We open the next major mecha work by Sunrise with a picture of slice-of-life rom-com…
Moving along, the series begins with a much overused plot device of military personnel infiltrating a supposedly neutral state in order to steal state of the art military secrets. At the very least I recall Gundam 0079, Gundam Seed, and Gundam Seed Destiny to have something similar.
But then, they kind of fail at securing the prized mecha when a barely surviving engineer decide to push buttons to move the robot above ground. Enter our main character Haruto, who is running towards the shelter with his friends. But his object of affection, Shoko, just happens to get caught up in an explosion caused by the invading forces.
Seeing the now exposed robot, Haruto decides to use it and have revenge, thereby becoming our sudden mecha lead hero.
The mecha is peculiar, though, as its boot up system asks him if he is willing to give up his humanity. After getting fed up being a punching bag by the enemy mech, he agrees, and something stabs him on the neck.
But well, this enables him to use the mech and completely obliterate the enemy.
That is until he steps down from the mech, and one of the infiltrators stabs him with a knife.
But he’s not dead yet. Apparently, he’s now some kind of vampire.
Mecha AND supernatural? I’m sold. The beginning of the series was pretty much standard stuff, and it was kind of hard to find what would make this stand out from the usual Gundam stuff Sunrise throws at us. The main character is pretty template based starting off with a rather passive attitude but quickly gets thrown into the limelight by circumstances, gaining a giant robot in the process. The setting of human nations at war likewise has been done numerous time, and this one has yet to even include any background on possible divisions of humans i.e. Coordinators, Newtypes etc.
The beginning was rather bland, and it’s not until we see the mech design that it becomes passable. However, it is only until the final scene, when Haruto goes all vampire, does the series actually become interesting.
So let’s see how this turns out. Will it be as awesome as Code Geass? Or will it somehow become too ambitious much like Guilty Crown?