Forum - View topicHeroic Age: Epic or Eh?
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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I got around to watching my BD copy of Heroic Age. I must say the outer space scenes are stunning. I actually think it compares favorably to George Lucass; epics in that regard.
This did get some mixed reviews, and I found myself on the whole really enjoying it. Things about it I liked: * A sweeping story with an ambitious sense of scale. They have ships with thousands of occupants, and fleets of thousands of those ships. * At least some of the characters (not all) developed quite nicely. I don't usually go for the designated big-boob character, but in this case the competent officer in that role really managed to carry a lot of the story. * The visions of technology and aesthetics was a cut above what you see elsewhere -- like the virtual-reality interiors of the ships and the flowing-water reception room. Things not to like: * Seemingly endless conflicts between sort-of-mecha sort-of-organic super-monsters that are constantly roaring at each other. Worse, they mix the soundtrack with quiet dialog or introspection then cut to the battle scene. If you have the volume turned up enough to hear the quiet parts the loud parts bother everyone in the house. Contrarywise if you turn that down you miss the dialog. Irritating. * Said monsters -- do we really need another rendition of that? The hero monster looks like a someone getting paid to wear a shark costume at the mall. I haven't seen many threads on this but I'd like to know what others think of it. |
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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I honestly found it to be an underrated mecha series. As you state the outer space scenes in Blu-ray are amazing, and I actually liked the monster battles simply because it was trying to recreate the feel of greek mythology, and I thought they did a wonderful job as instead of just going for a monster of the week, the battles actualyl lasted for a long time.
I also thought some of the characters where interesting and I loved the pompousness of the idiot brothers. I also think the Princess was an attempt to do Lacus Clyne with more personality which really helps the character. |
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GWOtaku
 Posts: 678 |
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It's a fun, epic space odyssey. Heroic Age is no candidate for my top five SF anime or anything like that, but it accomplishes its ambition without pretentiously trying & failing to be more than that. From what I hear, it's certainly a better SF pick from FUNimation's catalog than Glass Fleet.
I absolutely hated the two brothers, who I found to be a giant weight dragging everything down. For a show that eventually depicted the conflict between humanity and the Silver Tribe as being much more complicated than underdogs fighting a stereotypical evil empire, they were shockingly 2D antagonists and stupid to the point that they stress the suspension of disbelief more than the spectacular feats of Bellcross. Attack! Attack! Blow up a planet in our home solar system! Treat our would-be allies like garbage! Nothing will go wrong! They really, really didn't need to be that way in order for the series to establish shades of gray. That big flaw aside, it's decent enough to be worth seeing. Blu-Ray is definitely worthwhile for getting maximum mileage out of the flashy battles and the outer space footage in general. |
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Miranox
 Posts: 247 Location: Montreal, Canada |
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For me, Heroic Age is the second best mecha series I've seen so far (the best is Code Geass). I enjoyed it more than Gurren Lagann, Gundam Seed, Macross Frontier and so on. I suppose I liked it more than most people because I found the characters and plot particularly appealing. I also loved the "12 contracts" idea and the way the alien races were depicted. It's about time someone tried using a non-humanoid race.
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garfield15
 Posts: 1541 |
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^^More than Gurren Lagaan?
I really liked it. It took like five or so episodes to get going and some of the shipping pairs didn't get confirmed in the end, but it was an epic space story with some great battles and animation. I highly recommend it. |
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Gewürtztraminer
 Posts: 1028 Location: Texas - Its like whole other country. |
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The trailers gave me the vibe that this would be like Aquarion.
Luckily, this was much better than Aquarion. I liked it, and after a long string of disappointing (to me) releases from Funimation broken only by Spice and Wolf and Evangelion 1.21, figured I had better buy something of theirs I enjoyed. The BluRay was cheaper for the series was cheaper than the DVD? I wondered this as I purchased the BluRay. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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I agree with that. Switching to real life for a moment, what you describe is exactly the mindset of a big section of the right wing in the U.S. today. If you look at what Dick Cheney, John Bolton, George Will, the last GOP presidential ticket (McCain/Palin) and a bunch of others say and write, they are virtually indistinguishable from those two stupid fictional characters. Back to the story, it would have been much better for one or both of the stupid brothers go through a growth experience, and in a surprise development (even to themselves) do something constructive. Or flame out spectacularly. What they ended up with is a disappointment. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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HaruhiToy,
One of the things I disliked about the series was this whole idea that humanity as a whole would put its existance into the hands of two imbeciles. In fact, the whole royalty aspect irked me, to be honest, even though I did like the Princess. No, when your very existance is on the line, you don't screw around. The Silver Tribe was hardcore badass. The humans knew that even if they didn't understand anything else. So, why such a crazy command structure? It didn't make any sense to me. However, it should be noted that the Iron Tribe had been in this war with the Silver Tribe (and their Bronze Tribe proxies) for decades and apparently it never occurred to them to try to find out anything about their enemies. I mean, really? There were supposedly "neutral"(ish) star systems, yet there is no indication that the Iron Tribe ever made use of such places in order to try to establish a dialog. I really like Heroic Age, but there are aspects of the story that do not bear up to even weak inspection. I know lots of anime that have similar problems, so it's not a big hit from my perspective, but it makes it harder for me to suspend disbelief at times. tl;dr: I liked most things about Heroic Age, but the internal human politics made no sense to me at all. |
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lesterf1020
 Subscriber Posts: 297 Location: Trinidad and Tobago |
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The depressing thing about that is while it seems to make no sense it happens all the time on this planet. The number of groups that blindly hate each other without making an attempt to understand the other side is staggering. When you consider the fact that the iron tribe's first real contact with the Silver Tribe was the destruction of earth and their exile is it really that surprising that they weren't interested in understanding why it happened when the enemy are aliens.
