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 »

17 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Quikbeam says:

    Well, atleast Mix and Andy got their happy ending.

  • The Phantom says:

    The visuals were nice but everything else was forgettable.
    Hopefully next season brings some good shows because this season sucked.

  • Kaisos says:

    “So overall, I liked the show, but the last third or so was extremely disappointing compared to the first 15 or so episodes.”
    But all you did during those episodes was complain about ah fuck whatever I don’t care.
    I for one am more embittered by this show than anything else I’ve seen in well over a year. Damn everything.

    • Aroduc says:

      *shrug* Like I said it’s far… VERY FAR… from perfect, but the non-core characters were decent enough, there was always something to talk about, and while most developments were weird, it didn’t suffer from long bouts of absolutely nothing happening like just about every other show this season. Chalk it up to rose tinged glasses and comparison then. I feel a lot more positive about Evol than just about anything else this season.

  • Anise_Punter says:

    Aroduc liked something? You’ve gone soft, good sir.

  • Shirokuma says:

    That show was what you have when you join your hands together. Nothing. Grab a donut.

  • Nanaya says:

    To be totally honest, I didn’t see the EVOL – LOVE thing.

    It was too obvious and workable in literate English, and I’ve been conditioned to handwave stuff like that as them butchering a word (‘EVOLVE’ in this case) either trying to make it sound cool or out of general incompetence.

  • Embok says:

    The Crea thing was probably just fanservice relating to when the white haired cripple vampire girl in the first series got in Aquarion. At the very least Crea should have been the head. Oh well, at least Super Robot Wars will make better use of her.

    In the original series only the last fifth was any good, so only a third of Evol being weak is still an improvement. Yeah it was a disappointment when looking back at the Jin arc, but overall I don’t regret watching it. Plus it gave us the hilarious dog trolling.

  • Benigmatica says:

    I’m glad that this dramatic mecha love story has ended!

    Now everybody has a happy ending!

  • KLAC_OF_PERSONALITY says:

    so ding dong basco-mykage is defeated by LOVE yea one of those power of love save the day.

    yea there anime with power of love save the day http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePowerOfLove

    & now trap inside zen with nothing to do lock in zen’s jail.

    also knew pull a kagura face turn give screw you mykage & save zess now we kagu-zess?

    etc big bangs are backs with all good LOVE really did save everything.

  • KM says:

    The writers are on drugs if you ask me. The plot starts out okay then gets to the realm of the utterly nonsense.

    What a waste! Everything else is good but they mess up the plot so badly that I feel it hard to forgive them. What was Kagura doing all okay with the students and all after he utterly destroy, kills many of their classmates? So many things are rush and resolve with little to no reason.

    The logic side of the anime was murdered and mutilated so brutally that I am compel to called it foul play. The anime disappoint me greatly – I’m sorry but it’s the truth. What makes it worse was the fact that it could so easily turn out wonderfully had the writers took their time with the script. The lack of patience and forethought shows and led to a ruin anime.

    I’m sorry but it needs to be said.

    TQ

  • EXPERTICIA says:

    I respect all your comments, because you´re right in many ways… But let me tell you, I enjoy this final episode because it was all about LOVE: Mix and Andy, Kagura and Zessica, Donar and Suomi (she forgets that she´s a nun), and Mikono with Amata (finally, he says I love You to her, and viceverse). The common sense wasn´t in this final, situations were forced, Amata and Kagura were the reincarnation of a dog with wings, meanwhile, Mikono doesn´t recognize Fudo Zen as her beloved Apollonius (how easily she forgets). Maybe, we´ll see an OVA with much content and logic.

  • Thess says:

    Just a correction: Zessica begged Kagura to kill her in order to save Mikono and Amata by destroying the Solar Aquarion gattai since she assumed Mykage needed her.

    In the end, he couldn’t do it. This is significant, because he was told he could save SYLVIEEE yet he was naaaaaaah.

    Mykage got the best end.

  • KleenexGhost says:

    I agree with you on this review. I think if I had more of an attachment to Amata/Mikono I would have liked the series more. This show started off a bit slow but promising then it went downhill with the second half. I will say that the finale was entertaining, but when I look deeper than the flashy visuals and final battle, you still got the sloppy story along with the other problems of the show. This episode gets a 7/10 but the series as a whole gets a 5/10.

  • jonwii says:

    Is Mix become a female again at the end of aquarion Evol?