Boy, how well this series turned out. To think that even at episode eight, Chiko still hasn’t grown up to the version of her we keep seeing in the OP. Every part of this series suggests that the creators are continuously building up, and this building up is already starting to pay off.
The robot turns out to be a humanoid weapon, thereby introducing a supernatural element in this series rather forcefully. If I understood correctly, then the country Chiko lives in (I assume Japan) tried to develop humanoid weapons, though they were never able to be used in the war, because it ended before this technology could be perfected. The woman and robot we saw in the previous episode turn out to be the leftovers from this research: they’ve got superhuman powers but at the same time they seem to be suffering. I’m not sure what kind of torture their bodies go through.
But such a huge and lumpy robot was of course a perfect opponent for Chiko to handle on her own, since she herself was small and light. It forced her to take advantage of this. At one point, the animation style also changed completely, in a really messy kind. It’s interesting to consider how this isn’t the first anime to use this technique, and the fact that they’re used for major fight scenes (take for example the last episode of Macross Frontier, or the final episodes of Shion no Ou). But I do want to urge the creators to be consistent with this style, and not just have one such scene in the entire series. The reason why this worked so well in Shion no Ou was because the animation was building up for it.
Chiko’s future side-kick also surprised me. She’s further away from the spoiled brat than I imagined. As it turns out, she’s incredibly rich, and has to live with the future prospect of marrying at her eighteenth and living a boring life without having to do anything. As she’s really tomboyish, she seems to have convinced herself to live her life to the fullest while she still can, and so she came to overglorify anything that resembles cool adventures. Now I also understand why she’ll easily make friends with Chiko.
I’m surprised as well, this anime is becoming better as it got along. I’m waiting to see how Chiko can take hold of her own future and dismiss of her aunt, maybe with some help from Tome