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ローゼンメイデン 
Opening theme: 「君へ向かう光」- Kimi e Mukau Hikari by Akino Arai (15MB, for PSP/Quicktime)
At this point in time, I'm not too sure if this is the kind of series that I'd like to follow. On the one hand, the character design is quite good, the characters are interesting, and the story has enough mysteries to keep me intrigued. On the other hand, the CG is abysimal in my opinion. I hate flourescent kind of colour and this one has this kind of colour in spades. I personally think this element brings the quality of the series down quite considerably. It feels really jaring everytime the animation switch from the nice 2D to the crappy 3D build of the robot. Having said that, there are actually some nice use of CGI found throughout the episode. For example, the CG used in the opening theme's visual is beautiful in that James Bond 007 DVD menu kind of way. That is until the flourescent giant robot and 3 ugly large rectangle boxes start appearing on the screen.
Brief summary:
The episode begins with a pilot called Kyou disengaging himself with his co-pilot while a mission on another planet gone horribly wrong. After the title screen, the episode shows Kyou as a high school student who is fixated on a new girl who is seen diving into the school's pool. Kyou, being the hot-headed person that he is immediately falls head over heel for her and decides to swim as well. When he gets there, however, he sees the girl muttering something but no sound seems to come out of her mouth. The girl then dives into the pool and is never seeen again, forcing Kyou and his friend, Ryouko to think that the girl is a ghost since she doesn't even appear on the camera that Ryouko used to film her. Later on that night, however, Kyou begins to realise what the girl said to her and it was as request to save this world. All of a sudden, his apartment begins to glow flourescent green and some kind of a mark appears on Kyou's forehead.
The mysterious girl that Kyou saw earlier has now appear again and teleports herself and Kyou into the pool. She then pulls him into the pool and tells him that it's time to play the game. When the two falls into the water, however, they start to dematerialise. Kyou then finds himself inside a cockpit of a giant robot which is flying in the middle of a deserted city. Kyou wonders why he feels so familiar with this so the girl tells him that it's probably because this is not his first time piloting the mecha. She also welcomes Kyou to Zegapain and tells him that her name is Misaki Shizuno. Kyou decides to use the opportunity to ask the girl why she was in the pool that day. The girl claims that it was nothing special. She simply wanted to swim. Before they can talk further, however, Kyou notices that a bunch of enemy air squadron called Karzor. Kyou eventually agrees to pilot Zegapain on the condition that he gets to film the girl. The girl laughs and agree to his condition.
So the two off fighting the air squadron. Kyou doesn't seem to have any difficulty fighting the enemies as he picks off the planes one by one. While these happens, Shizuno provides all of the weaponry needs that Kyou possibly needs during the battle. After defeating all of the squadron, a call comes informing them that a fellow unit called Zegatank is in trouble. Because of this, they rush off to help the pair inside Zegatank. When Shizuno makes a contact with the pilot and the helper of the other unit, they seem to recognise Kyou's face even though it doesn't look as if they've met before. Zegapain then easily defeats the enemy robot and is promptly teleported away from the battlefield. The next day, Kyou is seen diving deep into the swimming pool and finds Shizuno laying on the base of the pool. She gives him a "Welcome Home" greeting before swimming up and proceeds to kiss the guy.
Impression:
As far as first episode goes, this one is of mix quality in my opinion. I really like the three main characters and I want to know more about the mystery behind Kyou's past and his possible relationship with Shizuno. Having said that, I'm not sure if I'll be able to withdstand bad CG effects week in, week out. I really don't understand why animators sometimes insist on using 3D when the use of said technique does not actually improve the quality of the overall animation. I am also quite surprise to see Sunrise doing something like this since usually the realm of bad CG effects belong to Gonzo. But I should have seen it coming when Sunrise attempted their first CG animation during some of Yakitate!! Japan's episodes. I actually was looking forward to watching this but now my enjoyment is marred down a bit. I think I'll still follow next week's episode but I'm not sure how long I'll be able to follow it continuously.
...
