Aquarion- ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH. WHY? WHY, JAPAN? WHY MUST YOU KEEP DOING THIS TO ME? Why must you continually ruin entertaining series by slipping in unnecessary filler, incomplete stories and shitty endings?! Ugh. The first 18 episodes were entertaining as hell. Hilarious stuff. The show worked because it didn't seem to take itself as seriously as you think it will. It was like a mecha Utena, complete with screwed up character relationships, thinly veiled sexual metaphors and awesome battles set to great music.
Turbulence hit with 16-18, since they were pretty much comedic filler, but the show was mostly a comedy before, and the episodes were, by and large, ranging between funny and goddamn hilarious. But... as soon as I saw the OP change at Ep 19, I knew the series was about to go down the crapper. The first theme is... so damn good, and it's amazing that no matter how many times you hear it, as the OP and in the episodes, it just rocks. The second OP is an awful song and works even worse as a battle theme, especially for a show like Aquarion. Suddenly, the story tries to go from simple and fun to complicated and angsty. Maybe if they had, I don't know, 13 more episodes instead of 8 and much better writers this could have been done, but no. The battles got a lot less epic, since the new theme SUCKED HARDCORE. Too many villains, not enough exposition. The time they wasted with 16-18 really coulda been used better if this was the route they were going to take. Where at the rate they were going pre-19, you expected an epic, awesome, Gurren Lagann type final battle. Instead it was just... shitty. Ugh.
Commander Gen was fun, him treating the kids the way he does makes sense because they damn well deserve it. They just... decide to gloss over the answers to the biggest questions about his character, namely why he rocks so much. What should be an OMGWIN moment ends up a few boring seconds shoved in the middle of other stuff and still is never fully explained. On a humorous note though, his philosophy lessons reminded me of the South Park episode where Tweak freaks out at his parents. I'm surprised no one pulled it on him: "AHHHH! YOUR EXPLANATIONS NEVER MAKE ANY SENSE IWANTOUTIWANTOUT!"
Sirius is on the Sakaki and Sasuke tier, officially. If you're in an anime or game and your name starts with an S, you're officially on notice.
I... haven't been this upset with how a show turned out in a while. The worst kind and true definition of a trainwreck. At least Gaess was bad all the the through and got worse, so it was funny to watch the fail. A real trainwreck has to have momentum and turn from a good ride to something horrible.
Gah. I need something to rescue me from this mood. Time for a Gunbuster/Dai-Guard/Gurren-Lagann marathon.