I love giant robots, I really do, and since I finished 3 mecha series over the past 2 weeks I’m going to review 4 mecha shows as a bundle. This includes eureka seven, gundam 00, gurren lagann, and rahxephon.
Eureka seven
Plot in a sentence: Renton joins the outlaw group Gekko state and falls in love with Eureka, together, they try to save thw world.
Art: The character designs are not to my tastes, but simple and pretty stylish. However, I loved the mecha designs. 8/10
Animation: During the slice of life scenes, decent, but during fights? Beautiful lasers and missiles fly through the air, blasts of wind brush by the stylish and streamlined mechas as a homage to Itano circus. WOW. 9.5/10
Music and voice acting: Kind of strange and mostly techno. I didn’t think that any of the bgm was memorable, however they did fit the scenes really well. The same thing applies to the songs. The voice acting was quite good, and I was really impressed with Anemone. 13/15
Story: Quite confusing and werid, with a few episodes feeling a little too filler-ish. Many things didn’t make sense to me but overall it was pretty enjoyable, especially the last few episodes. However, I didn’t like the ending at all. 7/10
Gut feelings: Pretty confusing and a bit too long, but still quite good. 3/5
Total: 40.5/50
Gundam 00 season 1
Plot in a sentence: A paramilitary group, celestial being, with 4 gundams and their pilots, the gundam meisters, is trying to end all war with armed conflicts.
Art: I didn’t like how the character’s eyes looked and was pretty sad to see Yun Kouga’s style getting lost in the anime, a lot of colors also clashed and looked bad. However, the gundams look great, the backgrounds are beautiful, and overall, the characters do look good (ever if Tieria looks like that guy from Hikaru no go.) 8.5/10
Animation: Very solid. The fights are done well and it’s very smooth. 10/10
Music and voice acting: Half of the gundam meisters sound sexy, the other half sounds really gay (in the literal sense. I’m 100% sure that Tieria fell in love with another guy). The girls sound really good too, and not a single annoying voice within earshot. The bgm is dramatic and the songs are great. I especially love the second ending. Even if you hate Gundam with a passion, at least listen to this song. 15/15
Story: Plot holes come up quite often, and a lot of things are awkward (for instance, Marina. I don’t see the point of having her character in the story, she doesn’t really do anything). There isn’t much of a plot but it was still exciting to watch. 8.5/10
Gut feelings: I don’t know why, but I really like this series. 4.5/5
Total: 46.5/50
Gurren lagann
Plot in a sentence: Gehh… this one’s hard. Simon lived underground but then starts a rebellion group trying to let everyone live above ground peacefully but it’s harder than he thought.
Art: Stylish, but not really to my tastes. I didn’t like the designs of any of the guys besides Simon and Viral, and the designs for the mecha was too face heavy and bulky. I liked all the different forms of Gurren Lagann though. Some scenes, like Nia’s flashback, was done very stylishly, and the backgrounds are beautiful. 8.5/10
Animation: Excellent and off the top. 10/10
Music and voice acting: The only voice that I didn’t really like was that of Nia (too high), but I really liked a lot of the voices (Kamina, Yoko, and Viral in particular). The music was very fitting and so were the songs. However I didn’t like the first ending at all. 13/15
Story: Exciting and excellent with epicness all around, but I just wish that they threw in a bit more plot armor. Also, I think that some of the relationships were a bit rushed, and that the writers cheated with Simon’s relationship with Nia by using a time skip and not letting the viewers see it develop. I didn’t really like the ending, as it felt a bit too rushed and the biggest problem wasn’t solved. But those are only minor complaints. 9/10
Gut feelings: EPIC, but kind of akward with the ending. 4.5/5
Total: 45/50
Rahxephon
Plot in a sentence: Gehh….. this one’s really hard ….. Ayato finds out that the world he lives in is radically different that he thought, strange beings are attacking him, and a mysterious girl tells him to pilot a giant mecha: rahxephon.
