In many senses.
There’s five premieres today, plus Momentary Lily’s second episode, and since I slept in a bit, five of the six shows were up by the time I woke up, so I’m going to get through them two at a time based on how interested I am in each for assorted reasons.
Impressions:
Disappointingly, kind of a boring generic first episode of any mecha ever, art style notwithstanding. I expect a lot more craziness from Aquarion and you, Shoji Kawamori. Even the orgasm combination scene was pretty much cut, both the orgasm and the combination. The planes get slapped underwater, the deus ex girl tells them to rememeber, and then they clutch their chests ad are already in a combined robot. Isn’t the fun of it both watching a bunch of awkward teenagers orgasm and seeing all the CGI mech parts rotate and slap into place set to great music? Maybe they were feeling conflicted because it was three dudes, but it’s not like that’s ever stopped Aquarion before. Hell, the non-Logos ones have always been about a dude getting pissed off about his boyfriend dumping him, so is out to rape his dog. That sentence makes sense in context… probably.
But that’s also the baseline for what I expected/hoped for from an Aquarion. Even Logos had people hijacking the Japanese language to fuel their orgasm robots in between expressing acceptance of the poly life or rejecting girls to have beach time with dudes, either/or. This was more… sort of angsty teenagers being told to get in the mech. Which I can’t say there’s too much of when it’s only one show of that a season, but it’s not the most unique mech thing either. I thought we might be doing an Ender’s Game bit for a little while, but then a large tentatcle ball invaded and everyone just went flying off to ineffectually swat at it. Even the OP is just a cover of the original Aquarion theme. Are we not getting actually new music? Again, even Logos had some great songs. I want fresh new crazy nonsense, and only the art style has delivered on that front so far.
