CoCodeBlazeFate
September 24, 2017
Mixed Feelings
So, Isekai, Monster Hunter, and early day Iron-Blooded Orphans, and combining all of these parts together, you get...a terribly mediocre show! That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, this show is a somewhat fun, mechanical, mess! An entertaining but very badly written Isekai show that had a ton of passion for the art of giant robots. That means despite not being very good (to the point where mediocre is giving it a bit too much credit), I can respect and enjoy it to some degree. So, why is it still mediocre, and what about all this really gets me to enjoy it aside from its spirit? Well,let’s find out, shall we?
There are...a ton of problems unfortunately with the narrative. For one, a ton of stuff is basically the narrator I explaining story beats or skipping stuff and saying what happened in between. It gives me Gundam Wing flashbacks and that is not ok. For a civilization about creating mechs to fend off beasts, knowing that they haven't made any remote innovation in the past century is rather disconcerting, especially when you consider the nature of a typical mecha show. When Ernesti (back then known as Kurata) dies in that original life, he just died without fanfare and we don't see what happened to him, let alone how he became reborn into this world. It also implies that he just basically hijacked the body of the boy he became; that's kinda fucked up. There are some real asspulls too, like how Ernesti used magic to pilot the Guair out of nowhere and how he was strong enough to pull the controls out despite other characters tugging on them quite hard just to move. I get that these run on magic, but again, this came out of nowhere.
There are other errors and dumb moments too, like when Kerhild had a chance to slay Edgar, whose Knight mech had been disabled, she (according to the visual damage since that was offscreen) simply slammed her sword into the cockpit and left instead of thrusting the sword through it to finish him. A potentially cool battle in episode 5 is skipped and given that there is some sort of war that gets ignited, the amount of time skips in development while nothing happens is disconcerting. I do like how they spend a lot of time on the building process and the camaraderie that comes of it though, even if they sorta still gloss over it. Not helping anything is the fact that Ernesti kinda dances near Gary Stu territory, nor is the fact that the pacing is a bit out of whack thanks to the obscene SAO level time skips.
That said, there are some moments that are actually pretty good, like with the king and his random duking it out for a flashy mech and showing that they're both the same basically, except one has withered a bit with age. I'm not going to really spoil too much here though despite the overall lukewarm opinion I have on the show. Even still, they can't save this pretty ravaged script that somehow gets crazier and more ludicrous in the second half. The final 5 episodes in particular are far too fast-paced given the contents within, and thus come off as disjointed that they introduce a bunch of holes and errors. I feel like they should've been their own cour to work at all, so that doesn't help matters either.
Ernesti is really OP. This kinda cuts both ways. It's nice to see that he takes his skills from his world to this one, so of course he’s knowledgeable about giant robots, but to know that with all this, he also becomes a top tier magic expert who innovates there too, is a stretch. He’s basically a spunky skid, and that's fun enough to see, but he does become unreasonably OP overall despite there being a good reason for some of what he can do. Unfortunately, he comes dangerously close to Gary Stu territory, always making so many advances with mainly his ideas and little outside input, having most of everything revolve around him (and I'll explain those ramifications in a bit), and being the only one to come up with crazy new innovations, as well as some of the other aforementioned things. What’s saving him a bit is his enthusiasm and passion for robots, the fact that some of what he is capable of is understandable right out the get-go, and the fact that even his stuff notably needs work, leading to himself other people being able to modify his ideas. The fact that he is a mecha enthusiast gives me some bias towards him though. The dude has fucking orgasms over this shit.
I'm sure many of us can agree that Shirley from Code Geass is not a good character, right? I mean, she’s basically there to kiss up to the MC and always devote everything about her character to him, to some extent at least. Well, Adeltrud aka “Addy” is some next level shit! The only thing separating her from being Miyuki tier shit here is the fact they there is no incest love at all, but it is still a one-sided crush. Thankfully it sometimes gets played to admittedly humorous degrees but this is largely her character.
