This episode returned to the action.And well… it was just over the top, like everything else in this series. In particular the focus on Shrade was just meant to kick ass and be as grand as possible. Now, I know Shoji Kawamori, so I’m not going to be trolled by one of those twists again, but his entire performance in this episode was just wonderful. The soundtrack in this series is great, but it’s at its best when he is involved.
In comparison, that dog bad guy still needs a bit of work. He has potential as Mikono’s future groom, but right now his characters still isn’t interesting enough, not to mention that he pulled a very cliched retreat at the end of this episode. Again though: this episode promised some interesting connections; now live up to those!
Going back to that soundtrack… how big is it anyway? I mean, there are series that have two or three good tracks and keep repeating them, but this episode came yet again with more tracks I hadn’t heard before, and they just all kick ass. 2012 is definitely going to be an interesting year, with two Yoko Kanno series. Although I did hear that a lot of this soundtrack was composed for the first season already. My guess is (considering Yoko Kanno’s inactivity for the past years) that the rest of the soundtrack was composed by the composer of Zegapain’s soundtrack. Seriously. She should do more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
The original Aquarion had two full OSTs, and they probably re$mixed some tracks and composed a lot of new music for the sequel. So quite large I imagine.
Actually, cca. 90% of the music in EVOL is from the first series, the exceptions are Shrade’s musical hijinks, some random BGMs, and of course the songs, though one background song in the previous episode was from the first series as well. The first series had two soundtracks (both are awesome) plus a couple of bgms that didn’t make it to the CDs.
I’m sort of sitting on the fence when it comes to the music. On the one hand, it’s AWESOME. On the other hand, it wasn’t composed for this series. Those who haven’t seen the first series probably don’t mind, but for me it’s kind of distracting – Sousei no Aquarion is in many ways different from Aquarion EVOL and whenever I hear the music I can’t help feeling a sort of dissonance (ha!).
I’m actually finding it pretty awesome even though I’ve seen the series. The two are so different that I need little things like the BGM to remind me it’s actually a sequel.
I want Fudo to be killed. That way, we won’t have to hear his lame speeches
And I thought I was the only one who hated him 😀
Umm a lot of the soundtrack in the last two episodes is just classical music (I believe I heard some chopin in there), so don’t go praising the composers when the creators just picked a few royalty free classical music tracks.
You’ll get trolled plenty of times if you watched Toradora. The twists will make you shit in your pants.
What does this have to do with Toradora? Also while I think Toradora is awesome it certainly never made my bowels move. I don’t think it has any particular twists, just awesome characters and nice drama.
Wouldn’t it be interesting and a much bigger troll if the show really kills off Shrade? But of course since he’s in both OP and ED I guess it won’t happen like that.
I always thought Macross Froniter was an amazing-looking (and sounding) series, especially in the beginning, and no other series I was watching at the time could match it in sheer grandiosity. Aquarion Evol may lack interstellar convoys and clamshell city ships (so far), but there’s no doubt in my mind that in the four years between Froniter and this, anime has made a lot of progress on the visuals front.
It’s really a treat to watch a weekly series that is so well-crafted and intricately-detailed, and in this week we got to see a night battle in the heart of Neo-Kowloon, which is really brought to life. While I’m are a little weary of the emerging Amata/Mikono/Kagura triangle as it stands (will Mikono just turn into Ranka Lee?), I do like how important a role the character’s feelings towards each other matter to the strength of Aquarion and the result of the battle.
I also like how loud and conspicuous the soundtrack is. There’s a lot going on visually; it needs and deserves a strong, robust, bombastic muscial accompaniment, and it has it. Can it border on excessive at times? Yes, but that’s the point. Aquarion Evol is about excessive stimulation.