At the start, the anime throws a lot of terminology and such at you very fast, and it feels as though it's starting in the middle of a story instead of the start. That isn't an inherently bad thing, it can be done in a way to throw the viewer into an interesting situation immediately, but I found it a little jarring and hard to follow for the first few episodes. Eventually you do start to understand what these words mean and what's going on, but it took me a few episodes.
While this anime is about a war between two factions, the heavy focus on character drama made what the opposing side was fighting for kinda vague. A few episodes early on focus on the enemy side, but it feels as though their motivations were given less focus to give more room for drama between characters. I don't mind this focus on character drama, but I feel as though that had the consequence of making it very hard for me to get invested in this war when we really only see one side's conflict. Another thing about the enemy faction is that they speak a language the characters cant speak, which they portray with reversed Japanese. I guess this decision gets across that the characters are unable to understand them, but every time I heard the enemy soldiers talk it sounded awful ;/
Speaking of the characters along with the drama, at the start it felt like there was too much of both. Starting with like 10 main characters, and ending with like 13, it became hard for me to get invested and as a result I felt quite bored and confused. But as I stuck with the anime I grew to understand these character's dynamics and became quite invested in most of their drama, especially Aeru and Neviril. They're both deeply flawed people with intriguingly similar yet repellent personalities. Seeing them come together feels quite engaging and very interesting. I think my favorite characters were Rodoreamon and Mamiina. The themes of class disparity and the discrimination Mamiina went through for being lower class made their relationship my favorite. I would have really loved to see more of it TvT.
The anime also has a focus on gender, everyone starting off as a girl and being able to chose your gender once you turn 17. This was the main factor that indulged me into watching Simoun since it's so rare to see any anime with something so overtly transgender, especially from 2006. How is Simoun when viewed from a trans lens? It's intriguing, I think the mere concept alone is a great vessel to tell a story about gender. Early on in the story, it's shown that gender dysphoria is a thing that can seriously harm someone psychologically, but it doesn't really go very deep with that. There are also a few characters in the main cast that don't want to decide a gender, I find acknowledging that possibility at all feels ahead of its time for this anime. It's a shame that the anime doesn't really feel as though being agender as much of a main focus.
Although this anime can also come off as weirdly essentialist when it comes to gender and portrays choosing a gender as an inevitability. Men in this world get better jobs, if a character becomes a man they have to have short hair and boyish clothes and vice versa. Multiple times, characters will say they want to become a man to be in a relationship with someone. As if the show feels two women can't be in a relationship, and that one person must always be a man and one a woman. Which is especially jarring for this anime! The Simoun are literally yuri powered, like they literally kiss and use their connection to each other to make the ship fly properly xD. It's a very odd double standard.
As flawed as the commentary on gender is in this anime, I would have liked to see more of a focus on it within the story. I think even more of a focus on these characters' gender identity and how that meshes with their psyche would have been fascinating, adding an extra layer to these characters and their interactions. Alas, the anime somewhat does this, but it never feels like a main focus.;/ Even then, for 2006 this anime tackles the topic in an interesting and not immediately hateful and stereotypical way and I respect that a lot.
Artistically, Simoun is very apparently low budget and the visual style can be slightly inconsistent. Characters will usually stand around or sit in place, not moving much, and most of the action is shown through extremely dated 3D models of the simoun flying around and drawing symbols in the sky. Despite that I do quite like the look of the characters, especially when they're given varying line weights in their line art, that kinda thing is very appealing to me! The character designs were all around solid, and I grew to appreciate the dated 3D models. As much as they stand out from the hand drawn backgrounds, the ships are well modeled for the time, and I think there's a charm to the slightly shitty mid 2000s CG look!
I also took note of the soundtrack. In many of the fights or preludes to fights, they use these accordion and piano tracks instead of a more traditional battle music. Some have said that this is unfitting and took them out of the fights, but I found this really caught my attention as a unique directing choice. It's as if the simoun are dancing in the sky as they draw patterns in battle, cool stuff imo.;3
In the end, I was very mixed on Simoun. It could have been a lot better in quite a few ways, but I think that there was an okay story and I don't regret my time watching this anime. I wish I could have liked it more
