Anime: Simoun

Simoun has a genius idea that is executed poorly. What happens is that the premise of the anime is quickly lost, and so is the enjoyment. Very unfortunate, considering that there's nothing similar to this.

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The animation is bad, they reused a lot of background art, the characters are cheaply animated and lack details. Studio Deen isn't known for having good animation for the time this anime was made.

I can just say that the art is mediocre and not that pleasing, even by 2006 standards. I would have forgiven it if other characteristics compensated, but unfortunately this isn't the case.

The 3D models for the Simoun are okay, but they don't feel intimidating at all. The Simoun are extremely advanced aircraft capable of vaporising hundreds of enemies at once without a single scratch, yet in the anime they only make a woosh sound. The spinning wheels of a Simoun rotate way too slow, it looks uncanny, considering that these aircraft can reach what looks like supersonic speeds.

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The sound is also mediocre, but supported by 2 or 3 background songs. The rest aren't that memorable. The opening and ending songs are catchy, so that's a few bonus points.

The voice actors did average in my opinion. Some voices don't match their characters, and a lot of voices have a pitch way too high. Aer has the most realistic voice out of all of the characters.

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Now here comes the big bomb, the story. The initial premise is that Argentum starts a war with Simulacrum in order to... do something with the Simoun? This is never truly explained. Anyways, the worst part is that you never get to understand the motives of anyone, or the current state of the war. There are no maps, no information about the time or at least the time passed between events, so you have no idea whether the entire anime happens in 2 weeks or one year. This feeling of uncertainty lowers the enjoyment, it feels like the entire anime was made after a draft, not a final design document.

The first 4-5 episodes are very interesting, you get to see the nation of Argentum, their steampunk world, and a few attacks. You have a moderate feeling of impending doom, and tension. However, after these episodes, the entire story just collapses and becomes a loop of whatever the characters are feeling. The anime is entirely based on the emotions of the characters, and not the war itself. Be aware of this.

Continuing, the quality of the story decreases rapidly, and by the second half the story just vanishes, and personally I found that it stops to make sense. It's a shame, the setting is unique and innovative, and it could have been a legendary anime, but it became dissapointing.

The main problem is that the story is developed in a shallow way. All characters get some development in multiple ways, but the story doesn't. Another thing I've noticed is that there are religious undertones, but they aren't developed much. These could have been the base for a grandiose worldbuilding, but ended up as mediocre.

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Now the btter part, the characters. They have weird personal customs but at least they finally get some advancements and not just shallow linear progression like the story. Each character feels unique and original, and they all react in differents ways, in a moderately realistic manner.

The characters evolve somewhat during the length of the anime, which is a good thing. When they move to the other giant flying ship, there are many moments that really make the characters feel human. It's a very sweet feeling, different from the artificial interactions in modern anime, which I estimate are already mostly made by AI.

As told before, it was never explained completely why Argentum wanted to attack except to control the Simoun or something, and all the other villains feel robotic, and their motives are unclear.

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And finally, the overall value. I wouldn't say this is a rewatchable anime, there aren't many things which you will understand better if you watch the show again. However it does have some sentimental value, and feels nostalgic, mostly because of the art style and the overall atmosphere, it really feels like the 2000s. This feeling is impossible to recreate now, especially with the technical and budget limitations of the time. Maybe you will remember at least the main idea of the anime after a few years, in case you do watch it.

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As a final word, the anime is somewhat enjoyable. The beginning was amazing, but it dropped like a rock after a few episodes. The climax around episode 18-20 raises the tension and conflict of the story again, but it drops immediately after. The ending is just weird, in a way it's an open ending, but it just feels like the writers gave up on the concept and inserted something in an emergency.

I recommend this anime if you like experimental works and feeling nostalgic.

Simoun is a 2006 version of Darling in the Franxx with lesbian romance and bad production quality. It involves a war where young girls have to fight against an enemy by pairing up and piloting technologically-advanced war machines, but the story is centered on the relationships between these characters rather than on the war itself.

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THE STORY IS UNIQUE

The story takes place in some sort of lesbian transgender world where people are born females and can choose their sex at the age of 17. Most of the characters are Sibyllae, i.e. girls who haven’t chosen their sex yet and act as priestesses who perform “prayers” that can destroy their country’s enemies by piloting CGI flying machines called Simoun. The Simoun can only be piloted by a pair of Sibyllae, and they have to kiss before getting in the machine, so the series has a lot of lesbian romance. Although it does sound like a weird p*rn plot, it is a unique setting that could have provided the basis for an interesting story.

