|
|
||||||||||
| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
|
[series:2837#628] | ||||||
|
(Three episodes watched): Well, the first episode of Buddy Complex did a good job of leaving me with lots of questions that I wanted answers to, so I decided to continue watching. Why does an assassin come from the future looking for teenager Aoba, and why has a classmate been acting as his bodyguard without his knowledge? Plenty of wild mecha action (and fairly plausible--stuff like running out of ammo, etc) along the way didn't hurt. Aoba is sort of on the line between having enough personality or not; he seemed a little too squeaky clean for me, but time would tell. It was too soon to say if the plot would have enough twists or not, so a decision would have to wait for episode two. ...and episode two was a complete disappointment. Except for one modest surprise at the very end, this one didn't offer any hints of where the story is going, just the usual flashy uniforms, heavy firepower, and sassy mech pilots that we have seen a thousand times before. Whatever this 'buddy' system of two pilots cooperating is, it didn't excite me or pique my interest. There are no answers in this episode, and no interesting characters, apparently. Dio is a dick and nobody else says or does enough for me to care what becomes of them. In short, this episode was nowhere near as intriguing as the first one. This show has taken over from Valvrave as the currently running mecha anime, but while Valvrave had developed characters and weird touches like pseudo-vampirism, this show doesn't seem to have much of anything to set it apart from the crowd. The time travel has done nothing but leave us in a stereotypical mecha premise. If I have to wade through this frankly boring stuff for numerous episodes in exchange for answers to the questions which episode one raised, maybe it's not worth it and I should just give up. I decided that I would watch one more episode to see if any interesting twists come about, but my hopes would not be nearly as high as they had been at the beginning of this one. Episode three explains how the present war came about, and gives a brief explanation of what the Buddy System is supposed to accomplish, but the main problem remains: Aoba is still a stranger, so I simply can't care a whole lot who wins and loses. His personality consists of his urge to find out what happened to Hina. Did he fall in love with her at first sight? I haven't seen any sign of things going that far. Does he feel responsible for her disappearance? He wasn't. What's going on doesn't make sense, and therefore I don't care how it works out. The Buddy System seems to just allow a person to react faster (time seems to slow down), but why the sum of two people's reaction times would be less than that of either individual escapes me. So, Buddy Complex seems to be thoroughly average mecha series which is lacking the stuff that would make it stand out from the pack. I would rather rewatch Valvrave than continue on with this (maybe I will). Whatever the answers to the questions raised in episode one are, I no longer expect them to be particularly interesting. In general, my time is more valuable when put to other uses than watching Buddy Complex. Last updated Thursday, July 08 2021. Created Thursday, January 09 2014. | ||||||||
