First Impressions / Super Robot Wars OG

「絆と約束」 (Kizuna to Yakusoku)
“Bonds and Promises”

With more mention of The School and the kids who want to be reunited with one another, the appearance of Shadow-Mirror’s leader, Vindel Mauser (Umezu Hideyuki), alongside his top researcher and head of the W-Numbers, Lemon Browning (Mizutani Yuuko), finally gave us faces to some of the antagonists in this series. The underground cryogenic hibernation facility, Earth Cradle, created by the Divine Crusaders as a means to preserve mankind in case they lost the war against the Aerogaters (in Divine Wars), comes back into the picture as well. Sophia Nate, the head of this “Project Ark” is revealed to be in stasis herself, while Egret Feff runs the show and meets up with the person who brought together and currently leads the Neo Divine Crusaders, Van Vat Tran. At this time, there wasn’t much of an introduction to what’s going on in the secret facility, though it should strike a chord to those familiar with the games.

The idea of “Machinery Children” and the “W-Numbers” mentioned by Lemon will come into play later on, so all one really has to take away from those scenes are that a bit of story foundation has been set for now. What should click right away is the mention of Beowulf from episode one, who is Kyousuke Nanbu in this dimension. Vindel also brought up how they’re looking for Helios, i.e. Helios Olympus, who is an interesting character in the Super Robot Wars franchise because he may be the only one who’s the exact same person across all the games. In other words, he’s a dimensional traveler as well, who showed up in Divine Wars and is also known as Gilliam Yeager (Tanaka Hideyuki). For those with a keen eye, it’s worth noting that Lemon doesn’t have a seiyuu listed for her in the credits, because Yuuko also happens to play Excellen. With all the mention of alternate dimensions and whatnot, I’ll leave it to the anime-only viewers to deduce what that means.

There sure were a lot of subtle plot developments going on this episode, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to get down to the more pressing matters at hand. In addition to Aya’s “father”, Kenzou Kobayashi, taking an interest in a piece of the White Death Cross mentioned last time, Latune’s mention of The School’s treatment of their students as test subjects and how she was saved by her step parents, Giado Venerdi and Garnet Sunday, paved way to her eventual encounter with Seolla again. From that point on, it was nothing but mecha action goodness, as the Earth Federation went after Neo DC to try to retrieve the Wild Falken they had stolen. This also marked the first time the SRX Team’s R-1 and R-2 personal troopers were seen in action this sequel, as well as the transformable Wild Raubtier that Latune used to get the upper hand on Seolla. The end result was Arado sacrificing himself to protect Seolla, who wasn’t even aware that she was the one he wanted to protect.

Before Arado’s supposed death could have any sort of a real impact, the return of the heavily modified Grungust, Thrudgelmir, pretty much stole the show with a cliffhanger of it attacking the Shirogane. Quite frankly, Lee Linjun hasn’t been portrayed as the most charismatic captain, so I can’t say I care too much about his well-being as much as I do the ATX Team’s battleship itself. Conversely, I was more interested to see who was piloting the Thrudgelmir this time around. As luck would have it, the pilot was revealed to be Wodan Ymir (Ono Kenichi). Viewers of Divine Wars will probably notice he bears a strong resemblance to Sänger Zonvolt and has the same seiyuu as well, which naturally isn’t just a mere coincidence. I’d imagine more on that will be made apparent in the upcoming episodes, as will talk about Lemon’s W-Numbers in general.

Overall, I like the fast-paced progression that this series is going on and how it touches upon various aspects of the story from a bunch of different perspectives (much like the SRW games); however, it’s becoming more and more clear in my mind that this series isn’t exactly newcomer-friendly. Diving right into this sequel probably isn’t a good idea since the writers aren’t sparing any expense on plot exposition to ease viewers in. Instead, it seems to me like they’re going on the assumption that anyone watching this has seen Divine Wars, which is probably a fair one to make given that this is a sequel. As I mentioned before, I never did get around to watching all of Divine Wars, but have been supplementing that with what I know from the games. Without that, I can’t imagine the average viewer coming into this series seeing it as much more than some typical robot anime thus far, though I do praise the ones that are trying their best to follow along. It’s a lot to digest at once. Hang in there!

