Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Erementar Gerad 1

Opening: 「Forever...」 by savage genius: Not quite to my liking as much as "Omoi wo Kanadete" (Uta~Kata opening) was. After a few listenings it's not too bad, just a different style than "Omoi wo Kanadete" was. Nice animation to go along with it.
Ending: 「約束」 by Kuroda Norihiro: Fitting song, as we see scenes of Coud and Ren together :)

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Our typical shounen hero who acts before he thinks about it, Coud, is a member of a gang of air pirates, the Red Lynx, and they're about to make a raid on a ship. Coud joins in and lands right in the ship they're raiding and makes his big speech... but the others already got what they came for so it's back to the ship. Back on the ship, Coud proceeds to exaggerate what he did quite a bit to the other members of the crew. He's not really that great a pilot in the first place, not flying straight, running into things, etc., etc.

He wonders into what looks to the storage room for all the loot the air pirates have stolen, and among them is a something that looks like a coffin. Of course, Coud opens it.. and inside is a rather beautiful girl. And she's still alive and gets out... but she says she hates Coud. He has the smell of a human.. Before they can get to anything else, the alarm sounds. A ship has appeared, but it only asks for permission to board.

And on board come a crew of three. The short girl, Cisqua (CV: Mizuki Nana), the leader of the group, part of the エディルレイド完全保護協会「アークエイル」 (I'll wait to see how the sub groups translate that...). The other two with Cisqua are Rowen (the guy) and Kuea (the gal). And they're there to retrieve that girl, who's actually not human, but an エディルレイド Adilraid. Coud has no idea what Cisqua's talking about... the captain says the Adilraid fought together with humans before.. Cisqua's group has been searching for that girl for a while, as she's quite a special one, it seems. Cisqua offers Coud some cold hard cash to turn her over.. but he's not going to cooperate, telling them to stop screwing around, and to stop treating her like she's just a thing and not a human. And now he's done it, getting Cisqua rather pissed off, so she takes out her rather large gun...

But before she can shoot, ninjas board the ship and attack, with Coud left to guard the girl. They run after a bomb is planted in the bridge, and end up getting cornered. Coud sees Kuea and Rowen come together, with Kuea turning into some kind of weapon. So that's what a Adilraid does... Cisqua comes to back Coud up, but she's out of bullets, so he's left o fight on his own while she reloads, and gets his butt kicked. After reloading, Cisqua tells him to keep it at that, since that girl shouldn't want to get involved with him. Adilraid can't get involved with humans anyways... Coud says he was all alone, right after he was born, and if he hadn't been taken in by the captain.. That girl's probably the same, so he doesn't want her to be all alone by herself. The girl goes to Coud and holds his hand.. she doesn't understand. He's human, but he's a strange person.. strange, but.. because he's strange... and a light starts to shine, like it did with Kuea and Rowen, and she fuses with him, turning into a rather big sword

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And the first episode ends with that. From what I've read on some Japanese blogs this seemed to be changed quite a bit from the manga, adding in elements original to the anime, and in a negative direction as well. The same person who did story editing for Jinki:Extend (which got pretty negative reviews) is doing the same for Erementar Gerad, so it seemed people were afraid of that happening. I can't make any judgments on that since I haven't read the original work (has anyone out there read it?), but we'll see. XEBEC did a decent job with the animation so no worries there (for now).

Ren (that girl) is kawaii~, and Cisqua's pretty entertaining as well, so I'll keep on for now. Have to anyways to find out what happens since this episode ended in the middle of things ;)

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In the opening some others who can combine with Adilraid like Coud and Rowan were shown.

  

Are the Adilraid all cute girls or something? And the mean-looking guy has the cutest-looking one ;)

...lovely Engrish lyrics at that point in the OP as well :)

Posted by Matthew at April 5, 2005 1:49 PM

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OMG the same as for Jinki? That's really no good sign *lol*

Posted by Mina at April 5, 2005 5:36 PM

I liked this one. Not having read the manga, I don't really care how it's been edited. I'll keep watching even though (I assume) there won't be a sub since it was licensed some time ago.

Posted by Hephador at April 7, 2005 7:12 PM

Wow, didn't realise Savage Genius did the op.. reminded me more of Kannaduki no Miko.
Akira Ishida is instantly recognizable (mostly from Chrno Crusade in this instance).
Cisque reminded me oddly of Sakura (CCS).. I think she once wore a hat somewhat similar with a musicl note on it or something.

Posted by Shiroi Hane at April 8, 2005 1:23 PM

4 fansub groups have already released the 1st episode: Eval, Power, GaS, Section-9, Eng-Subs.
All three of them seem to spell some of the terms used differently, like "Edelreid" as "Edil Raid".
Also, they translated Cisque's group as "Edil Raid Full Protected Group". (I downloaded the Eng-Subs version, BTW)

Posted by Ronin at April 10, 2005 1:16 PM

the term should be Adilraid, and Cisqua's group the ARC AILE is short for Adilraid Conservation Aile.

Posted by sarac at April 21, 2005 8:41 PM

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