Art: Great. Ayato is one of the best looking pilots in anime history, everything looks balances and gorgeous. However, this IS a bit old and not as crisp as I’d like. 9/10
Animation: Only 1 thing out the whole series really impressed me, and that was a 1 second scene in the op. The rest of the show has solid animation, but it’s not good enough to really leave an impression. 6/10
Voice acting and music: This show has heavy ties with music, and the bgm is really good. I love the opening, but I dislike the ending. The voice actors did their roles, but none of them left an impression on me. 12/15
Story: Really strange. I didn’t really get this series, and the ending was so weird that I wouldn’t have realized what was happening if I didn’t read its article on wikipedia. Many things didn’t make sense, and the overall pacing feels a bit off. 5/10
Gut feelings: It just didn’t click with me. 2/5
Total: 34/50
Calamitous Intent 
Mecha? Awesum. Which three are the ones you finished in the past two weeks?
I rather agree with you about E7‘s music: I don’t remember it well, but I remember that it fitted the show’s trippy and colourful action sequences really, really well. But perhaps if I appreciated trance and electronica more I’d be more qualified to judge. I read somewhere that the writers wanted to make the first half of this series limited and personal in scope, and the second half more political and broader. I’m not sure how well that worked, and I suspect I might have enjoyed it more if it was thirty-nine episodes long. But there you go.
I’m pretty positively biased when it comes to Gundam. Mass cast slaughter was a nice change after SEED Destiny‘s excesses (seriously, the only thing I can imagine killing Kira Yamato is the Chouginga Gurren-Lagann), and a nice throwback to the good old days of LolTomino. Whether Marina’s useful at all remains to be seen in the second season, but like you I struggle to see how the writers can can use what they did with her in the first twenty-five episodes.
In the alternate world where anime are rated purely on AWESOMENESS, TTGL is obviously an infinity/50 anime. In this world I feel that it’s more of a 35/50 show: I felt that the beginning episodes were rather weak, though flashes of AWESOME did shine through, and the story was a little slow immediately after the timeskip.
But hey, it was AWESOME.
Rahxephon I can’t comment on, since I’ve never seen it.
I have to agree with you on Rahxephon, I enjoyed it although i wasn’t really sure what was going on most of the time!!!!
I have yet to complete Gundam 00 although I do plan to.
Oh and sorry about MSN the other night, my comp rebooted, there is a problem with the motherboard battery.
As for Gurren I can’t comment since I haven’t watched it.
hmm I’ve seen Eureka 7 and TTGL. But I like TTGL by far. And Gundam 00 makes me confused, I stopped watching after like, 2 episodes.
Sakura needs to watch TTGL. O_O
@ Hoshi, nooooooooo too many shows. I haven’t even watched World Destruction yet and I know thats up to two already. I just watched through episode 2 of Yakushiji Ryoko and now I know I definitely like that show.
Since it also marks the end of that particular case I’ll start a write up ^_^ You know some of the BGM reminded me of the comical BGM for Ghost Hunt…
I don’t like a lot of robot shows, even though I did follow Voltron anime when it was out. But this show Gundam may be worth checking out. Especially since it looks like there are some cute guys in it!
I need more wallpaper like that!
Thanks
i dont no much about gundam 00 but im gonna start watching it
and also i think gurren laggen is genius in anime form its like if fooly cooly had more episode
i admit sometime the is a little bit cut and go but i this that works in it favor . the english dub takes out alot tho u enjoy it more if u watch the raw but that just me
….. the episodes with kamina are the best
Yes. Kamina was the greatest character in the entire series, and possibly the best that came out from that studio.
I really liked your reviews, even though i came to this site for a wallpaper :).
I would have to disagree with you on eureka 7 though. I personally thought the music was amazing and the whole vibe of a sort of underground rebel community was very convincing. The plot line was very developed if you had time in between episodes to think about what you just saw and not rush through them.
By the way, is that wallpaper up top from gundam 00?
@switch: Haha, watching the first season in dub and marathoning the rest was probably a bad idea then. I think the top is from destiny, though I can’t be sure. Definitely not 00, they don’t have wings.
woah! amazing shoot of gundam mobile! I like it.
Hi, for me the best is gundam 00.
Oh, and Rin’s re-drawing-ation is going pretty well.