First impressions – Aquarion EVOL

Kagura-“I want to rip my eye out….it burns!”

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…

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.