I know it has been a while since I have posted about this series, I have not forgotten about it. This show does a pretty good job of creating an alluring atmosphere. We have kids piloting unusual robots that affect their behavior and vice versa. The story has unfolded pretty solidly yet slowly and we are finally getting to a point where some questions are being answered.

We have a strong director [Junichi Sato] whose never done a mech series that I can recall has some wonderful people working with him on this show. Mari Okada writing the series had previously done Gosick one of my favorite series. She has a lot of works under her belt with Toradora, Selector Infected WIXOSS, the incredible character study series Simoun, Aria, and Red Garden. That series was astounding, putting aside a few plot holes, overall it left a great impression on me as a musical anime series. This series has great potential, like I’ve said before. The music has been pretty well varied, and so far the story continues to run at a slow rate. It was announced this series will be a full 24 episodes. I hope it continues this pace, it could very well become a sleeper hit of the season. This show without a doubt is highly underrated, you cannot access the official website without living in japan, there aren’t very many PV’s for individual episodes, and not a lot of fansub groups have translated this either. Daisuki is however simulcasting it in English.

It is interesting to see how much of an experiment fighting those Admonitions. The higher ups which we saw with the principal in the beginning are hiding a lot of information from these kids. They were chosen for various reasons. They’ve yet to travel in the Lightless Realm as many parts of this episode hinted at the idea that there’s a lot more there than what they’ve been told. Akashi being chosen for the Reaper has allowed for this story to turn into a true coming of age mech series. Emiru has grown to be a very strong character in this series. We’ve learned she has been inflicted with the dark metal and she has hidden it all this time. I’m curious to see what will happen with her later on. The scientist whose name escapes me is intrigued with Akashi’s piloting skills of the Argent. From the looks of it I would say he thinks this is all a game.

There were a lot of problems with the animation this episode, especially in the beginning. I hope this gets fixed for its Bluray release. The CG in that fight was pretty bad, and what happened to the animation in the first half of the episode? Ended up being poorly animated there. The fight with Argent and the Admonitions was choreographed quite and if only the animation [more so pointing at the CG] were drawn better this probably would have had a much stronger impact. The ending here was very nicely done aside from those issues, considering now we know full well that the Admonitions are derived from humans. Just hope that the animation gets better in this series. Love this ending song. Yumi Uchimura is back!

OVERALL IMPRESSION: 7/10

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