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May 15, 2020
The 80s saw a large number of OVA releases, many of which fell into two general categories. Some were passion projects by directors and animators eager to create something, and others were made to serve more as promotional material for another product. Ariel is an OVA that falls into the latter category.
I'll be honest, the only reason I came across this OVA was because of the recently released Moderoid kit of the titular robot. It's also worth mentioning that this is based on a 20-volume long series of light novels, of which a grand total of 0 volumes have been translated to English. The
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OVA tosses you into a story that's already in progress with some narration to tell you what happened beforehand. The OVA is pretty much just flat out telling you "wanna actually get the full story of what happened before, and see where these characters go from here? Find out in the novel!"
It's due to this format that the story kinda stutters and doesn't really show off much. The attempts at comedy aren't all that great, I had a chuckle or two but most of the time it fell flat. There's a lot of setups and possible scenarios they could've done with the premise of an alien corporation coming to attack Earth, but because of the length, nothing really gets fleshed out enough, although you get the feeling that some of those untouched threads are more teasing for things that the source covers more.
There are some positive elements though. The art style is nice and a pleasure to look at even when the animation isn't always the most solid. Ariel herself looks great in the few combat sequences she gets during the OVA, with some awesome close-up shots. Overall, looking at the OVA for what it is (an ad for the novels), it does a pretty good job at that because now I’m interested in knowing more of the hijinks these characters get up to. But as a standalone work, it sadly falls flat, leaving you wanting more when there isn't much you can get if you don't know Japanese. I’ll definitely check out the second OVA at some point, but I honestly would prefer if the novels were more accessible, as it seems that’s where the meat of this franchise truly lies.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jul 1, 2019
Egao no Daika is pretty falsely advertised, and I mean that in a good way. From the key visual, the first episode, and the OP, I'd thought that this would be a series with a hopeful, albeit somber tone, telling the story of two girls from opposing nations learning to put aside their differences to end a war with the power of friendship and all that goodness.
What ensues is instead is a show with a consistently bleak and dismal outlook on war and it's consequences. There are no grand heroic actions, no hero in a super prototype to swoop in and mow down hordes of
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enemies in the name of plot convenience. This is a show about two girls on opposite sides of a war, going through their own separate journeys.
Egao no Daika (which I'll refer to as EnD from here on) is a show that somehow completely went under my radar when it aired in the Winter 2019 season. I try to keep an eye on every mecha anime that comes out, as it's such a rare genre to see nowadays, aside from your occasional new Gundam installment. EnD was the only new Mecha of it's season, yet somehow I completely missed it, and ended up picking it up out of curiosity during that weeklong break between the Spring and Summer 2019 seasons.
Now not only is there a lack of mecha anime coming out nowadays, most of it simply isn't all that great. I recently watched a few shows from this past decade, including Knights & Magic, Eureka Seven AO, Heavy Object, and Macross Delta, and the majority of them didn't give me any real reaction other than "yeah this might be kinda cool in Super Robot Wars." The first episode of EnD led me to believe that this would be another one of such animes.
I was wrong.
Our two main characters are Yuki and Stella, the former of which is the young princess of a kingdom, and the latter a regular soldier in the opposing empire. In the first episode we're introduced to Yuki, who is young, naive, and hopeful. As the series progresses, she becomes more hardened as she comes to grips with the reality of war. On the other side we have Stella, a soldier traumatized by her past, who unsettlingly wears a smile almost all the time.
Both characters aren’t exactly the most original archetypes, but the show does a good job of making the viewer empathize with them, and understand their hardships. It’s genuinely heartbreaking and disturbing to watch as Yuki’s hopeful outlooks on the conflict are shattered throughout the first few episodes. Stella’s outlook is reminiscent of Chirico’s in the first few episodes of VOTOMS. The two have stories mostly separate from one another, allowing for the viewer to witness two completely different and disconnected viewpoints of the same series of events. I will say however, that I found the episodes focusing on Stella much more compelling and interesting than the episodes focused on Yuki. There’s a large ensemble of side characters, but not many of them stand out too much. Gail and Lily were the most memorable side characters for Stella’s episodes, while Layla was the most interesting by far in Yuki’s.
Now let’s talk about the robots themselves. The mechs in this series are referred to as Theurgears, and they’re treated as just tools of war. Similar to VOTOMS or Gundam The 08th MS Team, the mechs are treated as just another weapon to be utilized on the battlefield. They’re uniform, mass produced, and basically used as a replacement for infantry on foot in large scale battles. EnD has often been compared to Code Geass due to it’s focus on political machinations, but you won’t see any of the overblown bombastic speeches or over the top ace custom machines that Geass is so well known for here. The CGI for the machines is decent, it’s not anything standout but it’s not terrible either.
