Slayers S1 -
Lightheartery that doesn't really lend itself to having anything said about it. Fairly enjoyable. Have ordered the next season.
Aura Battler Dunbine -
Decent. Not a big fan of the way things are left somewhat open in the ending but any more information would break the way the series was framed. Although it's not like it was a particularly good frame, so I am divided on whether this is really enough of an excuse.
Subs (by White_Base) were mediocre. Never to the point of ununderstandability, at least.
The Aura Road sure can pick 'em... the majority of people that come through are somewhat sociopathic. Even Show spends a fair amount of time antagonising people, although he mostly limits that to towards Nie.
Cham spends a lot of time seemingly being contrary for the sake of being contrary also.
On the other hand, Drake and Burn are both far less babyeating than I expected them to be.
They start to give Garalia backstory, but then she is lamely killed off. Not sure what the point of going to the effort was, then. On top of that, Zet and her were supposed to be entering a relationship before this, but Zet never seems to care that she died or even mention her afterwards.
Interestingly they don't really give any of the other villains any backstory. Maybe they decided that it was too highbrow and attempted to get rid of the evidence.
Laughably horribly at one point Show starts claiming that Byston Well was peaceful before the Aura Machines were invented. This is from a guy who wasn't around then and despite evidence to the contrary, including one person stating that it wasn't true who he just brushes off.
So Show and Marvel go to Laas Wau to destroy a factory there. Show ends up 'rescuing' Silky Mau and then they leave without doing what they went there for. Annoyingly enough they start to use this construct in abundance in the second half of the show, where taking out the Gea Gring takes forever because they keep leaving without finishing things. SRW does a good job at conveying the tediousness if I remember its appearances there correctly.
So Jacoba Aon requests that Show deal with the Aura Machine problem, which he is happy enough to agree to. Then the next episode she kills herself to deal with the problem in an entirely unwanted way. How unnecessarily impatient.
Riml can't catch a break. Early on there are a number of attempts to rescue her which all fail. Later, she manages to escape herself, and finds that all the people that were trying to rescue her before now think that she's a spy and don't trust her, and just when she's pretty much dealt with that she gets captured again. Then later on she escapes again and then gets captured again due to being uncautious. Then later on she escapes again and embarks on an ill-fortuned revenge attempt. On top of this, Show et al had been advised by a seer to prevent her revenge from happening which makes no sense considering that she fails utterly at it without their interference. Further, while Show et al had been unhappy about the idea of attacking the Gea Gring while Marvel was held prisoner on it, they have no qualms about attacking it while Riml's on it, which makes sense initially as they don't know she's there but doesn't really do so after they find this out.
The armies of Earth are bizarrely triggerhappy when it comes to nukes in this show. You would expect that after they'd seen that the nukes weren't having any effect they would have stopped, considering the radiation and everything. There is a time when they're continually firing nukes at the Gea Gring to prevent them from seeing that the Goloan is coming which is completely absurd.
Shot Weapon & the Spriggan seem to be destroyed in the penultimate episode only for them to be around in the final episode as if nothing had happened, which is somewhat disconcertening. I should rewatch the point where they're initially destroyed to make sure that I'm not misinterpreting it. [EDIT] On rechecking, it looks like the Spriggan isn't completely destroyed in fact, but it does take somewhat massive damage and cockpit explosions. That it shows up without injury in the final episode is still a problem however as the final follows directly on from the previous.
