Episode 13 (finale)
A cool ending, no real doubts about that in how it had these magic mech fights, this last episode finishing the arc of the war, but I do want to kind of express some I would say tonal problems I found. First, just a little in how a couple of the villains were shown at the end to have survived, sword guy not to surprising, but that there seemed to be some sort of pilot protection, but that he was apparently going back to his homeland on a cart like he is just some kooky character. As well as the scientist going away in some sort of Eggman like personal flying vehicle, which they clearly should have seen and probably should have intervened with, but again it was kept light. And the next is what seemed to be the conflict between the two engineers, that Ernie apparently feels quite strong about needing humanoid robots like it is a necessity, which almost runs counter to a way he acted earlier in the series where he convinced others that they did not need to stay so close to a human design when he brought in the back arms and centaur legs.
What I found here was a mistake in trying to characterise Ernie's code, whatever it was. In general it seemed to be that robots are cool, but then we had some of him saying that robots that don't fit his idea of what one should be are wrong. Which in the end mostly feels like it was just to make cool things, and for the show to have the cool things be whatever it wanted. What got kind of unexplored were actual morals, that Ernie did not seem to care about what his robots were used for until it needed him to care. His robots he puts passion in could be logically seen as being used to kill people, including innocent, it only sort of comes up when his extra arm design is hijacked by another country. And while it maybe should be a deal that he see how what he makes could be used to hurt people, it never really gets focused on, ignored because it would get in the way of making cooler stuff.
It ends up being kind of tone death in ways, not seeming to be able to decide if it wants to be a sort of innocent bright eyed take on things, or go into more complex and conflict orientated ideas. Ends up falling on ridiculously evil dark kingdom that invades because they are evil, but we don't quite get information on the sort of things they were doing. It is a bit of a copout in not actually being able build some complexity, while otherwise trying to pretend it is being such with its focus on mech production, and hints of things like political intrigue, and social structure like with the dwarves early on. It is why we often got some cuts of a narrator explaining how things have or will progress like some sort of mother reading a story, rather than something that sounded like official documents or a history book, or say one of the characters around him.
These are not all damning parts, but I might say that characters in general were not that interesting, the most interesting chemistry that was showing up was between Kidd and the princess, but even that felt a little forced at first in creating the situation. It was a kind of fun story, and I was generally interested in what would happen next. Although with the end saying that the events brought in an age of air ships, I actually don't feel much more interest right away, this because it is framed as something Ernie would want. But I thought he did not want weapons to become such not humanoid, and is apparently a case of without regard the technology going to a lot of places, which I thought the show kind of put a warning that such a quick boost of technology could lead conflict in using the technology against others. The only way I could think against that would be events of a sort of diplomacy in setting up unions with exchanges of technology, with a focus on economic growth rather than conflict, which perhaps could lead to more coordinated defences against the enemies which were largely irrelevant in the second half of this.
For a rating, I will go with Decent (6/10), I did not lose my time watching, and on top the animation was actually pretty good. I will complain that a choice in the latter half in giving and keeping sound effects in the OP was a mistake, it not being too rare that a series might add some, but for such a large part of the series actually felt like a distraction. That sort of thing might just be me though.
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