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First season (24 episodes) are great. Second season (24 episodes), well, it's hit and miss with more misses than hits. The attempts at humor go up a few notches during the 2nd half, and that is to the show's detriment. Which is why it managed to become a relief when the over-the-top final act of the show begins, even if it is rushed and confusing as hell. Then the last 2 episodes caused me to change my opinion; there is such a thing as too over-the-top, especially in anime (as many of these shows are prone to do; they're almost never ... subtle).

The show is at it's best when it tackles how government and organization react to the appearance of the Ranga kaiju. How it evolves from national to international incidents, the political maneuvers, the responsibility of those in power (including the 3 girls who can control Ranga). Those moments that critique society and governments are great stuff, but it becomes too heavy-handed once those red fist people show up during the 2nd season.

The 2nd season still has some of that critique, but it's overshadowed by this lame "monster of the week" formula that just doesn't work. It could've worked, if it had more emphasis on world governments trying to get their own kaiju and control it and thus fight Ranga with it to have a stronger presence in the world; but the execution was lame. Not to mention there are moments I'm thinking it starts to retcon itself.

If only it was longer, slower-paced, and more reigned in. It was nice that the series didn't pad out the majority of scenes, as most anime shows do (due to each episode being 15 minutes long, including intro and outro, which basically makes each episode 10 minutes). But there were times where this was to the show's detriment, as some moments did need more room to breathe.

The second half, especially during the last 2 episodes, does wind up harming the series too much for me to ignore it. If only the whole series was more like the first half, and more reigned in... then it would be a masterpiece.

PS: A little too much girl-power involved too, considering how virtually every male character turns out by the end.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

So I’ve been aware of this anime’s reputation for a while now. Some say it’s “the best anime no one has ever seen,” and by no one they mean Americans. Not sure how true that is (personally, I think that reputation should fall upon Legend of the Galactic Heroes), as I believe it has gotten the attention it’s deserved since its release, but viewers have to jump through a few hoops to get the whole thing. From what I understand, this only aired on the Sci-Fi channel for a duration, and the last 15 or so episodes never aired, ... so most didn’t get to see how the anime would wrap up. Well, I’ve seen the whole thing. I won’t say how, but you could probably think of a few ways.

So, how was it? Not too shabby, despite a couple minor caveats here and there; up until the last 5-6 episodes or so when it does this stupid crap that a lot of animes do that irritate me to no end. I’ll get to what those are later, but for now I’ll just say they don’t screw up the show to the point where I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Despite its faults, it’s one of the better anime series out there, and it doesn’t run so long to the point where it overstays it’s welcome (I mean, Inuyasha, Bleach, One Piece, holy hell do those go on forever).

The opening 10 episodes almost seem like this could be a self-contained 13 episode series, but it continues to go on and on. And this is a series comprised of 74 episodes. I began to wonder, “The premise is interesting, but how in the hell can they keep this show engaging for that long of a duration? I’m seeing the setup for intrigue and deeper layers indicating that there’s more going on than what we’re currently seeing, but for another 60+ episodes?”

And the next several episodes began to worry me in this regard. Because despite how the first few episodes seem, this isn’t one of those shows that tells its story in a straightforward manner where we continually follow the lead protagonist most of the time. No. For several episode stretches and different intervals, we are introduced to other characters, and follow their stories, like Tenma’s arc during the first act was just one story amidst a bunch of other stories that encompass a giant conspiracy. In hindsight, this technique worked, but it demands patience from the viewer. There were times where I went, “Ok, this is nice and all, but what the hell is happening with Tenma!?” There are times when we leave him and then get introduced to some girl attending a college for a few episodes; or later on are introduced to some child of a rich man trying to become re-aquainted with his father; or follow a cop who’s a recovering drunk. But after a certain point, they all start to link together.

By the time the series was halfway over, I was down with this style of pacing. It accomplishes something that I desire in a lot of television shows. That the main protagonist is not the center of the universe. There are other pieces in the game that move independent of his actions/activities, who accomplish things that the protagonist is incapable of accomplishing, whether it’s because he’s not in the right place at the right time, or he doesn’t have the skill-set to do this sort of thing (ex: Tenma can’t really fight, and he’s just so-so with a gun, and most importantly he doesn’t know everyone anymore than he has all the answers). Plus virtually all of these other characters are interesting in their own way, thus I didn’t mind so much that I was spending time with them.

My favorite of these side-characters is easily the detective Heinrich Lunge, who pretty much chooses to have no life outside of his detective work, and can become obsessive with solving cases. And he has a technique for doing so. He is able to recall conversations and details with eerie accuracy, like he’s a computer who can record information at will. Yet his method does have a fault. Despite being able to recall conversations word-for-word, another character (who is a criminal psychiatrist) points out that Lunge utilizes this technique in a biased manner. If he has already predetermined a potential outcome, he will emphasize a tone/aura around his recall-ability, such as believing an individual said a line in a certain way (serious, lighthearted, grim, casual, a lie, a truth) when said-individual actually said the line in a different way. Because as objectively-minded as some people try to be, there will always be an amount of subjectivity to how they perceive things. Plus he does all his work at the expense of alienating his family; and there were times where I began to sympathize with this guy and begged for him to go to his daughter, a sign of good writing.

