Buddy Complex

In my view, "Generic" and "Formulaic" describes the kind of a thing, while "best-written and directed" describes the quality of a thing.

For example: There is immeasurable variety to be found in two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments. However some two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments are really great places to live, while others are absolutely terrible. Whether it's a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment or not has little bearing on how nice of a place it is to live in.

edited 1st Apr '14 8:30:31 PM by HighVelocityPointyThings

I honestly liked it but then again, unless the protagonist is REALLY whiny or there's REALLY BAD CGI (like on SRW: Divine Wars) ,I tend to love everything mecha

Just watched the first two episodes. Really liking this show so far.

Double posting, I know, but I just finished the series and want to gush about it. I had a lot of fun with this one. Aoba was a great shonen protagonist; optimistic and determined without being stuuuupid, and while there was some unexplained stuff about what a special snowflake he was, they didn't set him up to be more than he was cough Naruto cough.

I totally called that Hina was going to pull a whole Kyle Reese thing, and was jumping out of my seat when I correctly guessed that Bizon was the enemy pilot from the first episode.

I was sad to see the series end, but I guess it went out on a pretty good note. Hina had that line at the end about how the future's full of possibilities, which satisfied the shipper in me, and I was thoroughly satisfied with the ride I'd been on.

Then came the end credits scene. Nick Fury level, man. So, did they change the past or something so that Bizon survived the fall and lived his life over the last 70 years? Ooh, what if he was the one who started the war, seeing as he seems to be pretty high up in the Zogilian military. Can't wait for Season 2!

edited 21st Apr '14 2:02:47 AM by RedM

• sigh*

Well... I think this discussion needs to be ready for the two-part finale next week. Part One is on the 29th, and Part Two is on the 30th, which is my birthday.

From what I understand from what I've read and seen with previews, the story for the finale will most likely go like this (in spoilers).

As Aoba and Hina make up for lost time and begin to build on their relationship, a hate-filled and vengeful Bizon, having been thrown into the past and now a decrepit old man, sets his plans in motion to deprive Aoba of having any kind of future by setting up a final battle between the Zogilian Empire and the Treaty, which takes place IN SPAAACCEE!!!

So, what's gonna happen? Will Aoba and Hina finally make it back to the past? Is Bizon immune to dying, or will we finally see his current (and maybe his younger variant in the past to intentionally cause a Temporal Paradox) body get destroyed? And what of the other characters? How will Dio handle it if he loses his partner and close ally?

Frankly, I've been dreading this for over a month, and I just can't wait to get it over with... if only to see Ancient Bizon finally die in the last few minutes of the second half. But, ironically, I also expect an epilogue which presents a happy, non-psychotic Bizon that illustrates that, without a Hina in his timeline (or a young Hina), Bizon never turns into a Yandere and instead of being ruled by hate, he becomes a quality guy, and with most likely no strife due to a Zogilian Empire that died in its infancy, most likely a space explorer.

edited 25th Sep '14 8:07:15 AM by JDogindy

Honestly, I kinda forget what happened in the ending. Other than GIANT TIME VORTEX. And Bizon was like the Emepror in the...future? Or something. I'd be tempted to go back and watch the last episode, but it really doesn't feel like it deserves it.

It really feels like they could have cut a bunch of junk in the middle and maybe stuck the time votex in the middle of the season had and decent series. Maybe.

My main gripe with the series stemmed from the fact that I felt that Aoba was kinda slow on learning things, and that Hina should've prepared him better for what he was about to face. If they had been more lighthearted and dealt with the Mazinkaiser "Hey it's a spin on mecha, and we're gonna have some fun and explosions!" approach to mecha storytelling instead of the more somber Gundam "War... is hell..." approach, the whole story about a love triangle wouldn't have been so mind numbing.

The other problem with the love triangle was Bizon, because they quickly had Bizon go from an overprotective guy who knew Hina from his childhood but respected her to a Yandere who didn't give a damn if Hina was in agony as long as she was his, as the last episode depicted. I consider spontanious or quantum jumps in a character's attitude to be detremental in storytelling, and all it does is wind up with a character that the audiences hate for the wrong reasons (though, from the writers' perspective, the right reasons).

Plus, I do find it awful annoying that, in a show that hyped heavily about time travel, that the payoff to it was that the Time Vortex was purely accidental. In fact, I agree with you that this series and the special could've been done in thirteen episodes, with the Time Vortex happening around Episode 9 or 10 and the final resolution at Episode 13.

