So ends one of the more enjoyable series of the year for me. I'm not a big fan of robot shows. A quick scan of my List indicates only a handful of them: Eureka 7, Kannaduki no Miko, Infinite Stratos, Eva, Rinne no Lagrange; so it isn't a genre I line up to watch.
But, this show has been entertaining if a little haphazard. It seemed to go through maybe three phases, beginning with the historical introduction to the horrors of the Beta, the current battle against the Beta, and the more important maneuvering amongst the allies.
Good stuff: OP1 is great and works very well for this type of show. It's moody, it pulses, it throbs, it cranks up the heartrate for the show, which was often pretty good at maintaining tension. Of course, some of the digressions, such as the marketing trip to the Caribbean didn't fit too well with the general tenor of the show or take advantage of the OP's charms. But I'm often playing the song in my head, long after the show is over.
Some great character designs, augmented of course, by the compression suits, or whatever the heck they are. Some interesting minor characters, like Sandek, who is well suited for his role in such a political hotbed, or Dahl. Some good performances that worked for the roles that the show's creators seemed to want. Bremer wasn't part of the harem so she played a different role, and supplied a lot of the situational exposition that the messed up situations continually required. This felt a little strange to me after becoming infatuated with the seiyuu's Irisviel earlier in the year. But Takemura was definitely part of the harem and played the role well. I hope her seiyuu gets some nominations for best seiyuu of the year as in addition to this role, she voiced Watashi in Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, that wonderful, messy show from the summer. Cryska was also good as the cool and moody half of the space cadet duo. I liked Inia but too often her part was just to call out 'Yuuya' at irregular intervals. And cheers to Cryska's sickle and hammer bikini and what was the best swimsuit of the year, and maybe the best outfit of any sort, Takemura's UN blue and white one piece.
Bridges was good as the clueless, angry, decent male lead although sometimes his obliviousness around Takemura was facepalm-worthy. Manandal and Yi Fei both irritated me early on but I guess warmed to them as they became less abrasive. The show's humour was also pretty good, the hot springs episode stands out for me with the guys' response to Inia wanting to be with Bridges, and Yi Fei's as well. And given that everyone seemed to be a lieutenant, it was fun that two of them had names that rhymed. I laughed when I saw that Yi Fei's name was 'Cui' and wondered if they were going to call her Cui Chui, and of course, Takemura did.
The show was regularly able to build up some serious tension. Basically every minute of the first two episodes, or during Bridges' interrogation, it cranked it up. And often, it would deliver a great pay-off, as it did spectacularly when Bridges fired the big gun.
Weak stuff: Second OP was a huge fall-off. While not inherently bad, it didn't fit into this show for me. While watching the last few episodes, I played OP1 while OP2 was muted. The show was perhaps too ruthless in how it dismissed events that it had spent a fair amount of effort developing. On a grand scale, while you can sort of say that the first two episodes were just setting the table, or a flashback, or something of that sort, eventually the Beta became second-class invaders from space and were pretty much forgotten until other events allowed them to inconveniently get in the way.
The giant robots looked too similar. Other than the type zero, it always took me too much time to identify which TSF was which. Sometimes, the exchange was over before I was able to. Typical for most robot shows, the battle logic was a bit silly. I got bored after a while at how often they used timely fuel or ammunition shortages to make decisions and drive the plot. Sometimes you gotta look the other way. Sometimes, the characters were too stupid for words. As with characters descending basement stairs in the dark in horror movies, it wore me out when Bridges and Takemura sat about chatting casually while the Beta were on the warpath a few hundred yards away and they needed to do something with their high-tech hardware. The Beta were more robotic than the robots. The continual use of the same footage and sound effects (felt the same) caused me to downgrade the importance of the Beta in the world they were in.
But overall, I enjoyed this a lot, and looked forward to it each week. Hopefully another good show will take its place on Sundays. |