Today I’ll write about my impressions about the two season long anime Rinne no Lagrange
This light hearted sci-fi anime was produced by Production I.G. and Xebec, the first part aired from December 2011 till March 2012 and the second part aired from June till September 2012.
The story is set in the dreamy harbor town of Komogawa, Madoka Kyouno, a very energetic and cheerful girl with a high sense of justice is the main protagonist in this anime. She lives together with her uncle since her mother drowned in the ocean. As student of the Kamogawa Girls’ High School, she is running the Jersey Club where she offers her services. With Madoka as the only member of the club, she is tolerated by the school, but they don’t give her an own clubroom.
Despite Madoka being helpful to everybody she has no friends inside her school. Her classmates are chatting with her but they are just buddies and no real friends. No one from them wants to join the Jersey club, since Madoka spends big parts of her free time with a ridiculous amount of Jersey club tasks, which obviously isn’t everyones cup of tea. Madoka isn’t really bothered with things going this way, she likes to play hero and helps other people without ever complaining.
The framework of Rinne no Lagrange is a interstellar conflict in the Polyhedron, the two planets De Metrio and Le Garite are on a collision course that would lead to the destruction of both if no measures are taken. Le Garite under the command of Dizelmine plans to solve this problem with the help of ancient robots called Vox. The anti Polyhedron rebel group “Kiss” under the lead of Vilajulio believes in the dark ancient legend of the Vox units and wants them to be destroyed.
The Earth organization Novumundus keeps all three Vox units which where excavated in the past, in an hangar inside the swimming base Pharos near the coast of Kamogawa. In order to prevent a possible invasion from “Kiss”, Pharos desperately tries to activate one of the units, but the only available pilot can’t do it due to mental stress. Only people who have the memoria mark on their body can pilot these Vox units. Pharos know that Madoka also has this memoria and soon she finds herself involved in this interstellar conflict that also endangers her beloved town.
But she isn’t alone in her fight, two comrades from different planets join her in the battles, the first one is Lan. Lan or in full Laffinty Fin E Ld Si is the princess of Le Garite, but she stays on earth to overlook the activities on Pharos. She made Madoka join the Vox project. Despite her revealing outfit Lan has a demure and serious attitude, but on the other hand she is quite uneasy and easily flustered and can be quite clumsy. All these imperfections suit this cute girl very well.
When Muginami, the third pilot arrives Lan is very jealous when Madoka spends her time with her.
Muginami is the third Vox pilot who joins Lan and Madoka, she has a somewhat difficult backstory and is connected with Vilajuliowho saved her from her rotten homeplanet. On first impression she might appear a bit superficial, simple and ignorant, but she’s just a cheerful fun loving person and she really cares for the people close to her. Muginami has a well developed body and a very cute sugar coated voice. Her outer trademark is her fashion-conscious or like I would say she has a quite unique style of fashion she inherited from a person close to her.
With Lan and Muginami, Madoka finally found true friends, at first these two had a few problems with each other, but Madoka could mediate and cleared their differences. Soon they also started to live at her house and transferred to Madoka’s. They also joined the jersey club and so they can always be together.
Rinne no Lagrange portrays the friendship of these three totally different characters from different worlds very well. These girls have a deep bonding,Madoka, Lan and Muginami are a lovely group of friends and the viewer follows them through their happy times and hardships.
Viewers with yuri goggles might have their fun with Lan and Madoka, they seem closer than just good friends and there are definitely some subtle yuri vibes between them. Unfortunately this card wasn’t played, a yuri relationship would have been a nice element in this show, I mean it ^^.
This a anime is a lighthearted and cheerful representative of the mecha genre, it has some comedy and is mainly about friendship, but nevertheless Rinne no Lagrange also shows some good action sequences and mecha fights, especially the first season had some good battles.
Madoka is a pacifistic person who rather wants to solve things with words than violence, but when her enemies are ignorant she turns into a white “White Devil”. She’s quite skilled as a rookie Vox pilot and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
In the second season the amount of action is reduced to a mininum since the relations between the characters comes into the main focus. There are actually no real villains in this show, at least they aren’t as one dimensional like in Sword Art Online for example. The people in this show always act out of good intentions even though the way they are doing things is questionable.
Rinne no Lagrange is actually a good show, but there are a few letdowns in the story that surfaced during the anime. Some questions regarding the origin of the Vox or the Rinne dimension were left unanswered. There also a few supporting characters where it would have been interesting to know more about them, since they were not that relevant for the story they roles appeared a bit cut. I also think they should have added more background informations.