UNFORTUNATELY …

The story line focuses on boring relationships and romance between the characters rather than on world-building and more interesting themes such as politics and war.

The plot is confusing from the start to the ending of the series. At several moments in the first episode, the story is told from an enemy soldier’s perspective, which makes it hard to follow. The terminology is also confusing and it takes a lot of episodes to fully understand what each term means: Sibyllae are the girls who fly the Simoun; a Simoun squadron is called a Chor; to kill their enemies they draw magical shapes known as Ri Maajon in the sky with their Simoun. Then you have all the names of the different types of Ri Maajon, the weird names of their religion and their country, and the fact that the Sibyllae are called “priestesses” who perform “prayers” when it’s obvious that they are soldiers. The consequence of this is that the first episodes are confusing and it is complicated to understand what they are trying to do with their machines.

In this world, people are born females and at the age of 17 they are supposed to choose their sex. If they choose to be male their body will slowly change and their voice will become deeper. However, male characters are all dubbed by female voice actors who try to imitate a male voice, which is very unsettling and makes the dialogues extremely weird.

The enemies from the nation of Argentum speak a different language. How did the anime choose to portray this? They recorded normal Japanese voice acting and put it in reverse, which, as you could have guessed, sounds like shit. The characters’ names are also completely random: Neviril, Dominuura, Paraietta, Wapourif, Anubituf… This makes the dialogues sound even more ridiculous.

Then you have the fact that most of the first seven episodes consist in the protagonist yelling at another character and harassing her by repeatedly knocking at her door so that she becomes her partner.

PEDOPHILIA

Yet another anime that depicts a romantic relationship between an adult and a child – between a 12-year old girl and 19-year old woman to be precise, as something completely acceptable. It is almost a running gag at this point. Some people apparently think that an adult woman kissing a child on the lips is cute and wholesome. It seems as though the whole medium of anime and a significant part of the anime community is committed to normalizing pedophilia. Sad!

WHAT ABOUT THE CHARACTERS, THEN?

They are bad and they don’t make any sense. The protagonist is a dumbass whose motivations and objectives are never explained. The only thing we know about her is that she really wants to partner with the Sibylla Neviril, and for that reason she will harass her for more than one fourth of the show. There is few character development for her except from boring flashbacks about her grandfather. Her voice-acting is also very annoying, which doesn’t really help.

The other characters aren’t better. You have boring and predictable relationships such as the “master-servant relationship but they are actually childhood friends” or the incestuous sisters – how original! You also have the young girl that can only complain and yell all the time with her high-pitched voice, the useless characters such as Morinas and Vyura (oh god, the names!) and the character that is never properly introduced, doesn’t get any character development or evolution but is, for some reason, suddenly given an important role towards the end of the series.

Then you have Mamina (another weird name), who is introduced as some sort of rival for the protagonist because she too, wants to partner with Neviril. But instead of a proper opposition with the protagonist, she has a childish dispute with her and gets the whole squadron punished and then turns into a useless secondary character whose only purpose in life is doing the cooking and the cleaning.

RANDOM MUSIC PLACEMENT

It’s rare to see an anime fail so hard in terms of background music. Well, the background music in itself isn’t that bad, there are even some tracks that could be considered good in a different context. The main problem is that the music placement is completely random and doesn’t fit the situation at all. In the air battles and fight scenes, the BGM sounds like tango music (with an accordion-like instrument), which feels completely out of place and makes all these scenes that are supposed to be tragic and serious look extremely ridiculous. The lip-sync is also bad, and the voice intonation of the characters don’t correspond to the faces they make.

IT LOOKS LIKE SHIT

Most of the time, bad anime is bad not because it has bad animation, but because it has a bad plot and cliché characters. Simoun manages to be a failure both in terms of story and in terms of production quality, and it looks so bad it feels like a fan-made amateur anime.

The flying machines and other vehicles are all CGI, but to be frank, it doesn’t look that bad once you get used to it. The backgrounds, however, look like unfinished hand-drawings and feel completely out of place. But the worst thing is the 2D animation. The 2D animation is very poor and a lot of static images are used. Something as simple as a character walking in a hall will look bad, with the character’s movements being inconsistent with their speed. Even the lighting is bad, and the shadows don’t make sense. The characters’ faces are inconsistent and look very ugly 90% of the time, which makes most of the frames look like complete shit. It is sad because in the rare moments where the characters’ faces don’t look bad there’s actually a lot of detail in their eyes, which is the most important part of the face.

