Rinne no Lagrange’s biggest flaw is its pointless fanservice. Aside from that, it definitely doesn’t stand as inferior as the other Tatsuo Sato series this season. Where Mouretsu Pirates had its characters that impressed me, Rinne no Lagrange surprised me with how creative its direction can be. And I don’t mean in the big lines; that part is pretty standard. Instead, I’m referring to the small scenes and scenarios. These were written with inspiration.
The result is a standard mecha show at first, with some nice touches once you look more closely. Ships that were destroyed last episode are still broken and help bring continuity in the world, to that one robot that was defeated being towed away… still upside down. But I’m also referring to things like getting lost while trying to find a hotspot for your cell phone. Oh, and the regular weapons actually aren’t useless this time, but actually serve their purpose to buy time.
The crowning moment of this episode however was the underwater scene. It’s a very neat idea at that point in the episode, to just have her quietly talk with her sister. when she felt down. And Youko, you made my day. You are without a doubt my favorite character of this series.
The cast in this series is fleshed out very differently from Mouretsu Pirates. Mouretsu Pirates did it by giving characters really time to play themselves out. It had humour, but that was secondary. In this show though, the tongue-in-cheek nature is much more a core part of this show, and the characters are fleshed out in how they react to everything, rather than how they act.
Oh, and that soundtrack of this show is really good here.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
I dont know if I’m getting crazy from watching so much anime, but I didn’t really see any fanservice in the second episode. These days you can’t really get functional uniforms in anime, so I suppose that would be fanservice, but in comparison to Aquarion and Ano Natsu this show has VERY tame fanservice… it’s kind of wierd that you complain about fanservice here, when Aquarion Evol has much more fanservice… and even if they try and tie it in with the plot it’s a pretty lame excuse.
It’s definitely there, though I understand it feeling like it isn’t when you compare it to how your typical anime does things.
It’s just the type of fanservice that prefers to maximize the amount of curvature and skin we see at every possible opportunity, by using clever framing, posing, and such given the character’s designs and their costumes.
It’s a bit less in-your-face about it, since the script continues grinding away rather than calling attention to the panty flash, ripped clothing, characters fondling each other, etc. When you stack this up against, say, Nisemonogatari, of course you’d barely notice 🙂
But ultimately you’re still given a good amount of time to see a girl straddling an awkward pilot’s seat, stare at her leotard, or get a low-angle shot of her legs in her classically-short miniskirt.
So many mechas/space anime this season xD I can’t really say if I have a favourite yet but Rinne No Lagrange is quite fun to watch. I like how they fleshed out the main character by exploring her fears and motives for piloting that mecha. Sure she’s quite simple-minded, but at least they use time to develop her!! 🙂 Love her cousin too!
I think this one’s slowly winning me over. It feels kinda hollow, but in an intentional way. This was another second episode that felt like almost nothing happened, yet looked good while doing it. But here it feels oddly like it’s supposed to be this way, while in Mouretsu Pirates it feels like a different show than I was expecting.
And, as I mentioned in another comment, after watching Nisemonogatari I’m not nearly as “bothered” by the fanservice here. It feels secondary to the show’s purpose, and the shows slowly pulling me in for it’s story rather than it’s fanservice.
I was a bit off-put by how she had her cellphone conveniently with her underwater. Wouldn’t it have flown off somewhere while the Vox took off? Or did she actually have somewhere to pin it on that skintight suit, and then conveniently removed it off-camera and placed it on that spot? I know, I’m being unfair, but it was still awfully clumsy after the realism of seeing her hunting for bars earlier.
The cellphone is actually pinned to the stand inside the robot. You can see her removing it before picking up the phone.
well, or actually it’s hanging in a strap, so it seems a bit wierd that it didnt come loose during the crash.
Yeah, that’s what I ended up assuming, but it sure didn’t look like it had something pinning it down. It looked like it was just casually resting there, so I just thought “must be a some strong, non-destructive magnetic clip or something”.