Aquarion Evol

From FUNimation Entertainment, Japanese export Aquarion Evol: Part 1 recently made its debut in the United States with the release of a Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack. As a sequel to 2005's Genesis of Aquarion, the program revolves around the lives of a select group of young men and women who pilot giant mechs as the means to protect their home planet from Abductors. The show centers around a rather interesting storyline and features fun mecha fight scenes, but the combo pack release will probably only be desired by the most passionate of anime collectors.

12,000 years after the events of Genesis of Aquarion, a young man by the name of Amata (Christopher Bevins) living on the planet Vega begins his tenure at a pilot-training academy. As a member of the Neo-DEAVA organization, Amata and other gifted young people called Elements protect their planet using Aquaria mechs. As Amata becomes friends with a girl named Mikono (Brina Palencia) beings from the planet Altair start abducting females from Vega in hopes of preserving their race. With the fate of the world in their hands, Amata and the group of flirtatious coeds must use their respective powers to save the day.

Most readers familiar with anime programs know that many of them are overtly sexual in both character depiction and storylines. Aquarion Evol isn’t guilty of doing this blatantly, but there’s just enough of a tongue-in-cheek underlying sexual tone to make me feel uncomfortable watching this around my wife. Although the majority of characters are teenagers led by their hormones, none of them become too annoying to enjoy. The most popular character will undoubtedly be Shushu – Mikono’s part-cat part-hair accessory.

While fiddling around with the audio options on this set, I came across something rather perplexing. The English subtitles and English voice dubbing do not match one another at all. Your viewing experience will vary greatly depending on how you decide to view the program (I advise not doing both as it becomes a headache). Special features are sparse, but they do include a couple commentary tracks from the English voice actors, footage from Japan covering the announcement of the program, and trailers for other FUNimation releases. As you can actually watch the complete series for free at FUNimation’s website, it’s hard to recommend this as a purchase when it only contains the first 13 episodes. For diehard fans of Aquarion Evol, I would suggest waiting for an eventual complete season release.