Somehow, the description o the CGI reminds me of the early Gundam SEED uses of it, especially when the Archangel was on Earth and they were showing off the CGI-ness of it in the rotation parts. The water AND the ship looked patently artificial there, unlike Production I.G.'s use of it in GITS:SAC, where the 3D-animations (of the Tachikomas especially) looked almost like traditional cel-animation as the colors matched everything else about them.
It looks like one of the shows I -was- looking forward to trying is anything but spectacular though, especially with that last development with Shizuno. I've got Soul Link for that sort of thing. :D
I mean, it's one thing to have him completely unaware of his double-life (as the pilot of Zegapain)... but this is a little much.
That is one interesting looking Robot show. It's been a while since I watch Gundam SEED so I need a new series.
Bad CG is my mortal enemy. Seriously, who do people use it!?
We should start some kind of petition and boycott! Not that anyone would care what a couple of anime bloggers think...
This doesn't look bad but I agree that the CG is quite ugly.
The problem is many people will just accept this kind of bad CG and brush it off as something that is acceptable these days.
But this is the reason that some company like Gonzo keeps creating one bad CG trip after another. As long as the public buys it, then they'll think it's okay to create substandard production.
Hey there. I've been looking around for detailed reviews of the new shows this season and your blog is excellent for that, so thank you!
Anyway. Zegapain is one of the series I'm kinda interested in, but the plot sounds awfully dull and typical. You say the characters are interesting, though, which is obviously a plus. The character designs are nice, but as you say, the CG appears iffy. Oh well, we'll see. I'll wait for impressions of subsequent episodes before deciding whether to pick this one up or not.
Oh, and your Mushishi reviews totally rock. The links to reviews of Mushishi episodes from the Mushishi LJ community was what brought me here in the first place. I really enjoy reading your insights after each of those episodes, and you seem to have taste more or less similar to mine, which is why I'm also drawn to your first-episode analyses.
I think Zegapain will appeal to those who think that Shinji from Evangelion is a wimp and can do no good. I always think that's what makes Shinji interesting because he's always full of doubts. Kyou, on the other hand, is very confident, as a result, it's hard to get any kind of tense situation out of the battlefield when he's piloting. After all, he's so good in it. The good interesting about Kyou is that unlike other anime lead, he's a very confident person, to the point of rather abrassive at times. He doesn't seem to hesitate going after the girl that he wants and occasionally makes some lecherous remarks to the girl in question.
Shizuno is your typical mysterious girl from any giant robot series. The thing that sets her apart from the other girls is that she's a lot more mature and actually is rather talkative for a supposedly mysterious girl. Ryouko is filling up the role of Kyou's best female friend. So far she's probably the only one who doesn't go against the gamut of her character. But maybe in the future she'll turn out to have a rather different personality. Some of the background characters like the student representative council members reminds me a bit of Shizuru and Reito from Mai HiME in the sense that they seem to know more than the rest of the other students.
I thought with the advance of computer graphics giant robot will look less and less silly but I guess I was wrong. When Mazinger first appeared a decade or so ago, I thought it looked silly but this is just tacky. And what is that portruding thing that comes out of his chest? I think Evangelion is the only giant robot series where the robot actually looks cool.
I usually don't like to complain about animation, but 3DCG really, really gets to me. Frame-by-frame animation will always look so much better to me until shows can look like Advent Children with a TV budget. But even then I still prefer normal animation. But I digress.
I'm surprised at the relatively good praise this show has been getting. I know I was looking forward to it because I'm a big fan of Sunrise's super robot shows, but I didn't think it would be picked up well by the blogging community. It's good to be proven wrong on this. At least for now.
Now I await a fansub so I can finally cast my opinion.
where do u download all this anime
What, no RahXephon, Zone of the Enders or S-cry-ED?
Everyone is comparing Zegapain to Zone of the Enders on the 'Net (even on IGN) ... why is that?
I think Zegapain's mecha designs are very interesting ... a little bit too bright, but that's bearable if the show's other premises (mystery and character relationships) pay off.
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