May 31, 2016
TLDR: Shining Heresy is a 5-episode OVA series that is a good 2 episodes too long, choosing to focus on dull church bureaucracy rather than Chirico or interesting mech action scenes.
Full review:
The strongest two arcs of the original VOTOMS TV series were easily the middle two arcs (Kummen and Sunsa) in which Chirico is rivalled by Ypsilon for the affections of Fyana. It's an oddly engaging love triangle stuck in the middle of a real robot series that focuses on the mentality of a soldier.
Shining Heresy attempts to go back to this by introducing a new rival for Chirico in the form of Teitania,
...
a "Nextant" who was created ostensibly for the purpose of replacing ATs and I guess also destroying Chirico. However, it also incorporates notes of the Woodo arc of the VOTOMS TV show by setting her up as a female love interest for Chirico.
This is done in the most awkward and illogical way possible; Teitania literally falls in love with Chirico for no really good reason after he shoots her. Let me emphasize that Teitania sees Chirico like two times and is shot by him before falling madly in love with him and deciding to follow him forever. It makes Fyana's reasons for loving Chirico seem completely legitimate.
The biggest problem with Shining Heresy is that it is not about Chirico. Chirico barely ever appears on screen; the other characters certainly do a lot of TALKING about Chirico but the focus of the OVA is clearly on a completely unrelated story about "The Catholic Church, Except In Space" and a yawn-worthy competition over who is going to become the next Space Pope.
To the OVA's credit, the original VOTOMS show did not really explore the role of religion in the VOTOMS universe so in theory it's a cool idea to explore it, but the problem is there's no context given. Why does this church matter? What do they control? What are the stakes at hand in this competition to kill Chirico in order to become the next Space Pope? None of these questions are resolved by the end.
Oh yeah, Fyana is there too. But she has like a total of 5 lines and is pretty much just a plot device.
And here's the thing about Fyana: She's always been a very flat character. She hit her stride in the middle of the TV series when she was actually fighting in her AT, but the latter half of the series reduced her to a damsel-in-distress sitting around yelling "CHIRICO!!" every so often. But they've gone a step past that in Shining Heresy and she's incapacitated for the entire OVA and then... well...
I won't spoil what happens but the conclusion of Shining Heresy left me scratching my head and wondering "OK, but why?" Well, the answer to that question seems to be that the writers wanted to take Fyana out of the story and replace her with Teitania. Seeing as VOTOMS is about Chirico, that is the only major development that has transpired by the end of this OVA, and one wonders why the writers felt the need for this development. Sure, Fyana wasn't the best character, but she was Fyana! 50 episodes and several OVAs of Chirico chasing Fyana, and for what?
The art and sound are OK for a 90's OVA; it's obviously a low-budget production but nothing stands out as ugly. There's a new OP that isn't quite as catchy as the original OP but is still listenable. The scarce few mech battles are pretty interesting as far as VOTOMS go, and I honestly thought Teitania vs. Chirico in episode 1 was the highlight of the whole thing.
Overall, it has a few fun action sequences but they're stuck in a swamp of boring dialogue about Space Catholicsm. It tries to ambitiously explore the role of religion in the VOTOMS world but it fails to properly provide context for why the story being presented matters at all. Still, if you plan to watch the other VOTOMS OVAs after this one, you may want to just grit your teeth and bear with it for the major plot development that occurs in Shining Heresy.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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