Ginsoukikou Ordian

Platinumhugen Oridian is a mecha anime with epic aspirations, but it ends up feeling broken and confusing. Story: The plot itself is grand in scale, with several factions and numerous people, each with their own agendas, all centered around and connected by a mysterious experiment. The story begins by simply getting events rolling, leaving all explanations until later. An age old method of creating mystery, and while things remain simple the series goes along just fine. Unfortunately, the plot does thicken, and explanations become necessary, at which point, the problem arises. While some major facts are explained well, other facts are only given vague explanations, and non-essentialinformation may be skipped entirely. This also affects character development, and there are times where you may wonder why a character or faction is doing what it's doing. Also, the end is very abrupt. The instant the conflict is resolved, the credits roll. I feel that if the story had been better explained, it would have been quite engrossing, or at the very least, consistent enough to be certain it's nonsense. Possibly, the show had a tight budget, and could not afford enough episodes to explain better. I should note, I was watching a fansub, and several times, consective sentences would fail to make sense together, so I can't be sure it was the best translation, though to my knowledge, Anime-Keep has a decent reputation. Art: The art is decent, and reasonably detailed, though there are occasional inconsistencies. Sound: Fine. I didn't notice anything particularly good or bad about it. Though, I could swear that's the same 'weapon charging' sound used in so many other animes. Character: Many characters with well-developed personalities, though, possibly due to the mentioned lack of explanation, they will occasionally make incongruous decisions. Enjoyment: I believe the series is meant to be 'intelligent' and 'thought-provoking' but it's really difficult to enjoy such a series while you're asking, "Why the heck are they doing that?" and I think the ratio of talking to action is tipped too much in favour of talking for action junkies to get much value by just ignoring the plot. Overall: The series had potential, but really needed to be better told to be worth watching. Unless, of course, in Japanese the story is actually well told, in which case we need a better fansub, but I doubt that would solve the problem 100%.