 

Preview

41 Comments

      1. trust me if anything their going kinda slowly considering how many missions there were and the number of bad guys they will be fighting and new mecha to introduce and use i expect that it will speed up more besides i think the reason is for this next bit is to disable the shirogana so that they can more the crew over to the old ship

        chaos42
        Reply

    1. so act like he is dead it should be obvious to you he isn’t since the mecha he is shown in front of in the op hasn’t shown up. ALSO don’t assume anyone is dead in a super robot wars series people in this series keep coming back. Though there will be death unless there is a corps don’t assume their dead

      chaos42
      Reply

      3. Ah… There are people who die. In terms of heroes, I guess you could say that, though it’s not like every single character is good through and through and bad through and through. And considering that they’re taking a new pace with it, there room for a lot of change. Personally, still overwhelm that ah… Thudgelmir appeared so early, especially because of Show Spoiler ▼

        Sora no Kaze
        Reply

      4. just don’t assume that mc are dead. Now if their evil and a jerk they will probably die but even then they may show up one more time to get killed-look at super robot wars w they kept bring back people who i though id killed for good like la cruse but he shows up again in the final battle even though he should be very dead after getting a genesis blast to the face.

        chaos42
        Reply

    1. You don’t need to watch Divine Wars in order to understand what’s going on here. Sure, some events there will get a nod or two in this series, but Obari stated that The Inspector is NOT a direct sequel of Divine Wars. It’s an adaptation of Original Generation 2, like Divine Wars was an adaptation of Ryusei’s route from Original Generation 1. The two series are only connected via the characters, not storyline.

      Now, if you have never played either OG games, then yes, you will be at a bit of a disadvantage. However, there are summaries/walkthroughs/wikis that can be read to catch you up on events.

      Thrudgelmir
      Reply

      1. Im just hoping they will make some nodes to the extra stuff that was hidden in the game like the extra special mecha like the wild wunger L or the speical weapons like the gravity launcher or boost hammer those were a lot of fun to use. Also they did keep that prototype of R1 that can transform i don’t know the name but it was never in OG 2 for the advance-don’t know about the other ones but if it wasn’t in those version its nice they added it in.

        chaos42
        Reply

      2. I’m going to have to disagree with you there. I went back and watched Divine Wars and now I’m rewatching the series and it makes a shit-ton more sense. I know who characters are. I know their relationships. I know what the SRX Project is. Who Bian was. What DC is. All of these things and more should be known by the viewer but aren’t explained. Hence people’s confusion. Divine Wars helped a lot and I recommend it to anyone else who’s confused

        Bossun
        Reply

      2. At least they know more about character,mecha,bgm,and background story IMO. And I think the story of OG1/Divine Wars can be summarized : “the heroes get together and beat DC, then they go to space and beat the alien/Aerogaters”. The End.

        SRW OG2/Inspector start.

        Just read the summary
        Reply

      3. Well Divine, the problem with watching the first season is you have to spend 26 episodes of bad pacing, bad art, and bad CG mecha battles. At least this season actually has decent production values.

        fragb85
        Reply

  7. “Without that, I can’t imagine the average viewer coming into this series seeing it as much more than some typical robot anime thus far, though I do praise the ones that are trying their best to follow along. It’s a lot to digest at once. Hang in there!”

    Meh. Even though I know nothing about the franchise, I’ve been long accepted that there are things I won’t understand about this show. I still find it entertaining enough to watch every week.

    garfield15
    Reply

  9. speaking with a newcomers perspective i find that this information you are passing along seems to fill in the gaps to the point i can enjoy plot i wouldn’t have had a noticed at ALL, thanks for that Divine , and i get the feeling you’re also doing a good job skipping around some spoilers in the process so thanks for that also!

    Breedo
    Reply

    1. Heh, you noticed? 🙂

      Yeah, I definitely feel this series needs some background information to get more enjoyment out of, so I’ve been trying to fill in some of the gaps in my posts. Also, you’re right about me avoiding saying too much, as I don’t want to spoil anything that might be coming up. I’m happy to hear it’s been helpful.

      Divine
      Reply

    1. The way I see it, it could go either way. I mean, Angelg is pretty much Lamia’s signature robot, but I can see them giving her Vaisaga as an upgrade (since well, it technically is an upgrade in the game due to its superior stats even if it is a secret).

      Dendoh_fanboy
      Reply

  15. I never did get around to watch all of Divine Wars either.I played both OG1 and 2 on the GBA and did all routes and I remember most of the events in the story.

    There was some service shots (Excellen, Sophia and Latuni)in this episode, well to be frank, the entirety of this anime is fanservice, that’s probably why it’s not much newcomer friendly.

    Also, they showed Tsugumi and Irm in the preview, this means Ibis will finally make an appearance, I was getting worried about this last week.

    And yeah Helios’s identity isn’t revealed in OG1 but don’t worry Divine that’s just a slip of the tongue, your doing a great job so far covering this, hell you’re even helping people pick up the hints here and there (the stuff about Lemon not having a voice actor listed).
    It should also be noted that one of the most epic theme songs “the gate of magus” was played when Thrudgelmir appeared,I remember when playing OG2, when you hear this it means you’re screwed.

    Rockmanshii
    Reply

  16. I wouldn’t say it’s all female fanservice, lol. It’s also mecha fanservice. XD Well, either way you view it, with it being 26 episodes long, since there are over 40 chapters, if I do recall correctly, the pacing should be fine.

    SIlivious
    Reply

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