to warrant a re-listen or two; the same goes for the ending theme, although that is more because of how completely beautiful it sounds, from the instrumentals to Yui Makino’s voice. The soundtrack is pretty good, too; the piano rendition of the first opening theme is absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous. Finally, I watched the English dub of Aquarion, and the voice acting is pretty good for its time. The characters’ voices fit their characters quite well (although Brian Palencia as Silvia takes a bit of getting used to, although that may just be my fault for not knowing she voiced her and dumbly expecting a different voice to come out of her mouth), and they convey their emotions quite well.

Overall, Aquarion is pretty much just your average mecha anime. No one is going to kill you if you don’t watch it, but hardcore mecha fans may get a kick out of it. There is more to the Aquarion anime than just these 26 episodes, however; I wonder how it evolves from here....

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Nov 2, 2018

jkalyana

Not Recommended

Its been a long time since I saw such a bad anime. Now the review I am writing is keeping in mind the time at which this was released.

The story is like a mish mash of NGE, RaXephon, mecha link etc. The art and the art detail are not that great. Sound is bad. This concept of souls merging when the robots merge gives a very. ahh how do I say in better words, I can't say, so its erotic and has an erotic sound with all characters screaming ahh, oohh, I have never felt this before etc. You get the point. It fails on ... multiple levels.

I have an image of the mecha merge to emphasize what I said, but unfortunately I couldn't find any way to add a picture :(

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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