Houkago no Pleiades

I have never seen a Gainax production that I didn't like... There is a first time for everything.

The characters and plot are shallow, generic, and uninteresting. The pacing is absolutely horrid. The art style is decent, until your retinas are bombarded with bright pink mahou shoujo nonsense, which makes you wish you were never born. I personally wanted to gouge out my eyeballs with a screwdriver.

Besides for the usage of the Pleiades's constellation as seen on Subaru's logo, this show has absolutely nothing to do with Subaru or cars at all. The closest you will get is the horribly out of place engine sounds which ... come from the glorified broomsticks the girls ride on. This production has barely any redeeming qualities, which coincidentally includes the ending theme.

I thought that both Subaru and Gainax would provide us something up to their normal standards of quality. So far I have been completely wrong, and will be watching just to get it over with.

Lets break this odd team up down:


The Story:A very standard story that offers nothing interesting, which is sad, I've seen shows with less time than this offer a unique story.It's a basic collect the maguffins plot that were dropped in to near the end. Never really established what they do asides from being a source of power for both sides That being said it's not horrible just poor . I'll get to characters farther down.



Art:This is where the show shines, the art is very nice looking and the character design is nice if again stranded .Though as a minor nitpick the girls themselves ... have some of the stupidest hats I've ever seen. Not that I'm a stupid hat expert or anything but it just bugged me. The fight scenes,few that they are work well and the broom flying was kinda cool Also I think the bad guy was Yoh from Starry Sky, not quite sure


Sound:I'm not going to say much becasue I noticed very little of it and skipped the ending song.It's not bad but nothing really stands out.At least it's unobtrusive and that's a plus

Characters:This is where things fail hard.They have no development, no establishment of even the most basic relationships and as a result I feel nothing for these characters.With the roughly 20 minutes given I'm not expect deep complex characters but at least something other than stereotypes.We get one inkling of a relationship between Aoi and Suburu but it's never stated if they're sisters,friends or what ever.Ever other character is along for the ride . Suburu gets a bit of small development in that she's a bit thick headed and determined.The main Villain gets a back story about wishes but like everything else it feels rushed and unmemorable.It's kinda hard to say anymore about bland stereotypes.

Overall: I have to say while I've kinda ragged on it,it's not horrible just bland and stupid.Though for some reason I can't shake the feeling that the whole thing is taking the piss out of the Magic Girl genre.If I find out it is this could easily be a 7 or 8 overall.However since it seems to be doing it straight faced then it's a solid 4. Is it a waste of time? Not unless you can't spare about 20-30 minutes of your life. If not just go watch the much better Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica or if you haven't already seen it Mai-Hime.Both which are better.

I happen to like magical girl Anime. They are fun to watch, though typically cliché. I thought that one that took up only four episodes would make for a quick delight, but I guess I should have checked the episode length on the myanimelist site. Seriously, this Anime should have been put together as just one episode, not four. That brings me to the first point to cover, the story.

Seriously, I felt like I was reading a bad fanfic that leaves a bad taste in my mouth simply because you have to wonder if the fanfic writer is being lazy, or they are too young ... to be on the site. To describe the kind of fanfic I am specifically talking about, it is the one that happens to be short chapter, between two hundred to five hundred words, lacking in emotional depth and description,.

But on top of that, the fanfic writer self-inserts themselves as a Mary Sue. Yes, Subaru is in fact a Mary Sue. She has no flaws... well, no fatal flaws. Her clumsiness and slowness don't count as they are mostly told to the audience and not shown. A lot of her mistakes could be explained away by her being the newbie, not because it really was a flaw. Not to mention she is obviously special.

I know that this is supposed to be for little kids, but then... if that is so, why emphasize the romatic asspect between the male and female character. One, that I might add, is very obvious relationship. The whole true love felt more like Twlight's true love, with the fated lovers meet and don't have any real obstacles thrown at them. Yeah... that kind.

I started off enjoying this, with the first episode, but I found myself rather shocked that it ended when it did. I then started feeling the whole thing going down there, a complete train wreck. Not even the cute outfits of the characters can make up for the tons of plot holes in this anime, or the confusion as to what is going on.

So, really... don't be surprised at seeing so many negative reviews. It might be a good candy watch for some anime fans, but it was not a well crafted Anime and was a major disapointment.