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CONCLUSION

Although it is unique in its weirdness, Simoun fails in every category. Its story is boring. It focuses on the relationships between bad characters. But the worst thing is that it isn’t even entertaining. The ugly animation, the weird voice-acting and the random music placement makes it a painful experience. Avoid this show at all costs.

Simoun is a (cop-out follows) good idea with a dull presentation. You start looking at this show and you are given a most interesting alien setting with a world that has two suns, steampunk airships, and a civilization where everybody is born female. And as we all know, all-female cast in modern anime means shoujo-ai stuff. And there is magic, war, romance, weird gender related issues and above all it has lesbians. So what could possibly go wrong? … Well it is goddamn boring, that is what went wrong. Despite the seemingly complicating setting, the actual plot is very simple in presentation and mostly focuses on character development, rather political or social issues, wars, intrigues, or SOMETHING INTERESTING IN GENERAL.

I am not against character-centered/story-poor shows IF they are done in a captivating way. Some of my favorite anime of such type are Planetes, Tatami Galaxy, and Welcome to the NHK. The characters there were amazing, the setting was fleshed-out, the production values were great. None of that occur properly in Simoun; you watch the whole thing with apathy. *yuri-goggles on* Make that with disgust if the concept of transvestites is not your cup of tea. Lesbians are fine, transvestites are not. How am I supposed to make them my waifus if they later on transform to men? This is totally gay. *yuri-goggles off*

And it becomes harder and harder to like anything other than the characters in this series, since most of it is all about them and not those cool airships, or the twin suns, or the ancient ruins, or the WHOLE DAMN WAR THAT SETS THE WORLD ON FIRE! In effect, the setting goes total waste exactly because it is not handled properly. I mean just think of the Aria anime for example. What was the setting about there? A pretty space Venice and some chicks with gondolas living a carefree life; end of story. The setting didn’t need any further explaining than that but here there is supposed to be a whole bunch of stuff, none of which are dealt with properly. How are you supposed to care about wars and ancient civilizations when there are a dozen chicks blocking the way? The story is a total waste! And don’t tell me the series is not heavy on fan service so you can manage to look at something other than half naked lesbians, or you COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT!

I remember the good-old 80’s when they used to make some really shocking anime; not the modern crap we get today. One of them was Gall Force, a long line of movies and OVAs with an all female cast fighting disgusting aliens and terminator robots. The basic idea was pretty much the same and despite the older technology, the action was amazing, the violence was brutal, the character interaction was strong, and the whole thing didn’t last ten times more than it needed. Simoun did all that wrong.

Before you start wandering how much big of a troll I am for saying such things about an anime that looks and sounds so nice, let me make clear that I am not talking about the actual production values. Those are very good, especially for a series made by Studio DEEN, my personal worst studio of all times (yes, even worse than GONZO, believe it or not). The artwork can be considered great and the classical European instruments used in the soundtrack do sound great and all. I am talking about the implementation of them in the context of the story. The directing; you know? Does anyone ever care about the directing or the pacing? Here is something even more interesting. How many songs do you remember and how many of all those funky backgrounds do you remember? Chances are few to none because the whole focus was given on a bunch of moe lesbians turning transvestites. Oh sure, I remember that detail very well, IT WAS THE ONLY UNIQUE THING ABOUT IT!

Close to THAT memorable details are also the shapes of the airships. They are weird indeed, looking like snails with spirals and old-style biplanes. The 3D effects show their age though and they feel rather disjoined from the rest of the 2D ones. I can’t say I disliked the way they fly around or even battle but this is NOT a show you will watch for the action. The action is actually one of the dullest and most crudely aspects. What you will mostly care about is how each ship needs two underage female pilots in spicy relationships in order to fly around. Another case where the chick flavor is more important than everything else. And I don’t like it much.

I must admit that the character interaction is indeed very captivating if you go all myopic into the whole deal. Nice archetypes interacting around romance, and friendship, and skinship, and which gender they will pick later on and stuff. On a basic level the characters are indeed good in mannerisms and fleshing out. Going deeper though just shows what hollow shells they are; immature snotty pampered bitches that love how people worship them and go all snobby about it. And guess what, a bunch of hormone-crazy chicks do more work than millions of soldiers. Hooray for realism!

