First impressions – Aquarion EVOL
Kagura-“I want to rip my eye out….it burns!”
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Yooooo~! Another FI is here and this time it’s Aquarion EVOL. Now, I’ve never watched the other series, so I’m hoping that this is an unrelated story. I really don’t know what to expect from this anime but hopefully it’s some good stuff… |
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Combining mecha and sexy female character pilots? The trailer for EVOL sure sold me quickly, but I was a fan of the original series even if the story was 100% made up as they went along. So was the wait for another season of this crazy show worth it? And how does it hold up compared to over the top first season? Well, let us find out with Ness! |
Mikono-“Why are you staring at me….” Amata-“Your rabbit ears…I want to touch them.”
We start our mecha adventure with Amata watching a movie based on “Aquarion” as in the movie so an anime inside of an anime? HOLY CRAP MY MIND IS BLOWN…Anyway Amata meets a strange girl named Mikono who was pushed to tears by the movie. Amata asks her if she would like to discuss more details about the movie after he finishes work and he lands a date with her. Whoa for a lame main character he sure got a date super fast! Usually this takes what ten episodes for a “date” to happen?
Amata-“I rented a fancy boat, bitches love fancy boat rides.”
While Amata and Mikono go out on a date the local military is hard at work training the future soldiers even the church is at work training their girls. Did I mention female and male mecha pilots are separated? Well they are…due to some “purity” rules about guys and girls getting together. We join up with Amata again who runs away to put some weights in his shoes, Amata has some mystical power inside of him that causes him to randomly float when he gets too excited. Before Amata returns to his new girlfriend, a few dozen enemies from another dimension arrive to start attacking the city and kidnap a few humans.
Zessica-“Is it hot in here or is it just me?” Mix-“Do you always have to remind us?”
Cayenne-“Can someone tell me if I hit my target?”
Spider-robot-“Hey you humans want to go on a free paid vacation?!”
Along with the other enemies there is a red haired guy named Kagura who pilots a cool red machine and he starts to beat the local machines defending the city. Kagura has red mecha so you know what that means right? HE IS TOTALLY BAD-ASS! I am sure the girls out there are drooling over his character designs. During the fight a statue falls right on top of Mikono! But Amata saves her life and he uses his powers to fly into the sky. When Amata used his power it alerts Kagura who turns his focus on Amata who escapes into his mecha that pops out of nowhere. Amata’s new machine combines with other pilots nearby to form AQUARION! And that starts the whole combining cgi scene of awesome with naked understanding.
Kagura rocks perfect teeth and feahers quite well.
Amata-“The weight of my emotions is greater than the statue.” Mikono-“Great saved by a emo hero.”
Mikono-“Can I press the big red button??” Kagura-“I love this ship…I MUST HUG IT TO DEATH.”
NAKED SCENE OF SUPER TRANSFORMATION!
After fully combining their powers they get knocked around by Kagura because teamwork is foreign to them, after they quit bitching they finally work together and fight back. Also the Aquarion is now considered taboo because the guys and girls machines had to combine as one, OH NO! WE HAD TO COMBINE! WE ARE SO IMPURE. However this new team work comes in handy as they push Kagura straight to the moon! Before Kagura can do any real fighting he gets called home by his boss. The episode ends shortly after with Amata passing out not once but twice in the same episode; the second time is caused by Cayenne who punches him in the stomach…smooth move buddy… or is that his special way of welcoming Amata to the team?
Amata-“TO THE MOON WITH YOU VILE MONSTER!” Kagura-“Ouch….watch your words.”
Amata-“Dude…I guess we are walking home.” Zessica-“I really want to kill everyone.”
Extra naked combining
Nun-“Ahem…next time you borrow my booty shorts…return them!”
Captain-“Sir…I can see floating numbers! What is wrong with me!?”
Subway for live! Even in the future…
Captain-“Do you mind not punching my desk every damn time?”
End thoughts
WTF did I just watch? Really, I have no idea what I just watched. I felt like this anime threw in a bunch of random elements from other animes and put it all into this. Or is this how the other Aquarion series are like? The episode started off so smoothly. Really pretty scenery, animation and the character designs are just fine. The environment or setting of this anime is way cool with it being a city around water. It had a Aria and Venice feel to it. As for the BGMs, it was well played with the instruments and mood setting. Though I didn’t see an opening song sequence, the ending was totally like the end of a move.
