IS (Infinite Stratos) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sentai Filmworks also screens new releases at the Alamo Drafthouse West Oaks, and this is always on the 3rd Monday of each month. This is awesome, but also it is somewhat unfortunate that this means the Sentai screening is back-to-back with a FUNimation screening the very next night. And watching Anime on the big screen two nights in a row can sometimes be a challenge for an Otaku to convince either parents or significant others that this is still actually a worthwhile investment of time, gas and money! But I'm glad I made my case successfull and thus was able to take in the screening of Infinite Stratos recently as well as Legend of Legendary Heroes from FUNimation the very next evening.
I had heard a lot of advanced warning that Infinite Stratos was not very good, one reviewer ominously dubbing it "Infinite Shit" and yet another counseling otaku to give this one a pass if they are trying to make tough decisions on which DVDs to buy now.
So I had very low expectations walking into the screening, and came out pleasantly surprised. I speak only for myself, but I found Infinite Stratos very entertaining and emotionally satisfying. It manages to marry two improbable genres; your standard "Mecha" show overlaid with the comedy/Harem show, and surprisingly, it works!
Or at least it works for me. The main male protagonist, who for some reason not yet explained is the only male human on the planet capable of operating an Infinite Stratos mecha exoskeleton combat unit....and thus is enrolled in a prestigeous and heretofore all-girl Flight Academy dedicated to training IS operators located in his native country of Japan, but with students from around the globe, including Great Britain and China.
The male protagonist is voiced by veteran ADV Films (and more recently FUNimation) voice actor Josh Grelle (pronounced "Greely"), who also voiced the title character in Kenichi. Opposite him, in the role of the female lead in the English dub is Monica Rial, playing the protagonist's longtime childhood friend and now awkwardly his unwilling roommate at the Academy as well. It's nice to see FUNimation regulars still willing to come down to Houston to record for Sentai Filmworks like this. I love the ongoing cross-polination of talent that continues to happen despite the legal bad blood between Sentai Filmworks and FUNimation at the corporate level.
Yes, the story is perhaps a tad sexist, but so far at least not egregiously so. Brittney Karbowski is tapped once more to play a British girl (listen to her performance in Blue Drop for a comparison), and once more she pulls it off acceptably well. This time Karbowski's character is an aristocrat and quite haughty and a bit of a Tsundere character. Monica's character is also rather Tsundere herself. Very quickly the two develop a conflict between each other though the male protagonist doesn't quite catch that the girls feel this antagonism towards each other because they've both fallen in love with him and see each other as rivals for his attention and affection. Next enter character Rin from China, voiced by Hillary Haag in the English dub, who also happens to be yet another of Josh's character's childhood friends at the Academy...a perky freshman girl...and we have ourselves here the beginnings of a love trapezoid, and it promises to get only worse from here.
The first four episodes are handled "ok" on the emotional story front, I thought. Criticisms I've heard are the improbable emotional reactions of some of the girls later on in the show. I'll keep my eyes open and see if I agree. Since I doubt Sentai will be screening any further episodes of this series on the big screen, I'll have to either rent, stream, or buy the series on DVD to know how it all turns out.
As far as action sequences, the Mecha battles are very visually appealing and exciting. I definitely look forward to more of these in later episodes. I am very strongly considering purchasing this title on DVD to own, though I don't know if it's worth plopping down the extra coin to get it on Blu-Ray. Normal DVD will probably suffice for me.
I also realize I don't yet have a category tag for "Harem", which is a major oversight. My bad.
Anyway, Harem shows are a mixed bag. The better ones require some suspension of disbelief to work and work best as light comedy. The ones that play out realistically tend to veer off into vaguely creepy and painful, like Shuffle! which I enjoyed, but fully admit is a creepy, creepy show and sometimes hard to watch...those characters suffer...a lot...and a lot of characters get very deeply emotionally hurt before Shuffle! is done. I hope that Infinite Stratos manages to swing clear of this problematic ground.
I applaud Infinite Stratos for at least the attempt to mary a Mecha show with a Harem show...the results for me are "so far so good", and I find myself willing to pay Sentai Filmworks to see how the rest of it ends. Well played, Sentai, well played.
