Anime: Kikou Senki Dragonar

Ahhh, it tricked me; it really did. The opening clip was sooo good, it made me believed this was a lost mecha jewel. Then I watched the first episode and all went to hell. This series is just a poor man’s Gundam 0079. Really, similar mecha designs, similar style of fighting, similar story. Oh, and the people who made it are not just similar, they are THE SAME! The thing is, this series is far worse than Gundam; the explosions are the epitome of fakeness and the movements are quite sluggish. Besides the awesome intro clip, all the rest are drawn in a mediocre way; generic character figures and lukewarm voice acting all over the place.

I could look over the cheap production values if the plot was good but not even that was much. Although you can find amazing similarities in character motives and story development to Gundam, it lacks entirely its social-political overtones and mature approach. It offers the basic idea and goes nowhere with it, as if you are watching Pokemon. Three youths are forced to pilot super robots and save the day by megalomaniacs, that is as far as it goes, utter typicality everywhere. Although the leading characters have some hints of depth during the course of such a long and brutal war, none of them evolves at all besides getting into platonic relationships and learning a thing or two. Most secondary characters don’t even have a purpose in the story, other than wasting time and dragging the plot further. For the same reason nobody has much of an interesting motivation or does anything to escape the Saturday morning cartoon stereotype he began with.

Although the story does have its surprises and even a somewhat decent ending, it offers nothing of interest if you have seen even one Gundam title. It is a 48 episode series that could easily be summed up in 12 and STILL be inferior to its source material. And plagiarism is a crime punishable by law. Just watch the intro a couple of times and don’t bother with the series.

And now for some excused scorings.