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Season 1 - Lagrange - The Flower of Rin-ne (TV)
Season 2 - Lagrange - The Flower of Rin-ne (TV 2) (discussion starts here)

Genres: action, comedy, fantasy, science fiction
Themes: mecha, school

Plot Summary: Madoka is the lone member of her school's Jersey Club. She is one day recruited by a mysterious girl named Lan to pilot the robot "Vox" and protect her city from space invaders. They are joined by a third girl, Muginami, who has a different goal than Ran. Meanwhile, they still don't know their enemies' true goal, or what "Rinne" might be.
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Oh my.

Every season throws out a few series that catch me unawares. The synopsis on the chart thingy makes them sound completely throwaway and generic, and then they end up having something a little more. Last season C³ was one such anime, though it took a few episodes to actually get going. This season's surprise might be Rinne no Lagrange. It might just be. This one impressed me from the very first episode.

First off, the animation and soundtrack are great. The soundtrack in particular really won me over. The OP is the sort of pulsing track I tend to favour, and the song that plays when Madoka meets the robot, round the 13 minute mark... I love that stuff. The mecha are well designed (if a little typical of the genre) and the lines and forms throughout are crisp, the movement fluid.

In terms of story, if you summarise the first episode you'll find it very similar to a lot of mecha anime. How many times have we seen someone with the 'hidden power' to pilot a mecha called into action when the bad guys attack right from the get-go? It's mecha by numbers. The characters are a little bit more unconventional then we're used to, however. Madoka herself is a bit of a loner, despite helping a million people out during the course of the episode. Not a horrible, whinging loner (*coff* SHINJI *coff*), but someone who you don't see with any one particular group of friends. Her club, the Sweats Club, seems to be the object of ridicule (or was I misunderstanding that?). There's obviously a reason she works so selflessly and fills her schedule with other people's problems. The alien girl, Lan, is deadpan but actually very funny. The bad guys (Dementria?) are typical bishounen types but they're the exception here. There's humour injected into serious scenes, and it seems that it's poking fun at itself. This most definitely isn't typical of the genre and it actually works quite well.

The battle scene was also well done. Again, back to the typical scenario of normal weapons having no effect (yet they keep launching those damned missiles anyway) and only another mecha can stop the onslaught. It's not groundbreaking, but it does flow well and seeing a spoiler[mecha doing a german suplex] isn't something we're treated to very often.

There's a lot of talk on the boards at the minute revolving round 'otaku' and the anime that cater for them. I think this could be one such anime. The lead's called Madoka, for crying out loud. There were panty shots (and a shower scene!), mecha battles, cute girls and mysterious undertones. I really enjoyed this first episode and whilst it was easy to see where the inspiration for most of the set pieces had come from, it felt like it was a more... 'fresh' take on this kind of anime. I went into this one with no preconceptions and when it finished I was grinning.

So, when Madoka grabs her "mystical mark" or whatever, she looks like an old lady whose back just gave out.

This show looks like it could be tons of fun, as long as they don't take themselves too seriously.

It seems safely well crafted, an anime bread-and-butter action show with attractive designs, likable characters, a promise of hot mecha action with a cute girl pilot, a healthy dose of fan service (enough that Hulu branded it with a "Mature audience" label).

The only reason I'm thinking of skipping this is the desire to wait and marathon an action series, especially since this seems to be another split-cour show, the first half airing this season, taking a break and continuing in the summer.

I think Madoka's seiyuu has one of the most attractive voices I've heard in a while Embarassed

Turns out she's part of Hello! Project as well, bonus points for that!

Anyway, another great episode for me. Starting off with the stereotypical bishies coming up with their stereotypical plan to steal the stereotypically strongest robot. Poor bishies, limited by plot restrictions and destined to take a back seat to the awesome that is Madoka. I'm finding more and more that she's a really likeable lead. She's just as confused by everything as we are, but she's going with the flow as much as possible. The less-than-serious vein continued, and it makes the narrative less of a chore to digest. There's another healthy dose of service shots (though certainly not enough to be labelled 'mature', gg Hulu!) and more mecha fights. Plot development too, woot! With this only being one cour, I can see them conceivably keeping this pace up to the end.

What a silly, wonderful show.

I know that this sounds pretty silly, but I was sold on this show the moment that I read that the robot designs for this show are by Nissan's car designers.

"Just who the hell do you think you are?!"
Nothing like a Kamina speech to get that young pilot to move the giant robot.

There seems to be a few groups this season that are taking teenage girls for the purpous of having them control mech suits to ships. I like the leade, she did start to suspect that she had been tricked into piloting it, kudere has also shown some other emotion too, pretty good. Not sold with the third girl, but she was merely a small appearance, appearance makes me have doubts, but her lack of direction might work some how.

For some reason I found myself digging some of the music during the fighting of mechs. And that bit with all the chaos of annoucements worked also.