All in all, EnD is a show I unexpectedly came to enjoy. Maybe having my expectations caused me to like it more than it deserves. To be honest, it’s not anything standout or new to the genre, but because of my own personal enjoyment of it, I’ve given it a higher rating. It probably could’ve helped for this show to have had a bit of a longer run, to give more screentime to the combat, and more characterization for the assorted side characters. While its no classic, I definitely enjoyed this much more than the majority of other mecha from this past decade that I’ve watched (the only exceptions being a few of Sunrise’s productions, Full Metal Panic IV, Suisei no Gargantia, and Rinne no Lagrange). This was one of the few animes I’ve watched recently to truly satisfy me with it’s ending, and leave me content to take a break from watching stuff for a while, rather than immediately picking up the next show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 14, 2019
Have you ever watched something that wasn't bad, but you just couldn't bring yourself to say it's good?
That's the feeling of watching Buddy Complex.
Buddy Complex is a mecha anime by Sunrise, the company behind Gundam and various other notable mecha animes such as VOTOMS, Layzner, and Code Geass. The main premise of this particular outing is that a mysterious girl named Hina takes a high schooler named Aoba to the future, where he becomes a pilot in a war. Basically an isekai-esque concept, except that rather than a fantasy world, the "other world" is simply a future version of the Earth.
This piqued my interest
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in the series, as I'd been looking for something that had an isekai-ish vibe and a sci-fi twist to it, and this seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I also figured that I might as will binge it before playing Super Robot Wars X, a crossover game that features the show's characters, story, mechs, etc.
Now my experience with Sunrise's mecha releases in the 2010s is pretty limited to just a few Gundam releases, the VOTOMS OVAs, Valvrave, and Cross Ange. The latter two were glorious trainwrecks that managed to be extremely entertaining just because of how over the top and ridiculous they were. Given that example, I was expecting Buddy Complex to be similar, so exaggerated and dumb that I would be laughing the whole time at it's unintentional comedy.
Unfortunately, Buddy Complex wasn't that, rather it's just Sunrise Mecha™.
What I mean by that, is that this show just feels like Sunrise just tossed as many of their tropes as possible into one show, and rather than using it to lovingly play with their established patterns, they simply played them all straight. I guarantee if you've watched any Sunrise mecha show, you'll be familiar with any of the following elements:
- An ordinary boy suddenly becomes a pilot and for some reason becomes an ace quickly (bonus points if their Mecha is white).
- A wheelchair-bound little sister character
- An episode where two characters from opposite factions are stuck on a deserted island together.
- A mysterious female character turns the MC's life upside down.
- A friendship/romance across faction lines.
- A blonde character who serves as the MC's rival and/or partner.
All of these are present in Buddy Complex and play out just about exactly how you'd expect them to be, or in the worst case, are completely ignored and rendered irrelevant almost immediately after being introduced. I know that a company can't be completely original all the time after 40 years of producing works in a genre, but this just feels phoned in for the most part.
But that's not to say this anime is without it's merits. While it may be highly derivative of previous Sunrise works, the basic premise is interesting, albeit VERY underexplored. The soundtrack is solid, and the CGI work is some of the best I've seen in any Mecha anime. The CGI sequences are at times almost indistinguishable from the drawn segments, making the action much more appealing to watch than it's contemporaries, such as Aldnoah.Zero, or Sunrise's later work, Cross Ange.
The solid animation unfortunately does not help in that the designs themselves are rather bland. Our MC Aoba looks like Gundam ZZ's Judau if he'd been redesigned to fit the general art style of early 2010s anime. The other characters all have fairly generic designs that wouldn't really stand out much next to other characters from the time. The mechs themselves suffer from being uninteresting, as they attempt to combine the bizarre and intricate designs of the Valvraves and Villkiss, with the sleek elegance of Gundam Exia, and the medieval knightly motifs found in Code Geass's Knightmare Frames. The result are a bunch of machines who's names I can barely remember, and that look like they could easily just be generics in a cheap smartphone game.
When comes down to it, Buddy Complex committs the worst crime a piece of media can - being totally average and unremarkable. Although ironically, it was so unremarkable that it made me want to go and write this whole review on it, so that's an achievement I guess? Whether it was because of my expectations for this to be a glorious trash fire or just the show being generally average, it left me disappointed. It's not a bad anime, but you'd have a much more enjoyable experience watching almost any other mecha anime from Sunrise. My only hope now is that I enjoy it's scenarios in SRW X more than I enjoyed the actual show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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