Synopsis
Ah, the great arms race. If Civilization taught me anything, it’s that tech superiority is a very valid way of beating your enemies in a war. So if you can engineer a weapon that is stronger, meaner, sturdier, deadlier and whatnot, then that’s a very good thing.
Meet the Objects. They’re big. They’re bad. They’re deadly. We’re not sure why, but normal weapons don’t work against them. They dish out massive damage. And they look heavy. Hmmm, a Heavy Object?
But just like in any tech field, new tech makes old tech obsolete. So with the introduction of Objects in modern warfare, and given the large gap in performance, Objects have become the only weapon worth using. This pretty much means anything in the army that is not Object related have become worthless. So more free time for the soldiers!
Thankfully, our main character Qwenthur is sort of a student-mechanic in the military base where the story is set. So he’s not exactly useless. At least not yet. Oh and the main girl is the pilot of the Object of that base.
And that might just be the bulk of what we’ve been shown in the first episode. Sure, the episode ends with an attack by another Object, and the main girl’s Object getting destroyed. But that scene looked more like it was added to preview what comes next than really to show us anything important. Kind of just to add some hook because, you know, nothing really happened in this episode.
So yeah, large heavy objects firing at each other.
Review
There are a number of problems that Heavy Object is facing. First, the show is an adaptation of a light novel. Light novels have a tendency to allow for a slower paced introduction. This is okay for books since, well, you already have the entire book. For anime, you generally would only have the first episode at the beginning. So it’s highly probable that the original novel took its sweet time to set up the story, which when translated into anime may not look all too nice. That seems to be the case of Heavy Object where not a lot really happened in terms of plot.
Based on other works I’ve read from the author, it seems like his style is largely to open with seemingly trivial slice-of-life character interactions before jumping into the plot. Most of the time, he’ll tie those seemingly trivial interactions into the plot later on, so that’s a good thing. But the problem is that the average anime user might not have the patience to wait that long.
Second, for a show that’s largely about warfare and massive destruction, the Objects lack a certain oomph to them. They’re just these largely bulky… balls. There’s not much sexiness to them. And there’s not much dynamism to how the Objects fight. Just random cannons shooting and a lot of harmless explosions. It’s like what if Star Wars focused on the Death Star. No one likes the Death Star. People like the small fighters.
Third, the show just dumps fanservice for no particular reason. They’re just there, in your face. Like, everything stops to just have a fanservice scene.
So yeah, I was kind of bored. It’s kind of sad that I paid more attention checking whether or not the voice and diction of the commander changed when she had her pipe on her mouth and when she did not.
One interesting angle to show managed to touch on is a somewhat philosophical view of war. Qwenthur mentions in passing that the introduction of Objects made it possible for just about anyone with resources to own an Object to wage war. After all, it’s only the Object itself that is involved. Perhaps the show might develop the idea of the trivialization of war, and the impact of this to normal citizens. But then again, this is a shounen anime. Perhaps it’s best we do not get carried away with our expectations.
Waifu Index
Imagine the girls of Neon Genesis Evangelion in a non-mindfuck fanservice mecha anime. That’s the waifu index of this show.
The Object pilot (Milinda) is an unemotional and unexpressive doll like girl.
Frolaytia is a busty military superior who is (slightly) older and kind of tomboyish.
Heck even the other Object pilot shown in the song (ED for ep 1, might become the actual OP) looks like a psycho bitch.
So ask yourself: Did you like Rei, Asuka or Misato?