To sum it up, the premise of the anime is very good and as long as you don’t give a rat’s ass about good screenplay or directing and can indefinitely be entertained by moe and yuri cliches then this is a show for you. If not, then step away slowly because the next time you see one of these cute girls, there is a 50% probability they will have turned the whole thing into a futanari bukkake with you in the middle, and the only escape route will be an oyster looking monstrosity.

And now that I ruined your dreams for tonight, have a nice day.

Before reading this review, please take the following into account:[br][br]I hate yuri.[br]I hate fanservice.[br]I don't really care about flying aircrafts.[br][br]"Well, why the hell did you watch Simoun, then?", you may ask. I watched it out of boredom. I had nothing better to do, so I decided to entertain myself and watch something completely horrible. And now I'm really glad that I did.[br][br]Right from the start, the show confuses its viewer by offering something completely unexpected: war drama. The prologue, narrated by the enemy of Simoun's protagonists, wouldn't fit your typical girl-on-girl anime and its themes conflict with the show's purposely bright and colorful character designs and mostly light-hearted music. This conflict is a reoccurring theme that reminded me of When They Cry. It highlights the main theme of the story: the impact war has on previously innocent children. One scene early on in the show, for example, features a teenage girl cutting off dead man's figers like nothing happened, with cheerful tango music playing in the background. [br][br]Story:[br][br]Simoun's story is rather solid, despite being a bit confusing later on. Like I mentioned before it's a story about war and its effect on people and societies. This is a rather character-driven anime, however, so don't expect major plot twists in every second episode or anything like that. Some things are left unexplained, but you get a clear picture of what happened by the end of the show. Overall, I think the story has a good pace and fits the show nicely.[br][br]Regarding the "confusing" parts: later on the story starts following two different timelines. A small part of the show is spent on things that happened long before the first episode, and connecting the two timelines is essentially what the whole ending is about. It gets more confusing than your average show, but never reaches Evangelion-like level of "what the?.." moments. I enjoyed the ride, but I know many other didn't.[br][br]Characters:[br][br]Simoun has a huge cast and handles it surprisingly well. All characters have distinct personalities and behave like real people. That includes dieing, by the way. Some may dislike Neviril and it's true she's incredibly irritating in the beginning, but she's also one of the most well-developed and believable characters I've seen in anime. Once she gets out of her angst mode you'll understand why she's the most respected priestess in the world.[br][br]As mentioned before, Simoun is a character-driven series. It's all about growing up and becoming a stronger and better individual, and while nowadays these themes are recycled to the point of being ridiculously overused, Simoun's take on them is fresh and emotional. Character development is subtle. No one gets incredible power-ups and "I WILL PROTECT MY FRIENDS!" moments. The show's melancholic tone reminded me of Azumanga's ending. For those who haven't watched Azumanga Daioh: that's a good thing.[br][br]Something must also be said about Aeru. She's simply one of the most entertaining female leads ever. Um, well, that's about it. I still don't fully understand why I liked her so much. Maybe it's because she's cheerful and optimistic without being an idiot. Maybe it's because she has more balls than most male action heroes have. Or maybe it's because she is unusual without being gimmicky. Anyway, she's an extremely charismatic protagonist who makes the show noticeably better.[br][br]Sound:[br][br]The music is excellent. It's a mix of techno, tango, bistro and epic fantasy music and is really one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in an anime. So, why "only" 8? Because literally everyone is voiced by female seiyuus. Normally it's not a problem, because most characters are female anyway, but sometimes... Imagine the most irritating loli voice you've ever heard. Now, imagine that it belongs to a male. Yes, it's THAT bad. Fortunately most seiyuus do a good job, so you'll only have to endure horrible voice acting for a short period of time.[br][br]Animation:[br][br]This is where Simoun fails. Characters are actually pretty well-animated and CG is above-average, but the amount of awful-looking scenery and still frames is disturbing, especially in the early episodes. On the other hand, Simoun has some truly beautiful scenes. For those who have seen the series, I'm talking about the likes of that one scene with a dead girl and flowers.[br][br]Shortly, Simoun is not an ugly show, but it definitely could've used a bigger budget.[br][br]Value:[br][br]Simoun's probably worth watching at least twice. The later episodes in particular become much clearer if you know what's going on before it's explained. I'm not a fan of rewatching, though, so I can't really comment on this. Note that there is no dub. Too bad for the dub fans, but other may enjoy the lower price tags of Simoun DVDs.[br][br]Sexual content:[br][br]They kiss and there's a 10 seconds long rape scene. Some fanservice is included, but the show features a surprisingly low amount of "special" shots and boing. Don't watch this if you want lesbian action or half-naked females a-la Kanokon. To be honest, I haven't seen Kanokon, but I guess it's an appropriate example.[br][br]Conclusion:[br][br]Simoun is a surprisingly good show. It's slow-paced, sometimes ugly, sometimes too angsty, but it somehow managed to keep me glued to the screen until the final episode. And that's something few other shows have accomplished.[br]

