Apr 21, 2009
I should start this off by clearing up a few things. First, anything Shoji Kawamori, I take a look into. Second, anything with Yoko Kanno doing the soundtrack deserves to be atleast looked into, if not watched with the eyes closed. Third, with their powers combined, I got excited (Escaflowne for eff's sake).
So after mentioning the above, I had VERY high expectations for this show. Escaflowne still stands as one of my favorites, but we're not reviewing that. The premise of the show isn't anything all that original, with all of the Kawamori usuals, Mecha, Wings, Feathers, underlying romance,
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tortured souls, etc. The first episode showed promise of a fluid story line progression, cliff hangers, action, and suspense. Sadly, the suspense is only there as a tease, the fluid filler free progression was not there, and the cliff hangers were next to non existant. MOST of the "revelations" were predictable, but not all of them. Instead, you spend the next 20 episodes learning a "little bit" about everyone and their relationships with eachother, usually by the almost direct verbal guidance of the "Commander". You would think with the slow progression of the story that everything would have been explained, but it seems to save the day or end the episode things are discovered or revealed with no explanation or progression. They figure out how to defeat the enemy with the mutterance of the commander, repeating the words in their head, and then CLICK! it's all solved. Seconds, literally. It picks up again around the last 6 episodes or so with a very progressive pace, plenty of action and story, and a bit of a rushed romance developement that "changes the world" . The idea wasn't all the original, but enough differences and variants I think this could have been done way better. The animation is top notch for a TV series, the soundtrack is superb, and the comedy was just light enough I wasn't annoyed. ( I like comedy, but not in abundance with a serious plot.) I would say this would have probably been a better series had it been scaled down to 13 or 14 episodes, cut the filler, And left it open. Now if you're looking for a show that is mildly entertaining, and you can start and stop and pick up 2 weeks later, this isn't a bad casual watch. I've seen worse by all means. If I hadn't had all the episodes to watch together, I may not have finished it in nearly the same amount of time. I would reccomend Escaflowne as a better choice, but if you're determined to watch Aquarion, watch it first then pick up Escaflowne.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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