Reideen ep. 26 [END] + Review ~ 88/100
[ Episode 26: The Final Battle ]
The episode was all I wanted and more though it did fall short in some places. The battles were awesome. Reideen and Junki versus Gadeon and Roxell was great but ended too quickly because of those damn aliens. From there until the end it was a pure power struggle with the aliens having a major advantage having absorbed Gadeon. Fortunately, Junki learned how to use the Flash-Drive of Reideen which is more or less teleportation. I’ve known all along that Akira was apart of Reideen so it came as no surprise when she revealed herself as such to Junki after he was beaten to near-death. God Great was such an awesome technique as well. That’s one HUGE sword and it cleaved those aliens with ease!
Some issues I have with the final episode though is that we’re not shown a trace of Hoshikawa. One would assume that she’s doing just fine since Junki doesn’t mention her being dead or anything. Roxell is in the same position but I’m guessing that the little scene with his cat spinning around him represented him being teleported out of Gadeon before it was too late for him.
[ Final Thoughts ]
This has been quite the half-year journey with Reideen. Being a mecha fan I had simply picked up Reideen at first because of the attractive character designs and obviously because it was a mecha anime. While it doesn’t really do anything new it does all the things that already exist quite well. More could have been done with the plot if there were less “monster-of-the-week” episodes but I don’t have a bad taste in my mouth over them as even those episodes had character development. I also felt that Akira and Junki’s relationship should and could have been explored more thoroughly throughout the series as the opening sequence presented so much potential with them being a close couple though in the end they seemed to have arrived at that level of intimacy. So all in all, I loved Reideen for it’s great cast of characters and the atmosphere it managed to create in every episode that never failed to pull me into its world. It’s worth the watch despite its imperfections in the pacing of the plot.
[Overall series review: 88/100]
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Great cast of characters. I’m really going to miss them and I wish they’d have had a more personal send off, rather then a big battle that while pretty awesome in it’s own right, it didn’t really play to this series’s strengths. The Aliens were pretty good at being aliens with their own interests and ways of thinking, but it never seemed like the whole point to this series was to defeat them and to save the earth for me.
Reideen was always at the center of things and even by the end there were still a number of unresolved issues with it, like who made it, what happened to them, what happened with Junki’s dad, and the ending even created several other questions in the process like you mentioned.
It’s like, we had lots of monster of the week episodes, and while I didn’t mind them at the time, looking back I wish they’d have spent a bit more time fleshing a few things out and exploring the origins a bit more thoroughly. Thinking about it, Madesaki’s character, while entertaining and never disappoitning wasn’t used nearly as much as it was first implied.
I don’t know, if they’d focused more on the story, would we have lost out on the characterization? If that’s the case, the trade off was well worth it, but did they really need to end it when they did then?
It’s not like I’m disappointed, but I really wouldn’t have minded it if they’d kept the series going on for a bit longer, even if we ended up with an odd number of episodes and another half dozen “monsters of the week”.
And if I had to sum up this series in a single phrase “Pleasantly subtle” would have to be it.
best series of 2007 for me top10 forever for this year..
i must say.. it really has symbols of a god’s power.. i mean mecha god o.o” saiga x midorino forever haha. so tat means the alien invasion was gone, so reideen will not appear for the sake of human kinds.. cool ending.
R2 DVD 9 came today so I was able to watch the “Director’s Version” of episode 26. (They also had the original “Broadcast” on the disk for comparison.) The question of Hoshigawa is answered (positively), and the little postscript that was embedded in the ending credits of the Broadcast version was expanded significantly, and also made full-screen without credits. (The regular credits came afterwards.)
The DVD quality is great, and those opening scenes of Midorino are spectacular on a big screen, as is the final battle scene. This is definitely a series that I will enjoy watching over again many times. (And there are no two ways about it – Midorino is one of the hottest anime babes ever!)
ADB
Oh man. I have to see the DV now! Thanks for the info.