Soukou Kihei Votoms: Red Shoulder Document - Yabou no Roots

A pretty welcome bonus prequel chapter in the Votoms saga. Seeing the same style designs as the series with much higher quality animation was a big treat. However, I felt that this didn't give me as much new information as I wanted.

At first I thought that since this came out years later that this would be even darker and more violent than the original, but if it was, it was a negligible amount. The gritty realism has always been the highlight of Votoms, and I hoped it would be realized and taken even more seriously here. I'm satisfied that they've kept this value, at the ... very least.

I'm also disappointed that I didn't get any more insight into Chirico's character. He seems the same as he was at the start of the series. I assumed the harsh Red Shoulder training (of which we didn't get much of because of the length) would be what turned him into a stoic soldier, but I didn't get to see any kind of transition. Instead the whole thing mainly felt like a tribute to the Chirico we already know and a highlight of his special traits that make him up in a different context. I'm a little upset, because the potential for this part of Chirico's history was very high. Still, I was entertained.