Aquarion EVOL #26 — EVOL is LOVE Backwards!
June 24th, 2012
Never saw it coming!
Impressions:
Oh boy, one of those episodes where I just get to recap it and act incredulous. I kid. I think they did a decent job with it given preceeding episodes aside from a few particularly weird things, but we’ll get to them. Of course, had preceeding episodes been built better or Mikono not been so utterly useless the entire time, well… I guess that’s neither here nor there. Anyway! Kagura falls into Mykage’s dream world where he encounters Zessica, stuck in a giant venus fly trap and begging for death. So, being the hero that he is, he strangles her until she says Amata’s name. That then restores her clothes and drops them both into a Mykage pit where they use their powers together to… wait. Aren’t they inside some weird Mykage-Space? As it turns out later, no. Meanwhile, real-world Mykage waves his arm and instantly defeats Amata’s group and it’s time for Mix and Andy to step in. And, uh… the spirit of Shrade too. Who flies his jet out of a hole for the others. While playing space piano. Mykage’s a nice guy, by the way, and patiently waits for them to all be surprised by Shrade, not to mention letting Crea teleport in to fight too. She doesn’t get a naked combination scene though. I sense a conspiracy. Mykage then creates a bazillion giant hands that smash into the planet and begin draining its energy away. First half end.
Mikono’s then floating in the middle of ice filled with dead people, flashbacks, and for some reason, Zen. Then Mykage and Kagura somehow use their powers to teleport into the cockpits in order to team up with Amata to save Mikono. Keep in mind that Amata… and every other character… never even realized that anything happened to her. So in the end, Zessica beat Mikono to the devil’s threesome between Amata and Kagura. She, meanwhile, realizes that it’s okay to do what she wants, and what she wants is to not watch every single person she knows die. It sounds like nothing, but it’s a brilliant enough realization to her for the OP to kick in, Amata to once again yell that he loves her, and Mykage to grow headwings. Amata’s then naked and floating through space while every character says his name, which gives him super wings and his ultra final gorgeous deluxe wonderful omega special form. Which also moves Kagura enough to give up on Mikono since he now knows what true love is. Wait, what?
Wait for this twist too. EVOL backwards is… LOVE! Oh yeah, and he punches Mykage or something who went flying off into space where he exploded against Gen and finally got to be with his man. Mix also got her big bangs back during the montage epilogue, because why not? So yeah, aside from a frankly dull middle part centering around once again Mikono watching flashbacks and having things explained to her, it was a fairly eventful episode. Not the most sensical one mind you and just about every scene involving Kagura made me laugh at how horribly he was handled, but those ships sailed a long time again and show’s certainly been far far worse in recent weeks. Mykage going down to just getting punched was a little weak too. When Crea joined in, I expected they were leading up to Zen also combining finally too, but she didn’t even actually do anything at all. She was just a warm body sitting in the cockpit. They literally spent more time having characters be surprised about her fighting than she actually spent in combat. So, uh… I have absolutely no idea what the point of that was. Hardly a unique thought for this show though.
Final thoughts at the bottom.
Final Thoughts:
Well, it’s been a ride. Unfortunately a very bumpy one in the second half. Granted, the writing was always a little out of control to begin with, but it worked for a long time. Then they ended up with too many balls in the air and basically forgot or put entire arcs/plot threads on hold for weeks to a month before wrapping them up in a 5 minute spiel long after any emotional attachment had faded. Meantime, there was a parade of increasingly bizarre twists, people getting split into halves, people being magic dogs, planets suddenly crashing into other planets, weird dreams in the middle of battle about setting fire to Christmas trees, etc. All the while, the central focus was always on the eternally useless Mikono trying to choose between a psychopath who wanted to kill her and… you know what. The other choice doesn’t even matter. It could be her vibrator and her conflict over Kagura still wouldn’t have made any damn sense.
It’s a shame too because most of the other characters were solid. I’d have taken more of Mix and Andy, cliched and predictible as their relationship was, over Amata/Kagura/Mikono any day of the week. The group as a whole was colorful, varied, and even the females didn’t spend all their time drooling over the main character. They did have their groan-worthy moments, like every time Shrade went off to battle and the requisite "If you fight, you’ll die!" shtick, Cayenne kind of vanished from the show entirely after seemingly being important at the start, and Zessica’s entire point seemed to be to be moping and getting ignored, but overall, I liked the group. All of them losing focus towards the end of the show though is probably what contributed to things falling apart.
So overall, I liked the show, at least more than more other things lately, but the last third or so was extremely disappointing compared to the first 15 or so episodes. Mikono wasn’t a sympathetic character at all, the only thing Amata did was yell her name, half the plot threads seemed very poorly thought out, and by the end, there wasn’t much they could do to salvage it anyway. It was a fairly fun ride up to there and fun to make fun of it after that point. Take it as you will.
Posted in Aquarion | 17 Comments »
Well, atleast Mix and Andy got their happy ending.