I'm beginning to look forward to this series more and more each week, I probably have it on par with Bakuman as to how eager I am to see the next episode. It's not that the story is particularly gripping, we've already established that isn't one of the show's strengths. It's the fact that Madoka is just kickass. This episode had her up against generic bishie #3 from last time round, but instead of just laying into him and getting battered (as you'd expect from a mecha show) she's trying random moves she learnt in club, chastising the bad guys for ruining a peanut patch ( Laughing

) and singing the Jersey Club song whilst protecting the innocents from stray postboxes.

There's evidently something more to the robots, there was quite a bit of foreshadowing in ep 3 both from Lan and also from the monologue at the end, delivered by generic bishie #1. Next week we might even have a bit of plot development! Also, despite me mentioning this prior... Love, love, love the soundtrack.

C'mon Bakuman, the gauntlet has been well and truly thrown.

I'm liking this too, although I must protest the lack of screen time that Miss Oppai is getting.

*fires off sternly worded letter to relevant UN agency*

But yeah, I like our feisty lead character (and her circle-check thing) - well, all the characters actually. Like the mech designs and overall production values. Solidly entertaining all around, sez I.

dirkusbirkus wrote:

I'm beginning to look forward to this series more and more each week

This is how I've felt with each successive episode, and it's a shame to see that people aren't talking about it more. I realize that's not automatically a bad thing since some shows just work so well by themselves that few really need to discuss them at the risk of getting trolled, but even if that partially accounts for it, this is still probably nowhere near as popular as I think it deserves to be.

I probably wouldn't have had a problem with it sticking to the hyper-competent kid mecha pilot that some seemed to take exception to at first, since it's a thoroughly established convention. However, it quickly veered away from that and started building a believable mix of both strengths and weaknesses into its characters. The attention to detail in expressions and body language, and the way characters' thoughts are revealed through them in subtle reactions rather than being driven into the audience's skull with a sledgehammer, really helps to accentuate this. Certain traits are overplayed to induce a certain appeal, which generally works for me but could make it more difficult for some to take the characters seriously as the story takes more shape.

I tend to like the story being told more than I care for watching the battles that take place through the course of it, and prefer a first episode or two that set up a tense and clearly defined conflict. Failing that, I'll settle for some outrageous ecchi elements. The plot here is little more than intimation at this point and will likely never amount to more than an excuse for mecha battles, the tone has been fairly laid-back, and the fanservice is extremely mild by my standards. There's really no reason why I should like this show, but at the moment I would say it's the one that has succeeded in appealing to me the most.

I totally meant to post earlier, but for some reason I forgot.

I was kind of pleasently surprised with Muginami's (she makes she people know her name) actually introduction, it seems that she actually puts on the ditzy act and is actually deeper. I got a little laugh from her repeating her name like she could not speake Japanese, or even really understood it, then talks it pretty fluently.

And from episode 5 I think Muginami has really moved herself into an interesting character. I was really wondering how does bits like ED make sense of the three of them being allys spoiler[when it seems that she is with the bad guy, who himself looked rather likeable. But it became much clearer when he sudenly turned, leaving her in tears trying to say she was trying to help. Her deceptive personality actually make her rather entertaining and shows she has brains, but she is obviously not too bad in that she helped Lan when she found out she couldn't swim.]

Yeah but she was totally the one who flipped the boat up in the first place Wink

I'm glad we have clearly defined factions now. As far as I can tell, Team Generic Bishounen aren't with Kiss, Mugi's brother briefly denies that association before Madoka cuts him off. We have Kiss themselves, where Mugi's loyalties lie (or lay, we'll see what she does with that next week). We've got Lan's collective, which looks to be an aristocratic space group type thing, and then we have Madoka and us measly humans.

It was a good episode for character development, Mugi showing she's not one-dimensional and Lan drawing lines in the sand. It was nice to see Lan being assertive and not moping around worrying about a scary legend. I kinda get the impression that everyone's working towards what they believe are noble goals, only Team Generic Bishie are keeping their cards close to their chest, really.

The fanboy in me totally wants more mecha fights next week.

Am I totally crazy for thinking that Lord Stylin' Jacket was spoiler[deliberately mean to Ms Cheerful Funbags because he saw how much she was enjoying herself where she was and didn't want to drag her away from it?]

No, you're right, when hespoiler[ walked away down the steps there was a fleeting look of regret on his face, like he didn't really want to be a bastard to her. I also interpreted that to mean he felt she's better off with Madoka and chums, obviously a storm's-a-comin and she's got people she can call friends right there.]

Blood- wrote:

Am I totally crazy for thinking that Lord Stylin' Jacket was spoiler[deliberately mean to Ms Cheerful Funbags because he saw how much she was enjoying herself where she was and didn't want to drag her away from it?]

I don't think I caught that, but I guess it is a good way to leave us guessing who is really bad. But under some logic she will likely fight them.

As side note that jacket was cool, I don't think I have ever seen two guys fight over the right to buy clothing in a show before, totally understandible here though.

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