RogerBW's Blog

Aquarion Logos 13 June 2016

2015 science fiction, 26 episodes: AniDB. Mecha pilots fight against the corruption of words.

Yeah. The corruption of words. And that's what elevates this above the commonplace. But first I should mention that this is a third suck at the sav for the Aquarion franchise, after Sousei no Aquarion and Aquarion EVOL; it's only very loosely related, though. Yes, there are still combining mecha (airborne individually, humanoid in combination) with various possible configurations, and the act of joining seems to be at least mildly sexual for the pilots, but that's just about it; certainly the new viewer won't be lost by starting here, and in fact I'd rather recommend doing so. This show is set on a recognisable modern world, where the secret organisation Deava fights against word corruption.

And that's the key point. When a word (or rather a kanji) is corrupted, the entire concept becomes corrupted. When that word is "Love", people suddenly start to hate each other; when it's "Summer", there's a sudden blizzard; when it's "Shadow", there's not only darkness but despair. These corruptions are known as MJBK, with the contrived initialism of "Menace of Japanese with Biological Kinetic energy"… but surely it's no coincidence that this sounds like mojibake, literally "character transformation".

The initial plot has a Bad Guy setting up these corruptions for reasons that are unclear; but it then digs back into imagined ancient history and the lost Golden Age, and an attempt to destroy civilisation and bring on what may be the inevitable next stage of humanity. Principals and enemies come and go too, and Deava also acts as a theatre group (because the power of "Verbalism" is how all these mecha are made to work). I don't think I'm reading too much into the story if I see deliberate parody of trops of mecha shows: the five man band including a subverted Big Guy, for example, plus the mascot who's actually a potential child star, shoved into all this by her domineering mother.

As a mecha show, this isn't all that great, certainly not as much wacky fun as the previous two incarnations. As a show that tries to go a bit beyond that template, I rather enjoyed it. Recommended if you have my strange tastes.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1