Aug 18, 2014
This is a review of the series. Or it's supposed to be one, but I almost never write reviews, and I see no reason to bore people with things many others have written, so I'll offer some other perspectives (just don't read if you're under 20). Simply said, it's a story about war, love and adventure. Undoubtedly it is very ambitious, with moods going from girly giddy to PTSD then back to boyhood wonder in a brisk pace, but 13 episodes are just that, only 13 episodes. You don't feel like you've tasted enough of the world and its people. And I could see
...
all the cliches coming from 9 episodes away, so don't expect originality either. The technical aspects are passable.
However, don't rule out this series, because watching this anime can be good. I will be frank: anime has mostly become an exclusive wasteland for fetishists thanks to popular demand. Sometimes, it is even soul-destroying and only aggravating the emptiness felt by certain people who are deeply disillusioned with life. Maybe it has always been so, but I digress. Some writer once said a story will come to mean different things to different people. So does this series to me. By that I don't mean it's an awesome tearjerker (already done that to death), or a magical cure for depression (that's stupid). But it has actually made me think, and at some point I found my attention drifting away.
For a long time I have been alienated by fiction (that at least attempts to be emotional), anime or not. I am too old for high school idols or pretty-headed haremettes. I see no point in trying out yet another gratuitously dystopian fantasy just to see which fictional character could outbastard other fictional bastards. I am too aware to enjoy the kind of romances dominated by female interests, which believe in debasing men even if the vapid and vacillating women almost never deserve it, especially the subgenre of infidelity / divorce / "empowerment" fantasy that is mostly about feeding the infamous Rationalization Hamster. When I read about how 70% (or 90% in certain places) of US soldiers from Iraq face divorce (robbery), or how 1/4 of Britons commit infidelity, or how a female Facebook executive publicly encourages other females to sleep around with "bad boys" then snatch an obedient guy for marriage, I suppose I no longer have the energy to be fazed or sarcastic. It's like a broken record. But this anime struck a chord with me.
I, and probably many other people, have more in common with the prince than I'd care to admit. Just that, we don't have a loving family to heal us, or a destination so noble like the End of the sky to inspire us, or a grand conflict to humble our self-centered indignation, or the chance to forge an unquestioning bond of love in the face of death, free of doubt and pride, with a person that deserves it. We don't have a wise mother to tell us that embracing our hatred against her killer, which is the world itself, would eventually destroy us, no matter how justified we might seem. Such simple, theatrical words that I used to dismiss. Now ...
It was something to ruminate on, and nice when it lasted.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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