I have to say, I did not get what's the point of this anime. There's no character development, no coherent plot, and worst yet, no ending. At first, the story introduced this world where only one nation possess a special flying technology and as a result, its neighbor nations rage war against them. However, as the story goes on, it strayed away from this topic to talk about the inner conflict of each character. Their dialogs reminds me of Peter Pan since each and everyone of them fears to grow up. So we have the phrase mentioned over and over again "eien no shojou" (the eternal maiden). Having said that, the writer still did a terrible job. Those young girls suppose to be the protagonists in the anime, yet, they were presented to me as immature, self-centered, and lack of discipline. In the end, nothing was resolved and we are back to square one.

Bottom line, if you enjoy watching anime girls kissing, this is probably ok for you. So if any other reviewers has some great insights about what the author is trying to voice through Simoun, I am all ears.

PS, if you like Yuri, go with Strawberry Panic! It's much better.

Simoun is yet another anime with an identity crisis. In keeping with the series, though, it's more of a gender identity crisis. Is it the show that drives the characters, or the characters that drive the show? Sadly, in Simoun, the show is firmly in the driver's seat the entire time.

Summary: In this world, only young priestesses can fly the elite flying machines called Simoun. Only the young (and supposedly pure) can pilot, as they still need to choose a gender. The most elite squadron of priestesses, Chor Tempest, is called upon to fight against invaders from a neighboring country...

Animation: Well, in a word, bleh. The eyes are far, far too detailed for me to be comfortable with. It's hard to deal with any of the shots that involve one of the girls looking into the camera. It's also difficult to deal with the utterly vapid emotionless expression on some of the girls. Neviril is the worst offender here.

The Simoun fighters are pretty cool looking and a lot of the technological detail is well done. Unfortunately, all of the positive points are overwhelmed by the negative. The "gasp!" shots where the animators introduce a stylized still? Horrible in most cases. The overly feminine "men" make for some serious viewing discomfort as well.

Sound: WTF. I have never wanted to cover my ears while watching a show until now. The music is so thoroughly out of place in most cases, it makes me wonder about some sort of cultural divide. A lot of the music is just too upbeat in tone to my ear to fit the circumstances. The OP/ED were forgettable, which is just another point off the series.

That aside, the singular most disturbing point to the series is that they used female voice actors for everyone. Even the men. Yes, I fully understand that they were once female. That does not mean that they should still have a recognizably female voice, even if it's "husky". I consider that to be immersion breaking.

Story: The story is one of the stronger points of Simoun, which is sad, because it's not an especially great story. It is above average, but it's not enough to bring the series up. The war has a bit of a surprising ending, and it's handled pretty tastefully for the most part. Doesn't make up for the ending of the show, however.

In the end though, I feel strongly that the writers were pushing the characters into situations, rather than letting the situations develop with the characters. While a writer does need to introduce conflict, crisis, and tension, a good writer will allow their characters to act and react. To me, Simoun felt like the writers had a checklist of character growth and dramatic situations and they wrote the story around those to force them to happen. Very predictable for the most part, and very convoluted where not.

Character: Even though the story felt a little contrived, the characters did make up for it. Several of the characters were fun to watch, and the show is all about character growth in a way. The worst part of the characters? The NAMES. Seriously. Neviril? Guragief? Rodoreamon? GAH. Are you kidding me? The poor, poor seiyuus. Neviril is especially annoying because she's such a central character, so her name is all over the place. Gah.

Other than that, most of the characters are a little deeper than the normal stereotype. All of them show at least a little bit of growth over the course of the show. The least growth comes, oddly enough, from the two main characters: Aaeru and Neviril. The ending makes this clear and it's actually fairly depressing. My favorite character was Yun, and while she showed a lot of growth and backbone, the last glimpse of her was depressing as well. All in all, it's a downer of an ending.

Value/Enjoyment: I can't say that this show is worth time or money. In fact, I recommend avoiding it. The drama is weak and forced until the end, when it becomes overdramatic and forced. If you want a good drama anime, there are plenty more and plenty better.