The Series:
Thing start to heat up with volume seven of Super Robot Wars,
but the show also jumps the shark. In this volume the Aerogaters
launch their attack on Earth (finally!) and at the same time the remnants
of the DC plan a counter attack against the Earth Defense Forces, putting
them in a tight situation. While all this is going on however, the
show still has very little substance and an insane number of main characters.
There are so many people it's hard to keep them straight, much less care
about them or their problems. That becomes very apparent in the first
episodes on this disc. Everyone has a little time to relax, but there
are so many people that viewers will have a hard time remembering who they
all are.
Series background:
In the future the earth is a very different place. After being
hit by two giant meteors and going through a series of wars, the Earth
Federation Government united all the peoples of Earth under one flag and
restored the peace.
Then the third meteor struck, but this one was different. Inside
was a cache of alien technology and proof that invaders were coming to
take over. The technology that was discovered was harnessed by the
EOTI (Extra Over Technology Institute) Organization and used to create
mecha, called Personal Troopers, in order to defend Earth.
Ryusei Date is a teenager who is crazy about Personal Troopers and is
very good at the popular game Burning PT where opponents fight mecha in
a virtual reality world. Little does he suspect but Burning PT is
actually a training ground to find likely Trooper pilots. When aliens
attack just after a PT tournament, the government sends out an unmanned
Trooper that Date climbs in and uses to defend his girlfriend. Of
course playing in virtual reality and real life are two different things,
but with his life on the line, Date doesn't have a lot of time to adjust
to the differences.
Quickly pushed through training, Date is made part of a team that includes
the experienced pilot Raidiese Branstein and team leader Aya Kobayashi,
who is insecure in her ability to lead the small fighting group.
The group soon expands to include other PT teams, random fighters with
powerful mecha, and enemies who change sides. There's definitely
a full roster of characters here.
While the cast is growing, the EOTI Organization has decided that the
Earth Government's peace talks with the aliens are actually the powers
that be selling out Earth for the sake of their own skins. The EOTI
has renamed themselves the Divine Crusaders (DC) and with their new, very
advanced flying PT are determined to take over control of Earth.
The Earth Space Stations and Moon colonies quickly align with the DC, which
leaves the Earth Federation Army fighting a war on several fronts.
Out gunned and out numbered, they really only have one chance left:
the Noah-class space ship Hagwane. Armed to the teeth and able to
function in the air, water, or in space, the Hagwane is loaded with the
latest PT craft, including a few experimental models that can fly.
Even if the DC can be defeated however, there's still the alien Aerogaters
to deal with.
This volume:
With the DC apparently defeated, everyone has some time off. One
group takes the princess (who was rescued at the end of the previous volume)
out shopping, other go fishing, and then some decide to get more practice
time in on the simulators. Their vacation is cut short though when
something appears at the L5 point near Earth, a strange energy signal that
might mean trouble.
When the Hagwane gets out into space, they find a single mecha, challenging
the other PT's to combat. It's piloted by the daughter of the DC
leader, and she wants revenge for her father's death. The battle
is over quickly and ends in a way that would only fly in anime.
The mecha wasn't the object causing the strange energy readings however.
Just as that brief fight ends an impossibly huge vessel warps into Earth
space: the Aerogaters are starting their invasion of Earth.
The Hagwane, knowing it's out-gunned, pulls back and the Aerogaters
attack several places on Earth. What's worse is during the confusion
the Princess is kidnapped and given to the DC, or what remains of them.
They plan to use her psychic powers and to launch a counter offensive against
the earth forces.
Okay, I think I've given this show a fair shake. It started out
as a pretty good, if fairly typical, mecha show. But then they started
adding characters. More and more and more. Since this is based
on a video game series, I can only surmise that they wanted to make sure
that everyone's favorite person from the game was in the show too.
Unfortunately most of the Super Robot Wars games have never been released
in North America, so there's little chance that anyone in R1 is familiar
with this huge cast.
With this volume, where they continue to add more characters, it just
gets to be too much. I no longer have any idea who a lot of these
people are and even less understanding of their motives. Date was
supposed to be the main character, but his part is so small now that he's
little more than a supporting character, and not a very interesting one
at that.
The battle scenes are still done well and are exciting, but a large
part of me wants more than that. Twenty episodes into a series I
want to be able to see that sticking with it is going to pay off in the
end, and I can't really see that in this series. I predict that the
last two volumes will have some large battles between shiny mecha, and
not much else.
The DVD:
Audio:
Once again Bandai Visual has released a disc without an English dub.
For the amount they are asking, you wouldn't think it would be too much
to provide an English soundtrack for those who prefer watching dubbed anime.
As it is the original Japanese audio is only in stereo but it sounds pretty
good. The track had a fairly wide dynamic range and the impacts when
two mecha were fighting had a fair amount of bass. Of course a multi-channel
mix with a dedicated subwoofer track would make the fights more exciting,
but you take what you can get. Overall this is a nice sounding disc.
Video:
The video quality of the 1.78:1 anamorphic image was very good, much
better than the OVA that was released earlier. The image was pretty
sharp with lines being tight and well defined. The colors were bright
and solid and the blacks were deep. With only two episodes on the
disc compression artifacts weren't a problem.
Extras:
Zip. Nada. Ziltch. Nothing. Just an 8-page insert.
For the amount that they're charging for this disc, I was expecting something
more.
Final Thoughts:
I've gotten tired of this show after seven volumes and 20 episodes.
I have enjoyed the fight scenes and the large battles are very cool, but
there's no substance here. I have absolutely no connection with any
of the characters because none of them are on screen long enough to identify
with them. I counted a dozen major characters while watching this
volume, and that's just way too many. If you've stayed with the series
this far, you might as well continue, but make it a rental.
Buy: