Uknighted Manganime Life is too short to watch bad anime

Kyo is your average high schooler. He’s part of the swimming team and has a quick fire attitude. However all this changes when he meets Shinzino Misaki. She takes him to another world and tells him he is the pilot of Zegapain and has to save the world. Kyo has to fight to save the world and his friends.

I can tell what your thinking. It’s something like “Not another high schooler mecha, romance…” It’s easy to see why, the show doesn’t exactly give itself very much promise. With two main girls, 3d CG mecha and a small number of episodes it seems like something most people wouldn’t touch with a radiation suit on. However after watching I found the first ep I found it to be actually really good.

What the anime appears to be and what it is couldn’t be further from each other. Whilst we are used to seeing our main lead being trasported to some weird place and he had to pilot a mech, this is usually done with the super angst factor that puts so many people off. Not the case with Zega. Kyo instead of being like a spineless whine factory, says something like this when he is told he has to fight “Okay, now give me a weapon already!” See what I mean? It’s a joyful break from the cliche’, whether this changes later I don’t know, but for now I’m just happy to finally have a cool male lead in mecha.

The 3d CG is actually really well done. I was expecting horribly designed mecha that moved like they were leggless on a storm caught ship, not so. Be thankful people, it’s 3d CG, but good! No horrible transformers style crap here. Granted it’s not perfect but it’s much better than it’s cousin in animation, Vandread. Plus Zegapain looks pretty darn cool if I do say so myself.

Willuknight: This is one of the better looking anime that i’ve seen in a while. The character designs are realistic and well defined. No absurdly bight pink coloured hair here. The general quality overall is also worth mentioning. I didn’t notice any significant ‘ talking still frames’, and the clarity and sharpness of the picture is great. The CG robots blend in really well to the rest of the art, and it feels seamless. It’s definately the best looking thing to come out of Japan this year.

Overall a good first episode, I would recommend that if you like mecha or sci-fi style things you check this one out.
Willuknight: I’m not someone that especially likes Mecha of Sci-fi in anime (usually the interpretation and handling lets the story down) but this was something i definately enjoyed, despite the genre. It also manages to intergrate the highschool thing quite well, with out it degenerating in to something rediculous or cliched. I’m looking forward to see where this one goes