This, in particular, brings us to that whole Gary Stu issue. You see, since so much of this show is focused on Ernesti, his energy, and how awesome he is, we don't really get to see the other characters shine, a common symptom of a Gary Stu character. I'm not even gonna try to list the characterizations of the other character for this reason. I'm just thankful they don't come off as horrendous character archetypes, and some that come close, like the old man rival engineer, do get somewhat subverted (that way he isn't just a senile and jealous old coot character, he’s one that eventually finds passion again, thanks to you know who) or otherwise have something to safe then from being just a bad archetype. Doesn't mean that the cast isn't bad, because it most certainly is, though again, biases to some characters like Ernesti, and the absolutely gorgeous Helvi, even though they're not actually good characters. Besides, I don't even wanna get started in the villain characters, especially the ones from the final arc, which are all terrible and generic. There are some attempts to show some character relationships but they all fall flat too, and when we are often missing useful characters, that's a problem too for an already bloated but lacking cast.
Studio 8-Bit was in charge of this show's creation and I must say, they did a good job in the visual department. It seems I'm lucky enough to only see the works of theirs that have CGI because theirs is actually not half bad. The Silhouette Knights do have choppy frame rates in episode 1 and there is a mecha dragon that suffers from bad CGI and frame rates too, and up close, most of these don't always look very good, but the coloring and way it's done here somewhat helps remedy that, and once the kinks are ironed out, they become fun to watch in battle, both in swarming an enemy or in one on one mech combat. Those sequences are insanely fast paced and done very well, especially when we see how they take advantage of the new equipment. They're based on knight armor so they definitely don't look as appealing or potentially iconic as say, a typical Gundam, but these designs are nice enough that I can see decent toy sales of them. Those swords look especially cool. The CGI demon beasts look even better, especially that giant beast that looks like a gigantic blue Avalugg. The giant magic rods don't look nearly as good, unfortunately. Still, the CGI, on the whole, is actually pretty decent, though most kept inconsistent and certainly not great.
The actual art is pretty nice too, not just for the characters (just look at the way they did Ernesti’s hair, that looks sick af) but especially for the magic. I especially love what they did with the eyes. The shading for the magic fire attacks looks splendid, really selling how much of a spectacle magic can be, even though it becomes a bit overused and therefore lose its luster. The animation is overall pretty decent too, even with a few minor errors like having one scene show 3 explosion dots towards the center and the moment afterwards having those dots much farther away, but it all looks good, especially coupled with the luckily very kinetic action. Sometimes we even see beasts in 2D and they look ok. Characters don't always blend well though, so that's a fault. Overall, this show looks nice. The reused animation is also very minor, so that's alright, I guess.
The music isn't as noteworthy, unfortunately. For one, I don't care for the OPs. I don't think they entirely fit the tone or setting here this series presents overall and they're ok at best songs on their own. The OST is pretty decent though. There are some decent if unmemorable tracks that often fit the scenarios well, especially in most of the action scenes.
The mecha battles were pretty fun for most part and so were the big battles against some of the demon beasts. This show's attitude towards mechs also greatly appealed to me. That being said, the crypt kind of annoyed me at times and on the whole, it wasn't as fun as it could've been thanks to that, especially in the final five episodes which left me woefully disappointed. I still had enough enjoyment with this one, more than I should have.
There are the makings of a good show here. Give it two cours and tidy up all the errors and the show would've been fine. I admire the spunk this show has and as a mecha nerd, this spoke to me somewhat, but it's inner workings are really on the fritz, like a loose Gunpla Kit. Shame since for a while, I probably would've recommended this series despite its faults but boy are they too many for me to safely recommend to anyone who isn't either highly interested in the concept of high fantasy crossing with mecha, a total mech nerd like myself, or really into overpowered protagonists. There are plenty of better mech shows with even better action, but this is at least one of the better Isekai shows I've seen, which speaks to the low quality of these kinds of shows. Well, with all that said, I bid you adieu.