If putting an idiot in charge when everything is on the line bothers you then you really should avoid reading much history. It is positively frighting how many times an idiot ends up running the show, especially in war. It seems to happen pretty much as it did here. Some charismatic, wealthy, conceited, intolerant, well connected idiot wins the masses with some ridiculous claim of easy victory because of inherent superiority and the righteousness of their cause. They sweep away all opposition with slander and then ride into history as a disaster. Only afterward do we learn from everyone around them that they were incompetent idiots with delusions of grandeur. I didn't like that part of heroic age either but it was depressingly realistic. While I loved Age and Dhaneilla and the argonaut crew , they were the unrealistic ones. Current world politics don't allow leaders like that to exist. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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lesterf1020,
You do make a lot of good points. The only part I would add anything to is that militaries tend to become bloated with morons in the upper ranks... UNTIL a major war breaks out, and then they are gradually purged (though some remain) simply because incompetent military leaders get killed. I always viewed having incompetent leaders as being a sort of luxury, but maybe you're right and I was being a bit too idealistic even so. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Unfortunately, they tend to take a lot of worthy personnel in the ranks with them. One of the things I find striking about H.A. is that in each of the battle scenes, hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of combatants get killed. Yet the leaders basically shrug it off and move on and it doesn't seem to bother anyone in the story. They rarely even ask for a casualty report. As a counterpoint, when they spoiler[capture the Bronze Tribe's home-world, they realize it is populated with noncombatants and abort their operation.] So the show leaves me oscillating between thinking it is realistic vs non-realistic. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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spoiler[They only broke off the attack after Age and some of the others shamed the rest into stopping. If it had been left to the Brainless Brothers, they would've annihilated everything.]
The Big Breasted Commander chick did comment on the casualties to the CO of the Argonaut, right after the battle where we first run into her and her fleet. There are various comments about the dead and also about retrieving survivors of the various battles. The main people who seemed concerned are the Good Guys: the CO of the Argonaut, the CO of that battle fleet (Nilval), and the Princess. However, I don't think it's unrealistic to not spend a lot of time on the casualties: you focus on what you can do, and what lies ahead, and what resources you have to meet those challenges. Most military leaders have to dehumanize (or at least de-personalize) this stuff or it would compromise their ability to command. |
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UnrestrictedMethod
 Posts: 80 |
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Epic or Eh?
Both I liked the large scale space war and the politics. It actually felt like I was seeing a real war in progress. Making my feel like I'm witnessing a real society going through real problems is one of the best things a show can do for me. Not that Heroic Age did the best job of it but it was pretty nice. The problems were the nodos. In the fights between them (which were at times horribly drawn out) they just keep wacking each other, there's no real sense of weight to any of the violence. It's all just so dry and uncovincing. I suppose I like the whole thing with the labors and the prophecy as it added some mystery but I just wish the writers found a better way to go about it. So: space battles & politics of war=epic nodos=eh Last edited by UnrestrictedMethod on Sat Jul 09, 2011 4:39 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24550 |
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As it happens, I am currently watching this series and just finished the second BD disc last night (I think that covers the first 18 eppies). Don't really have much to add to what has already been said in terms of the shows strengths and weaknesses. I'm watching the dub and Caitlin Glass's thin, tremulous voice as Princess Dhianeila sort of sets my teeth on edge. As does the relentlessly perfect nature of her character. The brothers are, of course, absurd. And I don't understand how, spoiler[after Princess D. takes over command the first time, these clowns are able to get back in command. That made no sense.]
So yeah, while by no means a peerless classic, nonetheless it is not making me regret the princely $13.49 I spent to get the S.A.V.E. BD from one of TRSI's sales. |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7995 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Personally, I really enjoyed it overall and thought that it was a really good sci-fi epic.
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