(26 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Hey, it’s Sunrise making another flavour of mecha anime ! How surprising ! (Here’s, it’s a crossover with the mons genre.)
Characters
Marin, our protagonist, is a very energetic and cheerful middle-schooler. Also, an orphan, living with her grandma and helping out the finances by working part-time jobs such as delivering newspapers. With a bit of collateral damage, or course.
I could do without so much screentime being spent on the “joke” of bullies lifting up her skirt and embarrassing her. (It’s as unsexy as possible, but still.) But apparently it’s plot relevant, as a giant spaceship then starts blocking the skies, and a killer robot makes a beeline for her. Cue long chase scene.
Melan is another robot she activates accidentally (its small “at rest” form was hidden in a shrine she crashed into) ; it’s very polite and effortlessly destroyed the attacker. And he’ll be sticking around, as the next-episode preview promises more evil robots showing up in a quick succession.
Production Values
Quite good, and very colourful. Some unusual shading work, too, as we get spots of white to show off light instead of darker shades. It’s a bright series. And of course you can always rely on Sunrise to make mecha look good.
Overall Impression
Hum. On the one hand, there are many lovely bits of cartooning here. It showcases two different bike chase-scenes, and yet they never get repetitive nor boring.
The problem is that Marin leaves me entirely cold. I find her perpetual cheerfulness more annoying than endearing. So a whole series of her and her pet mecha fighting drones with little personality isn’t a prospect I find particularly attractive.
I’m probably just a bit too old for this.
