Let's Watch Simoun

[Tasrill]

Darling in the Franxx has dragged up some old memories of another show that involved relationships, symbolism, and puberty. A show that I still can't remember if I actually watched all the way to the end. That show is Simoun. My memories of the show at this point are vague and spotty and I think all of three other people have watched it since it was actually on the air. So lets all go on a journey together to see just what this is all about.

The story opens as all good stories do, with foreboding images and a long voice over. Airships from a polluted land chugging over an endlessly storm tossed ocean while our narrator talks about how they are going to invade the holy land to learn their secrets. We get a few flashed of the crew and a few flashes of incite. This isn't earth that we are on but Daikuuriku and the best science and technology of this airship loving group is some steampunkesqe looking 'planes'. It should be noted that this show came out three years after last exile and the whole 'another world with steampunk airships' was kind of a thing that had been kind of a thing in anime.

So we have hundreds of the guys launch their plans while wearing face covering helmets while talking about invading the holy land to take their technology. It isn't exactly subtle who are going to the the antagonist in this anime.
If the antagonists are steam punk industrialists then who are the protagonists. Lolis and preteens who all are in pairs piloting a ship made up of two sea shells and some bits of metal. Okay I have to admit I love it when a show goes this extreme in the visual design differences. This isn't just curves vs straight lines this is like a completely different designer for a completely different anime came in and made these ships. Anime needs more weird like this.

Anyway back to the preteen girls. They all are in pairs to a machine and then kiss each other. The technology for doggie style piloting had not been invented yet so we need slightly more subtle ways to point to our subtext like make-outs. None of them seem important outside of Pink Haired Princess and Purple Haired Make out queen. Everyone else looks like the normal 'pick out your waifu' fair with various character types from glasses to spunky.

Speaking of subtext here come the adults. There are men and women here but strangely enough all the characters seem to be voiced by obviously female voice actors and the male character designs are rather androgynous. Also we find out that the holy land isn't simply that in name. The ships called Simouns are holy objects that through magic skywriting can draw prays. Prays that can fuck shit up and some people think using prays to fuck shit up might be bad.

So our heroes go off to patrol and find a shot up Simoun. They find out the Steampunks have shot down an entire wing of the super seashell pray machines. There is a great deal of disbelief that those punks could do such a thing but with a shot up Simoun they go off to find out what the hell is going on, and hell is what they find. While flying there Make out Queen keeps saying how she wants to get stronger while Princess doesn't think that is a proper reason to be flying holy machines piloted by priestesses

Like a swarm of insects the industrialists are trying to carry away the seashell super ships with there weird little chopper plans. While the camera slides over dead girls in those downed machines our narrator from the beginning comes back to say how these are not chariots of the gods but simply machines that can be studies and that study will help their country become even more powerful.

Then we get our battle. We have our heroes shocked there holy seashells being shelled so the aggressive sky writing and acrobatics show begins. 3d glowing sigils are drawn and explode into great bursts of energy that burn the whirly bird industrialists into reused animation frames. There is yelling, bullets, erasing of magic sky writing, and variously named sigils but it all comes to a head with the Sigil Make Out Queen wanted. She keep pushing again and again for the most powerful one to be draw, one so old exactly what it did was forgotten, all so she may become stronger. In desperation Princess finally agrees and it goes… poorly. Poorly for the industrialists. Even as Princess suddenly comes face to face with the masked narrator we have been hearing from the Sigil starts to collapse. Sucking in the hundreds of Punks while Makeout Queen cries out. Then a purple flash destroys the rest while Make Out Queen dies of screen.

Then we get back into some character building. Princess has locked herself in her room and we don't see her again till the end of the episode. We have a six year old show up saying she is a priestess but more importantly we learn two other of the pilots are dropping out. They are going to the spring and one tells us she is going to become a Man. No one things anything about this other then she is breaking a taboo of telling people what her wish is going to be when she goes to the spring. Also we have focus on two new characters. We have Paraietta. She watches over the Princess' closed door and talks to those two pilots who are leaving. One talks about how she wishes she can be as gallant as Paraietta is when she is a man so from now on Paraietta is known as Gallant. There is also Aer who shows up in her single pilot training Simoun dressed in a reasonable flight suit and not weird anime cloths. She pushed herself into situations, is about as subtle as a brick to the head, and doesn't seem to respect the fact that Simoun are object of worship. In fact she just wants to fight with them. We shall call her Meatball head for reasons that are very clear once you see her.

