That was just absolutely amazing. Both this franchise and this OVA keep just heading in new and different directions, and yet at the same time this OVA is also bringing together the different parts of the series. This episode really embodied the things that made the mystery-parts of the Votoms-franchise so awesome: it just keeps throwing you in new settings and situations that are completely original.
It was a building-up episode, but it did that extremely well with its atmosphere. This child of god gets even more intriguing than it already was now that it got abducted by those strange huge bugs, who seem to know exactly what to do with it, along with that girl who turned out to be a previous Child of God, who managed to survive for god knows how many places, suggesting that these children of god are some sort of immortal, which is pretty believable considering how Wiseman lived for 3000 years.
And yet that makes Chirico even more intriguing, as he’s supposed to be even above these deities. I also loved all of the religious subtext that this episode again brought to the table. Religion in Votoms was always something vague, yet very much real. It never really was explained what exactly Chirico’s powers are, and yet his destiny plays a key part here: wherever he goes, something really important happens and everyone wants to be a part of it. At first sight Chirico seems to be nothing more than yet another variation on the Gundam-esque Newtypes, but his nature lies far deeper than that.
Oh, and what I also really liked was that the creators finally showed a bit more depth to the scene in which Pailsen tried to burn Chirico. It’s now revealed that he burned the entire research institute in which he was gathering potential Abnormal Survivors, and I think that that’s the point in which Pailsen really found out about Chirico. I’m especially intrigued by that boy and girl who ran towards each other, and what their relationship with Chirico was. And again, I loved how mature Chirico reacted to it.
We really need more series like this in the future. Heck, the Gen-ei hen has pretty much become my favourite OVA of 2010, and to think that there still are one episode, one movie and two side-story movies left. the entire Votoms franchise really is something unique. The animation could have been better, but ah, who cares? It’s nowhere near bad enough to ruin the rest of this experience.
OVA Episode Rating: 8,75/10
It seems to me that Bandai and Sunrise are expending all their money only in Gundam Unicorn instead of share the same amount of money in equals parts for their both biggest franchises (Gundam and Votoms, or maybe Code Geass?).
That’s a shame, because this series of OVAs really deserved a quality of animation as good as Gundam Unicorn.