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.

Genesis of Aquarion is an anime that I watched lat week, this show was 26 episodes long and was aired from April till September in 2005. Two additional OVA were made and a Movie came out in the year 2007. In this latest anime season a new adaption of the Aquarion franchise called Aquarion Evol started. So far I enjoyed it a lot and so I got curious about the previous anime.

With its fancy transformations, special moves and sudden enhancements of power levels Genesis of Aquarion is a little homage to the Super Robot shows of the 1980’s.

In the distant past mankind faces a fearsome enemy, the Shadow Angels who harvest them to extract their plana, the energy source of the Angels. The Shadow Angel Apollonius once betrayed his comrades after he fell in love with the human girl Celiane. In a bloody battle Apollonius and his human comrades were able to seal the Shadow Angels in their base, called Atlantia. In the future 11 years prior to the story an great crisis occurred and the Shadow Angels from 12000 years ago were free again. They start to attack the humans again with mecha units and harvesting machines to catch the inhabitants of the cities. The weapons of mankind have no effect on the enemy.

Out of desperation the organisation DEAVA started an excavation mission to find a weapon to fight the superior enemy, they found three plane like vehicles, called Vectors. These Vectors were already used by Apollonius and his comrades 12000 years ago. Only people with special abilities can pilot the Vectors, these three vehicles can be combined into a huge Robot called Aquarion. One part forms the head, one part forms the midsection and the third part forms the leg section. Every Vector can become the head part and so the whole Aquarion machine has three slightly different shapes with different abilities. When combined the emotions and the special Element abilities of the pilots are amplified, nevertheless the performance of Aquarion depends on the emotional compatibility of its pilots, which causes a few problems for DEAVA from time to time.

During the merging event the male pilots just feel a big boost of power, while the the female pilots apparently have an orgasm, a funny kind of fanservice, Silvia does a great performance XD.

In the 26 episodes the story progress is slow, most of the time there is the Shadow Angel attack of the week pattern where the characters have to face a new challenge and improve parts of their teamwork, personality or overcome personal issues during the fight with Shadow Angels

The main focus of the anime are the characters, and the slowly developing understanding for each other, at first the team of loosely conglomerated pilots don’t seem to harmonize very well, the playboy Pierre, the depressive Reika and the aristocratic siblings Sirius and Silvia are just too different in mind. The latest member is no exception, Apollo is a crude street kid, he has a lot of potential, but he’s also a big delinquent. Some people believe that he is the reincarnation of Appolonius, the Shadow Angel which helped the humans in the past. The idea of reincarnation plays a big role in this anime, even though only the three main characters are really involved in this subject. During the show there are a number of backflash scenes from their previous lives.

An interesting but also a bit weird character is the commander of DEAVA, Fudo. He is guiding the team with his odd teachings. They appear somewhat fragmented in the first place, but they are efficient. After a lot of entertaining (mostly for the viewer) drill, the team mastered the basics of piloting the Aquarion unit, but it still isn’t enough to stop the harvesting attacks of the Shadow Angels on a worldwide scale. Because of that, the setting keeps its apocalyptic and melancholic atmosphere most of the time. Even though there are many lighthearted moments in the show.

The clashes and tensions between the different personalities play a big role in this anime and adds the comedy element to it, the little fights between Apollo and Silvia are damn funny.

The main antagonist is Toma, the leader of the Shadow Angels, he is still hurt that his partner (one sided Yaoi detected) Apollonius betrayed him 1200 years ago. Toma could easily crush DEAVA, but his superior goal is to complete the tree of life which is very important for the Shadow Angels. But to make it possible, he has to wait until Aquarion reveals it’s true power.

The overall plot is interspersed with the spiritual concept, called the Aquarian Age, which was popularized by Carl Gustav Jung, I haven’t read it, but the main idea behind it is that humanity overcomes their differences and problems in the new Age of Aquarius and that all our differences, all our dualities should mix together to create a better enlighted future, while each individual personality remains distinct and individual, otherwise it would be called communism.
Also the teachings of Yoga play a big role in Genesis of Aquarion as well as greek mythology.

Technical Aspects

The animation style could look better, but for an anime of 2005 it is still good enough, the character design is good and unique. Even though I prefer 2d animated mechas, the mecha design of Genesis of Aquarion looks good and the CGI scenes are very well integrated in the 2D environment, there are some reused scenes here and there, overall its a solid animation quality.

the artworks of the ending song are quite appealing

The orechestral and the ancient chorus back ground music work really well in Genesis of Aquarion and give it this epic touch, The insert songs, especially the usage of the first one feels a bit repetitive, even though it is a Song that you like more and more every-time you listen to it.

Final Impressions

In summary Genesis of Aquarion is a good and interesting show, the main appeal for me was the way how the different characters grow together as friends and how their personalities slowly developed with each episode. I liked every member of DEAVA, Silvia became my No#1.

On the downside the main story feels quite dragged in these 26 episode, the finale episodes unfortunately turned out quite rushed, they should have used more time for a better explanation. There are probably better mecha shows of this kind, like Neon Genesis Evangelion or Zegapain, but Genesis of Aquarion kept me entertained over its entire length. With the likeable characters, good comedy and an interesting setting I got quite addicted to it.

To get a better impression of the anime you should watch the 2 OVA’s afterwards, which more or less are an alternative continuation of the anime show. I have yet to watch the Movie.

From my impression you don’t have to watch this anime to get a better entrance in the new Aquarion EVOL adaption, even though a few characters seem to be reincarnations from the old anime, so far Aquarion EVOL appears to be a mainly independent anime.

Have you already watched Genesis of Aquarion? I’d like to know your opinion.