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Trigger warning: sexual assault

It is a testament to how stale anime has become if Tengoku Daimakyou is considered great. It is not quite awful, with strong production values throughout and clear artistic effort put into it. The major issues with the pacing, coupled with the poor story and characters that we are shown, land it as a high 3 out of 10.

The short TV anime squanders so much of its limited runtime on boring and pointless scenes. Not the side stories; such diversions are welcome in this kind of show. However, the scenes showing the children in 'heaven' were excessively long and dull. None ... of it mattered whatsoever until the final few episodes, and still it didn't tie back to the main characters. These parts took up a large portion of the show and were unecessary.

This might only be a problem because the show is unfinished. The entire pacing is built towards a climax that is being saved for some future second season. It can't stand on its own as a single season without that second part. The entire show is unwatchable because of how it was structured. Unless you're watching it for the above average art and animation, there's no point in seeing this until they release the rest because the only interesting part of the show is the mystery, which is built up through the whole season and never resolved.

Of course, if it had good characters and individual stories it would still hold up. Unfortunately neither are quite the case. The creators were good at writing a mystery, not so much interesting characters. None had complex personalities. The only real character trait an important character had was the main boy who's trait is that he is horny. Main girl, heaven girl etc., are all completely forgetable but for their designs (the designs clearly came before the characters). The side quests are really forgettable as well, all just exploring very basic and surface level themes. They were all just incredibly mediocre and poorly written.

The climax of this season is about the main girl's character. Her character arc is the real point of this season. But this main pillar crumbles only a few episodes after we hear her backstory (which does look to be interesting at first). The whole thing is handled so poorly and the writers clearly can't make anything complex or believable. This character's story is just such an insane planewreck that crashes into heathrow, leveling several terminals and killing thousands. The quasi-normal anime sexual assault that the main boy does to her is just even less forgivable because in the last two episodes the show actually brings up sexual assault and its just so awful. And its like mainly about gender but only the wierdest conception of it. There's nothing wrong with touching these subjects as long as you treat it with respect (the show doesn't). It's also fine to have boobs and fanservice, and the show isn't bad because it has those things. It's bad because of how the fanservice is presented and how it ties to the character themes. It could have still been a good show despite this depiction...

Tengoku Daimakyou would have been less talked about than Aico: Incarnation if this had come out in 2018 (not the highest point in anime). But today it is somehow praised to the moon and given an ultra-high ranking when it is fundementally, detatched from its poor handling of the main character and themes related to her, a 4 out of 10 show, or 5 out of 10 at a stretch. Don't watch until the second season comes out. Even when it does, only watch it if you like the character and monster designs.

Aldanoah.Zero is bad. But more than bad, I think it is offensive. Offensive, because it fools newbies into thinking that this level of quality is good.


So, to start off with the most boring and easy to review part, the story. To put it nicely: generic garbage. It is completely un-original and steals from classics such as Gundam, but somehow manages to make it much worse. Though, to give credit where it is due the ending was quite nice. I don't have much more to say, except you have probably seen it before.

The art was alright. Nothing new, you will probably not care about it unless ... you hate the A1 pictures art style. The mechs look kind of bad though. The ANIMATION, (specifically the vehicle animation) though, is very very bad. And I am not talking Berserk bad, where it made sense, I am talking lazy CG bad. Seriously, CG is much easier to animate than normal I am surprised so many fail.The CG mechs move at like 3 frames per second, making the fight scenes almost unwatchable. Not that they would be very watchable anyway, the choreography is terrible.

The sound. This is one of the few points that is actually acceptable. The ost is cool and memorable, the OP is alright. Not amazing, but good.

The characters are, like the story, generic and poorly written. The MC (who I forgot the name of) is basically your standard Intelligent, No-emotions-except-when-I-feel-like-it kind of guy. I wonder if you can name 3 mecha anime with similar, but better, protagonists? Slaine is the Zeo- sorry, Vers or whatever their name is MC, he is actually only bad. At least he has some originality to him. Oh, and then there is the Martian Princess who is the same as every other martian princess (To be fair, this came out before IBO)
And I can't even remember who the supporting cast are, apart from the maid loli who drove a jeep around for a bit. Good times.

Enjoyment - the most subjective part of any review. That is why I am going to keep it to a simple numerical score: 1

TL;DR Search "Gundam 0079 episode 1 english sub" into google