Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Chrome Shelled Regios Review


            This is a show about a young man with incredible powers and combat skills who was expelled from an order of special warriors for miss conduct. It’s set on a desert planet with poisonous air. The people must live in giant mobile cities called Regios. The show begins with our young protagonist coming to a city created for the soul purpose of education. Through series of events he ends up getting put in a military arts group, even though he had sworn to stop fighting after he was expelled from his order.

            The show mostly revolves around Layfon our hero and his platoon. You learn about all the members of his platoon over the course of the show, and see them all become more knit together. The platoon’s purpose is to protect the regios from contaminoid attack. Contaminoids are gross looking moster alien things. This show is packed full of action and emotion. There is at least one battle per episode and they spent a lot of time on character building. Along with having action, the show also has a harem aspect. For those of you that aren’t familiar with anime themes, harem is a show in which the main character has multiple members of the opposite sex that are either attracted or close to the protagonist. There are four girls that have feeling for Layfon and you get to watch as they awkwardly fight for his affections. The best part is that he’s completely clueless.

            I personally like the story as it flowed along. There was very little filler. I didn’t like the fact that for no reason they would cut to a brief seen where you might see the characters standing in the shower or in a hot spring naked while contemplating. There wasn’t any actual nudity, though. I personally find things like this in anime quite comical. The proper title of this is fan service, and this show likes to find a way to slip it in at least once an episode. The voice acting is mostly good, with the occasional over/under acting; so no problem there. I’m a big fan of Funimation’s newer dubbed series. The older stuff they used to do weren’t as accurate, but anything after 2000 is a pretty high quality translation. I remember watching Gundam Wing in English with the subtitles on and I saw two almost completely different stories going on, but they seem to have gotten over that issue.
             
            I found the ending of the show to be quite lacking, and it left me wanting more (Which isn’t a bad thing). The show was so good and captivating that I didn’t want to leave the characters behind. And the universe was so interesting, although they didn’t explain too much. This is one of the parts that I didn’t like about it ending after only 24 episodes. You can tell they left it open for a second season, but for some reason it never picked up. The ending of the series is sufficient enough for me though. There’s a long fight scene and enough emotional resolution for the characters. I dare people to not be rooting for at least one of the girls to end up with Layfon. I personally was a sucker for Felli. She was just way to cute with her not knowing how to deal with her emotions, and constantly getting jealous. But enough about being an otaku nerd.

            There are some really good lessons in this show about going out of your way to help others, and learning when it’s time to rest. You see these people that are so driven by many different reasons but they all come together and get over their personal issues to accomplish one goal. There is also a theme of fate. Not fighting your fate but embracing your gifts and talents to be used to fight for a better future. I use the term fate here rather loosely. There seems to be a trend in anime to honor ones own born-into calling. This is a very Japanese message. Many American have a, you can do what ever you want and no one can stop me mentality, where as, from what I know, the traditional Japanese view has more of a cast system like approach to what you can or should do. There is also another trend going against this traditional view, but I’ll save that for another show.

 I would highly suggest this show to anyone looking for some action with a good story. Once again beware of the fan service if you have a problem with that sort of thing. But if you can get past that, and some brief moments of poor voice acting, you’ll love the show. I give this show 8.5 kamehameha waves out of 10.

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