Back in early January, a friend and I decided that we'd sit down every Thursday to watch the latest entry in Shōji Kawamori's Aquarion series, Aquarion: Myth of Emotions. After a few weeks, we realized that we didn't know anyone else who was watching it. There wasn't exactly a ton of buzz or enthusiasm around Myth of Emotions—even among mecha diehards. So this begs the question: “Why a new Aquarion?”
As far as the modern mecha scene goes, Aquarion isn't a series that comes up a ton in conversation outside of discussion of Kawamori's career. While you'll likely hear from a strong contingent of fans who'll go to bat for the earnest horniness of 2012's Aquarion Evol, I've found most non-Kawamori conversations to detail the frustrating floppiness of the series's Soul of Chogokin toys.
From the jump, Myth of Emotions declares that it's a bold, new beginning for Aquarion—featuring a new rendition of the original theme song, a radically different art style, and a plot that aims to remix familiar series elements while establishing its own identity. These hopes for the new beginning were bolstered by the presence of Perfect Blue scribe Sadayuki Murai, the varied team at Satelight, and, of course, Shōji Kawamori. And you know what? The series' first three episodes accomplish that very goal.
Right away, the viewer is introduced to Sakko and the rest of the cast as they grieve the sudden passing of a close classmate—an even more difficult task as they all somehow lack certain emotions. But to their shock and horror, these students discover that she's still wandering the halls of their school. Then, in a sudden twist of events, Sakko, Rimiya, and Toshi find themselves behind the controls of ancient vehicles that combine to form Aquarion. From there, it's up to this trio and their allies to defend Enoshima from the mysterious mythic beasts.
These episodes do a great job of putting the audience in Sakko's shoes, leaving them just as confused as he is by all the proper noun terms. However, the series' creators show great restraint in not over-explaining any details just yet. While the cast acclimates themselves to this new normal, the audience has the same chance to familiarize themselves with the new art style and the vibrant world created from it.
Unfortunately, all of the series' early strengths are thrown right into the bin with episode 4. Like previous entries in the Aquarion series, Myth of Emotions has a keen focus on reincarnation and the past lives of our cast from 12,000 years ago. Now while this sort of lore can establish a fantastic table setting for the plot about to unfold in the modern day, it's not an element that works as an anchor point for an entire narrative. This issue with the series is initially exacerbated in the aforementioned episode, where the audience learns through a series of flashbacks and visions that Rimiya is the reincarnation of another character's sister from a past life. From this point forward, the series drowns in flashbacks that only serve to muddy and slow down the primary narrative.
However, the modern day plot quickly unravels as well at this point. The series goes from a considered roll out of need-to-know expository details to just opening up the hose at full blast. With so many lore details to juggle, Myth of Emotions descends into Evangelion pastiche territory. Be it the appearance of amorphous angelic monsters, secret organizations that force children to protect the world, an even more secret organization with dubious plans, or a mysterious new pilot, these elements aren't exactly a good look for a property with Shōji Kawamori's name front-and-center on the copyright line. Especially when the aforementioned Aquarion Evol used its academy setting to focus on the raging hormones and torrid relationships of young adults...and that one guy who was obsessed with digging holes.
Once the threads of 12,000 years ago and modern day intersect, Myth of Emotions' story veers right into the realm of incomprehensibility. When my friend and I dropped fellow ANN Contributor Chris Farris into the thick of the final episode without any context, he was just as confused as we were...and we'd been watching the series week to week. It didn't help that the questionable presence of an egg cult in the series' later stages also muddied the water. This group may function as a riff on Happy Science, but the values they espouse are based on a combination of the Norse myth of Yggdrasil and Tahaitian creation myths. Given Kawamori's mishandling of South Pacific Islander mythologies in Macross Zero, it might've been best to bring in a sensitivity reader to review these concepts.
Looking at the series' technical elements, I'm sad to say that this new vision for Aquarion is incredibly inconsistent. Again, the first three episodes start off strong with fluid animation and on-model characters, but overtime, largely static scenes become the norm. Not to mention that the cast occasionally look like either the light has left their eyes or their hands have ballooned due to an allergic reaction. To the series' credit, however, the mechanical animation and the titular robot look fantastic in its unfortunately sparse appearances. But what the audience does see—be it a dynamic finisher or the vectors launching in plain sight—demonstrates that Satelight's CG mechanical animation only continues to improve with each and every outing.
The same couldn't be said for the CG character animation that appears in the series' copious flashbacks. These mythic versions of the cast occasionally struggle with lip flaps, jerky movements, and a visible lack of bespoke character rigs. At times it felt as if the team was working with only a pair of base rigs with little room for variation.
At the end of it all, I really wanted to like Aquarion: Myth of Emotions. But again, it says a lot when a new viewer is dropped into the final episode and the pair of week-to-weekers they're watching it with are just as confused. If Aquarion does return in the future, it is absolutely worth exploring the bold visual choices made in the development of Myth of Emotions. However, it's also time to strip back the layers of lore to rediscover Aquarion's core.
