The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Aquarion: Myth of Emotions

Enoshima is a small island floating in the Shōnan Sea. On its beautiful and tranquil beach is Private Enoshima Academy. The school gathers talented children from all over the country and provides them with a gifted education using the latest equipment. Sakko, Rimiya, and Toshi, who have been selected as students in the special reinforcement class "Elements," are ordered to pilot the "Vector Machine," a fighter plane powered by the power of emotion, and are forced to fight against the mysterious invasion weapon "Mythical Beasts." The boys and girls, burdened with their destinies, will come face to face with the truth of the universe as the mysterious organization Space Egg Society and the intentions of adults intersect.

Aquarion: Myth of Emotions is the fourth installment of the Aquarion franchise created by Shōji Kawamori. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

It's been a long time since I've checked out anything to do with the Aquarion franchise. Aquarion EVOL was one of the first shows I ever covered for this website, back in my days working the Shelf Life beat, which makes me a little nostalgic for the wild and weird mecha toon. Looking back at my original review, I was pretty harsh on the series, but man, I'd probably fall to my knees and thank Anime Jesus for sending it down from on high these days—at least if I had to check out the first episode during a Preview Guide run as dire as this one has turned out to be. I won't pretend like Aquarion: Myth of Emotions blew me out of the water or anything, but it is absolutely trying to do…well, whatever the hell is going on in this premiere. Seeing as I just had to sit through a back-to-back dirge of isekai slop and whatever that nihilistic pissboy anime about the “Appraiser” was called, I will take whatever meager scraps of effort I can get.

I'm sure the first thing that will stand out about Myth of Emotions is its aesthetic, which is very different from the Aquarion anime that have come before it. The best way I can describe it is that every character looks like an overly-cutesified chibi rendition of a preexisting character that has been created for some minor spinoff of a big franchise. I'm thinking specifically of those Persona Q games, or some sub-sub-sub series of tactical mobile games based on the Fate franchise that I am positive must exist out there, somewhere. It's not going to appeal to everyone, and I still can't even say for sure whether I like it, myself, but it has personality, and it stands out from the crowd. Because of this, I can't help but respect the fact that every single character in the new Aquarion anime looks like they just escaped from a tangle of cell-phone chain trinkets that had previously been attached to overambitious Japanese otaku's iPhone case. Like I said, y'all: I'm not looking a gift horse in its over-designed, candy-colored mouth.

As for the story, well, I can't say for sure I know exactly what is going on, but I've seen enough cryptic science-fiction anime about secretive societies and futuristic space monsters that can only be killed by a team of emotionally battered child soldiers to follow the gist of what Myth of Emotions is setting up. Unfortunately, the vague world building doesn't get anywhere concrete enough in this premiere to be truly compelling, and stilted interactions shared between Sakko, Rimiya, Toshi, and Sayo only serve to gesture in the general direction of a storyline without truly getting the audience emotionally invested.

Still, there's just enough creative spark here to keep me interested enough in what Aquarion might be up to with this new season. It could easily be a misfire that takes the franchise in directions too bizarre even for the series that birthed EVOL into the world, or it could be a creative resurgence for the long-dormant property. Hopefully the signs will become clearer (and more positive) in the coming weeks.

Mecha: endangering children since 1972. Because why would you have an adult who understands what's going on to pilot your giant robot when you could grab three random children and teleport them into small aircraft that almost immediately get batted into the water by a tentacled monstrosity? At which point, naturally, their craft will combine into the legendary giant robot Aquarion. It just wouldn't work with adults. Obviously.

Not that the Aquarion franchise has ever necessarily gone in for making much sense, at least not in the iterations I've encountered. (My sister still hasn't forgiven me for making her watch Aquarion Evol.) This one, however, just jumps right in without giving you much room to breathe or make sense of what's happening on screen, which I suspect might make more sense if you've consumed more Aquarion series. For extra oomph, this one also opens with the funeral of a child who may or may not have killed herself, which is certainly a choice. But this child, a girl named Sayo, may be the most important piece of the story. There's some question as to the veracity of her death, too: she appears before Sakko, Rimiya, and Toshi, the three boys who have been, seemingly randomly, tapped for the special Element Class at their school. They wonder if the school perhaps faked her death, but I'm more inclined to think she's a ghost in the machine, if you will, since the teachers in charge of the program can see her too, plus she has a tendency to vanish.

Still, precious little is explained in this episode – not the “missing hearts” of the boys chosen nor much about their world. It does work to make you curious about what's going to happen and where it's all coming from, but it also risks driving viewers, consumed by uncertainty, away from the show. Its distinctive visual style may also be a turnoff for some viewers, as it lands somewhere between Powerpuff Girls and anime. The bright, clear colors and solid shapes of the backgrounds are very appealing, but the characters are less so; I particularly dislike how the eyes and hair are done. Still, it is very much its own style, and it's nice to have a show look so different, even if the art in the ending theme looks like it belongs to a completely different series.

I'm not really sold on this, largely because it doesn't do much to ground the plot. But again, I do think more familiarity with Aquarion as a whole will help with that. If nothing else, it's interesting to look at, which alone makes it worth giving it a try.