First Impressions / ZEGAPAIN

Summary:
In a battle on the moon, the ZEGAPAIN is heavily damaged and facing seemingly impossible odds. One of its pilots, Kyo, decides to use the self-destruct, but says goodbye and sends his co-pilot Shizuno away first. The scene then changes to a high school, where Sogoru Kyo is trying to shoot a movie with his friends. He spots a beautiful girl on the diving board of the school pool nearby and goes after her because he wants her to join his swim club. But when he gets there and calls to her, her response is muted; her mouth moves but no words seem to come out. She dives into the water and disappears. During class, Kyo comes up with the idea to have a swim club promotional video using the earlier girl as his model. But then he discovers that the girl seems to not exist, not even in the video his childhood friend Kaminagi Ryoko caught of the diving board incident.
Kyo and Ryoko live near each other and are chatting happily together on the phone when Kyo suddenly remembers the girl from before, only he can hear her voice now; she was talking about saving the world. Ryoko then notices that Kyo’s apartment has started to glow green. Inside, Kyo sees a green light and then finds a set of green eyes staring in at him. A symbol on his head appears and he’s surrounded by several holograms of military personnel. The beautiful girl also appears – her name is Shizuno. She puts his hand on her chest and the two are transported to the school pool. She wants him to save the world (he wants her to appear in the video), so she pulls him into the pool, while holding him to her chest, and says that it’s time to play the game.
After experiencing some pretty lights, Kyo is transported into the cockpit of a mecha. The world now looks battle-torn, unlike the one he was just in. Kyo notices that he harmonizes well with the machine, to which Shizuno responds by saying that this isn’t the first time for him. She then formally introduces herself as Misaki Shizuno. Kyo and Shizuno are able to use the various weapons systems on the Zegapain Altair to destroy all of the enemies headed for them. His schoolmates Shima and Minato are watching the fight from the bridge of a nearby battleship. Kyo even goes to help out one of their ally Zegatank and defeats some more enemies. After the fight, Kyo finds himself floating in the school pool. He dives down and sees Shizuno at the bottom. She comes up, embraces him, welcomes him back, and kisses him.

OP Sequence

OP: 「キミへ　ムカウ　ヒカリ」(Kimi he Mukau Hikari ) by 新居昭乃 (Arai Akino)
Watch the OP! Mirror 1 Mirror 2
Well this is supposed to be the OP song, but they’re playing it at the end. As much as I love some of Akino Arai’s previous works and this song too, I think that this doesn’t quite fit as an OP and would work better like they’re using it here as an ED.

I can’t resist a good mecha series, and that’s exactly what this is. The first episode isn’t terribly unique in terms of story, but I like it anyway. Yes, I see a lot of parallels with Aquarion too, including the fact that the main character is hot-blooded and has red hair. Unfortunately, there’s no gattai here. 🙂
As I and many others have said before, the mecha designs aren’t that great (ugh to the fluorescent colors), however the animation in general is pretty good (including the CG parts), and I can see a lot of potential in the show since it’s a 6PM Sunrise series. There’s a good deal of story intrigue, including what was going on in the first scene on the moon (i.e. if that was a flashback or something coming in the future), what this alternate world is, what kind of relationship Shizuno and Apollo Kyo used to have, etc. So I’m pretty interested in seeing where this series is going.

30 Comments

  7. There’s never enough mech series. If you think about it, most of good mech series are retro (including majority of the gundam series). Recent good ones are Sousei no Aquarion, Fafnar and Eureka 7, and GS/D were crap compared to the rest of the franchise.

    Great first episode. Definitely high expectation here.

    Rasmiel
    Reply

  10. >> Somebody seriously need to make an anti-mecha series.

    So I don’t know how to quote. Excuse the one above.

    Have you SEED all these pedo series lately? You can’t GET more anti-mecha than loli shows. Mecha is the genre that’s hurting right now in anime, trust me.

    N-Bomb
    Reply

  13. wow , this look alot like Gravion :
    – the hero start to pilot a mecha out of nowhere
    – the mecha kinda look like gravion’s mecha
    – the Opening is playing at the end of the first episode

    anyone know how much this serie is going to be long 6 cuz if it is olny 13 ep , then expect a 2nd season some years after .

    kurotsuki
    Reply

  14. Plot seems kind of similar to Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventures. At least, it seems to be sharing some structural similarities in terms of potentially two alternate worlds. I wonder how similar it will be…

    MonkeyBrains
    Reply

  21. *frowns* So many good series… I really want to watch this too… but I need time to download them, dunno if I’ll have it. But I say this definitely has potential, even if the story is far from original. Dunno why, but this reminds me a bit of Saikano (though with Kyo in place of Chise). Just hope this doesn’t have such a tragic ending.

    Vera
    Reply

  22. Actually, some of the systems on the mech reminds me of Starship girl Yamamoto Yohko, which is an old series, but was probably the first to make war into a video game where losing means your ship gets blown up and you get ported back home. And it also had the “let’s grab someone from the past because everyone here in the future sucks” type of deal. Well, guess they’re not exactly alike, but still interesting. The last “real” mecha series for me was Godannar. That had it all. Cheesy story, fast action, adrenaline, people dying and coming back to life, love, marriage, big boobs, inexplicabily weird monsters that come out of nowhere. Now, that’s a traditional mech series.

    weirdofu
    Reply

  26. Wow. Just wow.

    The background music is great! It’s definitely alien to me, but I think it fits quite well. It’s been a while since an anime series has pulled me in. Most of the ones nowadays are too cheesy with harems and cliches.

    And for once the Engrish is good in this one! Actually I bet they hired an American for those parts. So unlike Soul Link…oh man that was pure torture.

    -D

    Dan
    Reply

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