OK, for a person who dislikes giant fighting robot shows, why did I watch another giant fighting robot show? Well, call me a hopeless optimist, but I am genuinely wishing that I can find a giant fighting robot show that works. Like an honest lawyer, I know there’s one out there, but I haven’t see it as of yet.

OK, it’s the slight future (2016) and Kouichi Hayase (Mr. Intense up there) is bullied and set upon by other students, as bullying is both a Japanese tradition and an anime trope. One day, after school, feeling lost and forlorn, he takes a short cut through the nearby forest and manages to get a GFR to crash into him (not like he is there with semaphore flags, P-L-E-A-S-E L-A-N-D O-N M-E). He awakens to find a naked girl next to him (that’s the clothed one up there, Emi Kizaki). He takes her home and learns he has partial amnesia. Then, other GFRs attack the town. He discovers he can pilot this one and uses it to defeat the enemies. Nest, he learns the shocking truth: he is dead. The machine revived him, but now the two of them share control of this robot.

OK, Kouichi goes a bit power-drunk and tries to be a champion of justice, but wrecks everything in the process. Finally, JUDA (which is disguised as a medical company) recruits him to fly his robot, and he meets the other members who also do this, but have done it for longer.

OK, I’ll stop using that as an open, but I would have gotten a better splash panel for this, but it was too small, as you could see the rest of the flying circus. Suffice it to say it is the same problem that I have encountered with this ‘fish-out-of-water’ tales: the veterans look askance on this tyro who has lots of zeal but not experience, and then do NOTHING at all to help him acclimate to his new situation, save make rude and snarky comments about him, both behind his back and to his face. Yeah, they’ll smack him around and denigrate him and undercut his support and give him the back of the hand, but as far as anything helpful, he is well and truly on his own.

On the whole, it is just another GFR, actually not much different plot wise than “Eureka Seven”, but without the over-the-top abuse. Still, you feel for Kouichi. He has so much to give and equally so much to learn, yet, he is still an outcast and unwanted. They can wrest control of the robot from him, but they would have to kill him in order to achieve that. Well, they aren’t that craven….as of yet.

*Sigh* It was another failed attempt by me to see if I can find a good GFR. I was so frustrated by this show that I wrote a fanfic on the last episode, just so I was satisfied with the conclusion. It could have done more, but fell into tried and true tropes. Nothing really out of the ordinary.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork           7 (Standard character design)
Plot                  5 (Seen it before)
Pacing              7 (it works for what it needs)
Effectiveness    6 (Too many curtsy turns)
Conclusion       6 (It gets to a coupler point)
Fan Service      3 (A similar show would be “Okamisan”)

Overall            6 (Plus de seme)

And remember, it’s first run until you see it. I am a champion for justice. Or maybe it’s just ice.