As for the actual story, there was a good amount of questions brought up with the mysterious things about the main character and his narrations. You can see there’s some comedy relief characters and something about a separation of male and female soldiers/pilots. But man, when they got onto talking about this whole union stuff, it was like… What am I watching again? We suddenly get mechs into this, yeah they looked kind of cool but the subject of union between males and females keep on throwing things off. UNTIL! WE GET A TRANSFORMATION! Sure I figured that Amata Sora would have some special powers and he’d be the key to saving the day but really now he brought down these people’s protection system with the OH SO FORBIDDEN UNION of males and females in combat. This WTF Transformaion had me going on WTF is this? But what saved me was the hawt bishie BAMF badguy, Kagura. I AM ON TEAM KAGURA~!
With that stuff aside, what did you think of that Flying Love Attack? Or was that just gg’s troll sub? XD But really, seems that Sora needs the power of love to bring out his powers because after all, he said it works when he’s excited. Also, that narrating eye-patch wearing guy is so amusing with his words that seem to reach Sora. But anyways, I do say that the animation and my curiosity of what will happen next is going to keep me watching this series. I figured that Sora will be recruited with Mikono, they’ll fight more and we’ll get more pieces to Sora’s mysterious past with the girl who seems to be Alicia the actress who is somehow known to the enemy commander. So yeah, looking forward to the next episode. Laters~
Damn talk about a long freaking episode! They basically did their own combining here with two whole episodes to form a long forty five minute episode. So it ended up feeling more like a movie, it is hard to believe the original series came out in 2005 and here we are in 2012! So was this really amazing? To be perfectly honest not really…first off it was way too long for me and some of the characters were so damn boring. Like Amata? Voiced by annoying Kaji Yuki aka OH MA SHOE from Guilty Crown and we had Mikono aka Inori from the same series. I am really tired of hearing his voice as any main character; I just don’t think his voice fits action based anime! He has to whine all the time…
Anyway enough bashing of EVOL time to hear the good parts! First off the only character that looked fun to me was Zessica voiced by none other than Kana Hanazawa. Besides having the lovely hanakana voice she looks great! Have you seen those tiny shorts of hers? And that top? She could be another Yoko sibling from TTGL…but still will one fan-service character be enough to keep me going? We shall see I definitely don’t have any issues with Zessica right now, but who knows she could become annoying really fast. And I have to talk about that cool dude named Kagura! Do you girls like him? Compared to the other guys he has the most style. Or maybe you like that robot guy?! That chin of his…THAT FREAKING CHIN…Just what the hell is that I kept staring at it.
Production values were all over the place in a good way like the whole city design? Really good! We had lots of great mechanical designs thanks to Stanislas Brunet and Takeshi Takaura. Together they have done some great work over the years, and the music was fantastic thanks to Yoko Kanno and Ayako Otsuka. Even if Aquarion EVOL blows it will have a great OST after the series finishes. So should you watch this series? I would say if you are a mecha fan you should give this first “episode” a shot. But I can understand why you pass due to the whiney main guy and a girl who just doesn’t stop crying! Then by all means pass and never look back.
Preview
Zessica-“I wonder if I can wear less clothes in the second episode?”
The new Aquarion team begins their special training! Stay tuned for more Zessica fan-service and Amata screaming.
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: 1000-1099 and Pirate King with 1048 comments
I just watched it before this and the Milky post came up. Memo-chou’s hour episode was great, and F/Z’s was good at setting up all the Masters and the War. Here, it was too much in one package which is probably a contributor to Ness’ point of what the hell did I watch?
Fosh, agreed about production values. Sometimes it looked awesome, sometimes it looked liked upscaled stuff from the old series. But, Zessica’s a babe and Kagura basically looks like a BAMF Apollo from Sousei.
In terms of mecha, definitely below Lagrange, but having this nostalgia with having seen the 2004 series, I’ll keep watching.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
whahahah Milky Holmes! You sir win! Yeah I can somewhat second Ness’s wtf did I watch lines…then again I saw all of Aquarion season one and the movie xD
Right! It looks great and nice character designs for Zessica and Kagura does look like a BAMF Apollo hahahah
Right, Lagrange 720 looks greaaaaat! Finally able to see the enemy mecha designs and all that extra stuff.