The production values of this show very good, the animation style has an unique and appealing look with nice character designs and as to be expected from Production I.G. the animations were smooth and had pretty backgrounds. Due to Komogawa being a coast town the the blueish cast creates a nice tropical summer atmosphere, but there are also scenes in space.
The second season of Rinne no Lagrange had only a few background themes one for sad, dramatic, action and happy situations, but in this season the opening and ending songs were really nice and captured the atmosphere from the anime very well, I loved all of them.
The opening and the 2nd Ending were performed by Nakajima, Megumi who also voiced Grania, the commander of KISS’s front lines in this anime, I didn’t expected her to have such a beautiful voice. Jersey-Bu Tamashi! was performed by the voice actors of Madoka, Lan and Muginami.
Opening – Marble (マーブル) by Megumi Nakajima
ED 1 – Jersey-Bu Tamashi! (ジャージ部魂!) by Kaori Ishihara, Asami Seto and Ai Kayano
ED 2 – Wasurenai yo. (忘れないよ。) by Megumi Nakajima
http://youtu.be/2DpsVEIPb44
Even it wasn’t as epic and exciting as it could have been, Rinne no Lagrange turned out as a very entertaining anime. The athmosphere and the likeable main characters made this an enjoyable ride for me. If you like anime were cute, pure girls doing cute things, this could be something for you.
feal87
Wholeheartedly agree with your review, Rinne no Lagrange wasn’t anything great or special, but the great chemistry between characters was what kept me from dropping it for the two seasons. 😀
wieselhead
Thx 😀 Yeah not much happened, well not as much as I actually expected, the villains were to nice afterall.
The girls were adorable, in the second season I felt more love for Muginami than Lan
Miette-chan
I been thinking about giving this show a go. Female leads in a sci-fi mecha anime? Atypical mecha designs? Yuri goggles applicable show? It sure has my interest now. It’s alright if it’s not super heavy on the action and focuses on the characters, in fact that gets my interest more. Time to go download I suppose.
wieselhead
Do it, it is fun otherwise I wouldn’t put so much effort into writing all the stuff.
Yeah Madoka is the boss in this show. I hope you have fun with it.
Jenn
Great review. I felt the same way watching the show. The plot is fluffy and there are some unanswered questions, but the characters kept me going. The three main girls are some of the best rounded characters I’ve come across in recent times (there are so many 2D characters out there). Muginami always stole the show for me. She’s too adorable.
Plus they had great pilot outfits. They reminded me of tennis jerseys. So cute. >w<
wieselhead
Thank you very much, I had so much fun with that show that I flt like writing about it 😀
These these girls were a really good trio, I liked that they are friends even though they had quite different personalities.
I loved when Muginami sung the ending songs, her voice is so sweet, ok her body is also great, Well, she’s a good girl ^^
Ahaha they looked a bit like tennis outfits, I agree 🙂
Aya
I lost with the story after some episodes a lot of plot holes too +_+, but those 3 characters friendship are the main attraction 😀
wieselhead
Well, it are more unanswered questions than plot holes that make it hard to follow at a few times.
Yeah I liked this trio a lot, especially Muginami, she’s so cute ^o^
hoshiko
I am still amazed at how difficult Lan’s full name is to pronounce. Luckily, we get to call her Lan for short! >.<
Yeaps, I agree with you about the unanswered questions part. It's a bit frustrating. Midway through Season 2, I got confused with which way the series is heading and what it's trying to tell. However, I appreciate the light-heartedness of the series.
Really, it could've been better, especially how I enjoyed the first season greatly.
wieselhead
I doubt anybody who is not from Le Garite can pronounce her name correct.
But Laffinity is a very nice sounding name I think =)
It appears a bit lazy that they really didn’t try to answer anything more detailed than necessary.
But Madoka, Lan and Muginami were a good trio and the chemistry between was nice to watch.
I agree with that ^^
Tier
I watched the first couple of episodes and liked the main characters a lot (and Madoka’s older sister, particularly after the depantsing scene). I didn’t continue with the show, though, since although I really liked Madoka (and her sister) and Lan was pretty interesting, the mecha stuff seemed kinda boring to me. In particular, the adversaries didn’t interest me in the least, and I never quite figured out whether they were humans from outer space or aliens who happened to look human or whatever. Normally I like fighting robots shows but this is one of those cases where the battles didn’t interest me as much as the lead girls.
wieselhead
Ah I see, Ahaha at least you remember the depantsing scene XD
I think they could have made the mecha part more interesting, sometimes they seemed more like decoration than necessary for the plot.
Well, all were once humans, they explained that pretty late in the second season.
At least the girls were nice characters, too bad there wasn’t more yuri ^^