Argento Soma

Title:Argento Soma
アルジェントソーマ
Overall:Buy
Keywords: , , , , , ,
Notables: Animation - SUNRISE
HORIE Yui
INOUE Kikuko
KUWASHIMA Houko
R1 License - Bandai (Defunct)
The death of his girlfriend during the reactivation of “Frank”, an alien creature, has left the brilliant college student, Tukuto Kenishiro with nothing in his life but a deep desire for revenge. But the repeated attacks of strange off-world creatures has forced the Earth Special Defense team to enlist and depend on the X1 (the renamed “Frank”) as their critically important weapon of last resort in the defense of Pilgrimage point - a rural area in Montana where all of the invading aliens appear to be targeting. The latest replacement member to the defense team is a moody and silent pilot named Ryu Soma, a soldier with no clear past but with an apparent undying hatred of the X1 alien.

25 Episodes (each about 23 minutes long)
+ one OVA episode "Alone and by myself" (孤独と孤独, Kodoku to kodoku).
Licensed by Bandai for US(R1) release
(boxed set released in Nov 2004)

See ↗wikipedia entry for more info.

1:34min English Language Trailer - ANN Trailer
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent 8 7 7 7 8 8 Ggultra2764 [series:455#1552]
Not a bad show. I can see where some would compare Argento Soma to Eva. But Argento offers enough to make it unique from the classic mecha series. It doesn't dabble into a monster-of-the-day plot as episodes mix around focus on the backgrounds of the different members of Funeral, deal with Ryu/ Takuto's internal struggles over what to do with Frank, some shady activity with Funeral's military sponsors and some shocking revelations revealed about the origin of the alien threat as revealed in later episodes of the series, especially with its connection to Frank. The show does have its rough elements, particularly the later revelations on the true nature of the alien threat are quite limited in their depth and the animation feeling a bit lazy in areas with lack of variety in alien designs and many occasions where certain characters had their noses barely drawn on. Still, this was a solid action-drama that is worth watching at least once to get a feel for the show and is certainly not too well-known among many folks.

Last updated Tuesday, June 26 2012. Created Tuesday, June 26 2012.
Buy 9 9 10 9 9 Goos [series:455#1473]
Wow, this is one of the best series I'ev ever seen. The only thing that bother's me is ep. 25. It should never exist. In fact episode 24 would be a better conclusion to the serie than ep. 25.
Character design is good. Ruy Soma is one of the best characters ever, and others are well too. Everyone is carrying a burden of his/her past.
Music was also nice, with pretty opening.
The story is another strong point of this anime. Although at the beginning the aliens are seem to be very typical bad guys, they turn out to be a very interesting and suprising things.
Overall this is a very good anime, the only disadvantage is ep. 25.

Last updated Saturday, January 22 2005. Created Saturday, January 22 2005.
Buy 9 9 9 8 8 Kari [series:455#798]
I have to say I love Argento Soma, and hate Neon Genesis Evangelion with a passion. I love mecha shows, but I could never see what all the hype about Neon Genesis Evangelion was about anyway.

I love the character designs for Argento Soma, as well as the animation and the plot. This is one of the few shows in which CG is used wonderfully, and not overly so. The soundtrack has some pretty nice songs too.

Argento Soma has some pretty angst-filled characters, but I don't mind that in this show. It has a good dub, and a reasonable amount of episodes on each DVD, so it's very much worth purchasing.


Last updated Wednesday, August 11 2004. Created Thursday, July 24 2003.
Buy bekku [series:455#816]
argento soma is actually a really good anime in my personal opinion. i was a fan of evangelion up until a certain point when it just began to suddenly fall apart. i mean, right when asuka started to go mad and prototype unit 03 went crazy it just went downhill from there.
this one seems to have a rather "interesting" storyline developing and i really enjoy it. i agree that the "mr. elf" thing gets REALLY annoying after a while and makes you want to smash hattie/harriet's head in just to make her stop, but the mix of the shakespearean demon/angel guy and the biblical allusions they place in this anime all come together to make a deep, and delicate story leading to.....revenge.

Last updated Monday, June 30 2003. Created Monday, June 30 2003.
Watch 6 6 5 8 5 poneru [series:455#638]
I've only watched the first ten or so episodes so far, so i may have to change this later on, but I'm definitly not a fan of this series thus far. What I really stands out for me was the fact that in many shots, the characters had no observable noses. That just perturbed me greatly. Also, those alien thingys Frank was fighting were too plain. It's like the designers spent all their time making Frank look good and forgot about everything else.
The music was pretty fitting, and the animation wasn't that bad, but come on, there are just WAY TOO MANY Eva ripoffs out there. If you are looking in to this series, I suggest you watch;
Neon Genesis Evangelion,
Rahxephon(good, but an Eva rip off),
Gasaraki,
some Gundam,
But if you've seen all of these, go right ahead and get Argent Soma.

Last updated Monday, April 14 2003. Created Monday, April 14 2003.
Buy 7 6 6 8 8 8 Anonymous #543 [series:455#543]
Hmm Ill have to say the clone is better than the original.. Frank is one of the coolest mecha designs ever.. Looks like a walking futurist sculpture.. I love the sarg mech too.. Kimtoshi Yamane is one of the best designers out there..
The story has great twists and I like how it ends .. Yeah it seemed a little rushed, but the ending was cool and made sense.. The character design definately was economical.. Many times to its detriment..
Definate recommendation..
BTW bandai needs to make a Frank action figure!

Last updated Tuesday, February 18 2003. Created Tuesday, February 18 2003.
Buy 4 5 6 8 Wil [series:455#403]
Where to begin? Usually after you've dedicated 8 or so hours of you life to watching something, you generally come away with a pretty good idea of whether you actually liked what you just saw. After this I just had to sit and stare at a wall for about a half hour muttering 'umm' to my self. Its not that we're talking disturbing mind scarring material, its definately not Eva class whacked out surreal ending either. So whats my problem? I'm not sure, I'll just share my list of pros and cons.
Pros:
- the music was quite enjoyable. Not a necessity, but I think it adds that extra touch, showing someone cared about quality.
- Obscessed behaviour. Ok, Soma just needs a freaking hug and a good deal of therapy on how to share his feelings. Totally impressive.
- Decent story. Well, started out that way, more on this later.
Cons:
- Have you ever seen anime based around a super powerful giant robot? Then you've already seen most of this...
- Hattie. If I have to hear her yell 'fairy-kun' one more time I'm gonna hurt someone.
- Quality seems a tad on the wanting side. Or maybe its just the style that I don't dig, whatever, its not fatal.
And the kicker:
- plot twists. No, I'm actually quite a fan of them, they make things interesting, right? Unfortunately when abused it all just go oh so downhill oh so quickly. I dig suspense, I dig drama, I dig mystery, but this was just wrong. My theory is that they fired whoever did the first 20 or so episodes and replaced him with a retarted chimpanzee who was then pressured to finish thre rest in a week. Totally discontinous parts, scenes just far to unrealistic for me to go for, and I'm pretty lenient. And the last episode just left me physically in pain. I think my final impression was to call up someone in charge and ask for my life I lost watching it back.
Sad, for an Eva rip it actually had some potential. Sheesh, I'd even let all the little cons go, but this has to be the worst ended anime I've ever seen. Well, I don't dislike it, but at the same time, I can't say I like it either.
Nuts.

Last updated Saturday, October 12 2002. Created Saturday, October 12 2002.

Other Sites
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Sunrise http://www.nifty.ne.jp/rstation/sunrise/soma/soma.htm

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