And, yeah, that last episode should be skipped. I still have it seared into my brain.

edited 26th Sep '14 7:21:59 AM by JDogindy

I actually kinda appreciated that everyone was mostly pretty sane. Like they sorta accepted Aoba when he showed he had the skills to back it up, even if they didn't exactly believe him.

Since you knew how it ended, you couldn't take the Love Triangle Then there was the whole "being Hina is suffering" thing later on, with her father getting killed, Bizon going Yandere and the pseudo-Germans going to ridiculous extremes to be suspicious of her and drive her away.

Really, the problem was it had a fairly large cast, but also wasted alot of time on mecha battles that didn't really serve any purpose other than look cool(as expected of Sunrise) and give Aoba an Dio a chance to do their thing. It really would have been better to cut some of those and develop the characters a bit more. (although this seems to be a general problem with mecha shows. Aldnoah and Argevollen did it also this season). The problem with time travel the way they did it is....you know the destination, so you have to make the journey interesting, and it couldn't quite do that.

And so, Bizon Gerafil is finally dead.

Along with this series.

Just putting stuff together.

I'm guessing there was supposed to be a significant amount of time passage as they said they used up all their unobtanium firing the Alaska cannon and then had 3 more years of production for the orbital version. I guess Bizon was supposed to take over at the start of season 2.

It kinda feels like the concept plot turned out to be 18 episodes worth and they decided to pad it out to two cours rather than condense it to one. In retrospect, trying to turn Dio into a character was pointless as he ended up not really mattering other than "guy to link with Aoba". That would have saved a bunch right there.

Bzion turning into a Large Ham in it For The Evuls was just a waste of the tone up till that point.

And then they had to condense it into two episodes. You can see where arcs would have been expanded — for example the counter-coup and the parts. Still plenty of good stuff from The Good Captain^note  Show Hayami in Macross7 Max Jenius mode and Adolf Galland Alfried Gallant — and, of course, Bizon never stood a chance. Aoba had won even before the "Groundhog Day" Loop started...

edited 1st Oct '14 7:38:14 AM by Greenmantle

Honestly, it still wasn't clear what was going on with the loop. I think Bizon and Hina from the last ep of season 1 ended up in past fighting over Aoba and then Hina got thrown....somewhere? Going to the future and meeting her "father" seems like the logical point, but her age doesn't seem to match up. I guess Bizon took the Long Slow Path to the future and plotted his Coup and revenge the entire time under a different name. And then there is the segment with Aoba and Hina in colledge where some sort of experiment sent Hina through time again(another possible source of future-Hina). It's not clear how that links up either.

So...yeah, it's kinda mess. Honestly, if they had condensed season 1 alot it might have been an ok, but not great show. Just ignore Dio, bring in Hina in episode 2 or 3, have the season 1 Climax around the midpoint and then have the last half of the cour to deal with the Zogilla rebellion/counter rebellion and time loops stuff. Part of the problem is that it feels like the first half was real-robot ish, while the second cour was like something out of Valvrave.

Call that the fallout from trying to condense 12/13 episodes into two.

Oh lord, all them signs of being rushed...Not even a new opening/ending song.

So let me see if I have this right. In the original timeline(Let's call it A), Hina and Aoba were OTP, met in college, the usual shit, became scientists and developed the mechs. In testing, Hina was sent to the future, which while it still is in the same timeline, let's call it alter A. In alter A, she meets Dio, joins the Federation or whatever they were called, and then the same battle as the one from the end of S1 occurred, and both Hina and Bizon got sent back in time, to timeline B now. In B, events that are more or less the same as episode 1 happened except Hina's piloting Luxion, and so sends Aoba to the future and herself also to the future(alter B), but with lost memories. In Alter B, similar shit happened, Hina goes back in time(this time, not on the Luxion due to not being a feddie pirate), and so timeline C, the definitive timeloop starts.

...If only this got more episodes. It was a nice attempt but there just wasn't enough time. At least they answered most of the questions, which is nice. Dio however, is pretty much irrelevant, which is not nice. Don't ignore best boy like that

For a mecha (space) war story, the scale of the story itself is rather small. Only Aoba, Hina, Dio(not really) and Bizon are kinda relevant, and Bizon only towards the end. It's kinda weird. Still, I don't regret watching Buddy Complex. Could've been better, but it has a place somewhere in my heart.