POWUH: Lovely-pyon~ with 339 comments
If you haven’t watched the first series, then there’s a lot going on that you wont really understand. Key points would be that the first series had a similar time difference between the current time and a previous time; the movie the boy watched was of what happened in the last series; the man clapping his hands together was a huuuuge motif from the last series (and may or may not be the same person…some how) AND the bad guy who was sniffing everyone out looks and acts EXACTLY like the main good guy from the first series. But most importantly the Aquarion was how they united in the first series, and it DID NOT matter if they were boys or girls – so something has happened in that time frame to change that.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Yep saw season one! I liked the whole “reincarnation” theme they had with the old gods! Really cool for that series, yeah lots of small details and hints from the past ;D
Kagura? YES! A more bad ass looking Apollo <3
Yeah I hope we figure out what went wrong...to make the guys and girls afraid to combine to form Aquarion? Maybe we will find out or maybe we never will...overall fun series to watch!
POWUH: 1000-1099 and Pirate King with 1048 comments
My honest to goodness first thought was that, because the boys were talking about wanting to do it so much, that over the years they had to implement stuff so that the girls wouldn’t feel violated by the uniting.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 107 comments
Well of course they’re impure. Combining is having sex so now they are impure since they are no longer virgins. Or something. Apparently combining with the same gender was fine till now so I don’t get what kind of fredian symbolism they are going with that makes combining boys and girls such a big deal. Show ▼
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Ahahahah all of this! Correct! Oh my god those episodes in the first season? with the 3 dudes and 3 chicks combining were so funny!
POWUH: Lovely-pyon~ with 323 comments
lame
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Lame? or SUPER AMAZING AWESOME Kind of lame? 😉
POWUH: Occasional (51-75) with 68 comments
Oh noes such comments, but I loved it! ;DD 3 things made it worth to follow to my list what to watch:
1. the movie theatre and the fact Amata worked there, don´t know why but made so in love, inception, anime in a anime, genious and so Lovely.
2. Amata, because his character design is so subarashi! What are those wings, so interesting when the main character have to have such cool boots because flyin´isn´t always fun ;DD
3. Kagura. When that badass came so yes, Kagura. The animation is so beautiful and why-are-they-so-handsome-omg-
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Wonderful! I will continue to just watch this probably not review it but sit back and enjoy how random it gets xDD
1- I know right? A movie inside a movie was like omg..awesome….
2- Amata…he looks cool I just hate his voice actor…so annoying thanks to Shu from Guilty crown.
3- Yeah I am sure that Kagura will gain lots of female fans heheh
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
I somehow erased (almost) the memory of OH MA SHOE and enjoyed the anime. But the retro-like songs kinda killed the mood for me, as they seem forced.
I have to say I enjoyed this… I’ve watched the Aquarion OVAs and thought they were decent (I never watched the initial series – I still love Sousei no Aquarion by Akino). Though I didn’t remember Aquarion looking so toy-like and cheesy.
Oh, gondolas! (that reminds me, I still need to finish Aria the Natural and then Origination).
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I never had that much love for the mecha series. Over-all the genre just seems ludicrous. Yeah, sure, Magical Girls are ludicrous too, but…..they’re girls and they’re magical…..and yeah. So there….
This is my question, or my series of questions. I know full well that I am not supposed to take this show seriously. I acknowledge full well that it is taking Refuge in Audacity. But, is this unintentional comedy? Cause I found myself giggling most of the time. I think I was supposed to go, like, “Rock On Dude” at most of the moments. But I found myself going, “Yes Yes, of course, Holy Mech appears out of nowhere accompanied by Hair Metal Rock Opera music ::giggle giggle giggle::”
I mean, my little brother lighting his farts on fire, only to ignite his pants is funny on one level. A very small level….
POWUH: 1000-1099 and Critique with 1024 comments
Oh, I’ve missed naked transformation sequences.
NOT.
POWUH: Metanorn Lover with 192 comments
I might stay for the jaw-dropping animation, but I hope they at least explain some of the concepts in the future.
Also, I expected the Union stuff, but this? Man, anime really knows how to surprise me.