And speaking of multi-dimensional characters, to my surprise, Tenma’s be-otch fiance ends up showing a sympathetic side to her, though you do have to get pretty far in the show to see it. And, of course, even the main villain Johan is shown to be multidimensional. There are no perfect characters in this show, no heroes that aren’t infallible, no villains that are pure evil (even if they do their best to convince themselves and others that’s how they are).

Getting into the character of Johan here, he does become a fascinating character. First one begins to wonder just how it is he’s able to brainwash/manipulate others into doing his deeds. Because as we soon find out, he usually prefers not to get his own hands bloody (though he certainly has no qualms about doing so), but rather getting other people to do things for him. Why? What is his end goal? Why is he doing this? Well, honestly, despite the hopes others have for him (there are organizations who have an interest in Johan, partly because they’ve put some investment into him in the past), he seems more interested in causing destruction simply because he likes manipulating others to see how they will all interact with each other, like interfering with the paths a line of ants would take, forcing them to follow different trails and seeing how they will adapt to new obstacles. And he is determined to show that no one really deserves to live, that there isn’t really any value in life. Which is why he became a bit fascinated with Tenma, intentionally bringing him into the game, wanting to see Tenma’s early philosophy on life proven wrong by having Tenma turn that very belief 180 degrees. It's like a Joker to Batman matchup in its own way.

And since Johan was trained to be a manipulator (though some in the organization admit that he was a prodigy compared to the other children, which is something that was bound to happen), he finds ways to easily manipulate others. Because if you observe one for long enough, you find faults in their character, regrets over sins of the past, or having no regrets and thus being prime candidates for doing evil deeds simply because they enjoy it. There are many faults to be exploited in humanity, and exploit them he does, not for riches, not for fame, but to send a message.

Fascinating stuff, and there are other complexities I haven’t covered yet, but I’ll leave those for readers who wish to seek out the show. But now I’m going to have to talk about the ending. Because the ending is why I currently don’t rate the show higher than 6/10. Without discussing that, I can't justify why I rate this show lower than it's current average rating.

It’s not that the final outcome in of itself was bad, it’s just some of the crap that was done to get there, crap that was easily avoidable. About halfway through the show, there’s this big muscleman who gets shot and flies down the story of a building and into the smoke below where a fire had broken out. The way they framed this, the way it was shown, an alarm bell rang in the back of my mind, “He’s going to show up again. We didn’t see the life go out of his eyes, so he’s coming back.” That’s anime 101 logic (and most film logic for that matter, but animes pull this all the time, especially in the manga version of Elfen Lied where they dial it up to 11). So I wasn't shocked to see him show up about a dozen or so episodes later. On the contrary, I rolled my eyes at the notion the show would try to have me believe otherwise. This is not the only time something like that is done with this character, similar situations occur during the climactic episodes, which I found to be even more infuriating than this example.

And then, of course, there’s the tip of the finale. Where the major character(s) are face-to-face with Johan, guns pointed, people wounded, emotions running high. Johan making a Joker-like speech to the Batman-like protagonist (minus the riches and skills and equipment). A seemingly lose-lose situation when it comes to testing ones morals and ethics and philosophy, which have been tested throughout most of the show. But the series takes the cheap way out of all this, by having a third party intervene, and making one of the luckiest shots in the world for a guy who has never handled a gun, let alone done so while sober. It’s a pure lazy cop-out, and it results in the show trying to give the happiest ending possible, despite everything that happened prior to this, from episode 1 and onward. It would’ve been interesting to see how the protagonist would’ve handled himself after doing that, but nope, we’re not going to have any of that.

Plus the whole thing just seems naive to me. And I get what they were going for. Once you kill, you lose an element of innocence that you will never get back. I get it. But the fact remains that if someone had killed this psychopath far earlier on, a bunch of lives would’ve been spared his wrath, and many more would’ve lived. You can talk about losing innocence all you want, but that is why people exist who are willing to lose that innocence to protect others so that way others won’t lose their own innocence, much less their own lives from others who have no innocence left. But screw that, the anime wants you to feel sympathy for this guy and demands that the viewer hopes for a redemption arc for Mr. kills-a-lot.

So yeah, all that stuff irritated me, and marred what had been a fairly excellent show, making it go from having minor annoyances to major annoyances. But despite that, the show is still good, has some fascinated scenarios and some thought-provoking concepts and philosophies (up until it simplifies them in the last 2 episodes), especially with regard to identity and who you really want to be. It is worth a watch. The things that cause me major irritations may only be minor or insignificant to you.