We are left at the end of the episode with Meatball Head running off to try and fight people with fucking guns with a Simoun that can't do any skywriting and Princess flying around in a mostly translucent skin tight suit in a zero g tub of air.

All in all it is an interesting first episode but it is extremely heaving on the world building and very light on character building. The character building that we do get is also very obvious and blunt. Still this is a world that seems full of world building so spending a episode largely just setting tone is not a negative mark but it also isn't a positive one. Going forward I hope to focus more on characters if the show will let me. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

 

[Alturangga]

Oh yeah. I remember this. Never watched this. Just read a review in some magazine. But you can hardly forget the show that use lesbian kissing as its gimmick, especialy at my age back then.

Will be following the thread.

 

[Jiven]

Oh yes! I never finished Simoun, i dont know why.

 

[Tasrill]

When last we left our heroes Meatballhead was flying off in an unarmed ship to take out some evil industrialists and Princess was flitting around in a mostly translucent suit in zero g. The show cuts back and forth but for the sake of clarity let's start with Meatballhead.

So you are in a unarmed trainer and you have a recon flight of enemies near you, What do you do? Do you wait for help? Do you buzz them to try and scare them off? If you answered ram the fuckers you might be Meatballhead. Yes she decides that since she doesn't have guns the best thing to do is to ram all five enemy planes one after the other with her trainer Simoun and it works. She is also yelling at them and in general excited for all this fuckery. Then she comes back from her sortie hyped and expected everyone to be excited for her to.

Well it turns out a bunch of priestesses flying around in blessed seashells are not big on the military jargon like sortie or fucking people up. Gallant is there to and she is really not having it because while Meatballhead was headbutting people to death she ended up drawing the same sky pray that Makeout Queen and Princess did but with the smoke of her enemies that were splattered on her windscreen. Meatballhead clears the air on that by being completely oblivious to what these sky pray things even look like, who Makeout Queen and Princess are, and about being a Priestess in general.

Meatballhead does get one thing in her head though, Princess is the best pilot in the Choir and she must have her. She even has one girl with a very mid-2000s moe face throw herself at Meatballhead only for Meatball to turn her down. She then proceeds to wander the ship yelling out Princess' name looking for here while two of the younger priestess follow around this very strange person. Subtly, tact, and reasoning are not Meatballhead's strong suit.
While all this was happening you had a seperate group of girls all staring down at the Princess as she sky writes in her skin tight suit. There is a great deal off talking about her skill and graze and how amazing she is. Princess draws out that sky pray that lead to her co-pilot/possible something more Makeout queen getting kill and through the very unsafe hole in the sky pool she sees that Meatballhead had drawn the same pray with the blood of her mechanical enemies. This is clearly a good time to get out of the pool.

Out of the Pool and right into some more character and world building. Hey remember that girl I mentioned that said she was going to the Spring and thought about becoming a man, well honestly this is her episode. It turns out that at least for the holy land and possibly the world everyone is born female but are socially genderless until on their 17th birthday they go to a sacred spring and choice a gender. If you are a Simoun pilot though you get to put off that change as long as you keep flying. Well Elly doesn't want to fight and kill and she is already over 17 so she wants to go to the Spring and she wants Princess to go with her for moral support. Princess agrees because what with the death of her friend and possible crush she really needs some time to think about if she wants to keep going if she is going to be a murder Priestess.

Meatballhead finally stops yelling like a lost puppy when she finds Princess and rather quickly convinces her to be her copilot for the flight over to the Spring. It turns out Meatballhead is in on this Simoun thing because she doesn't want to have to pick a gender and she is going to milk this priestess thing for as long as she can. She is willing to fight for it in a very literally since. Princess is mostly just sullen during the flight.

Then comes the trip to the spring and well first we get it dropped that Elly is thinking about being a man only because the job prospects for men are better. So yeah even in a world with gender transformation you still have some good old fashioned sexism going on. We also have Princess forced to stand in front of a bunch of 'normal' people who are mostly anime old as the fawn over her for being a Priestess. This is very clearly not what Princess signed up for.

The emotional core of the episode though is the spring. To girls both not thought of as adults or even gendered stand before a huge pool of water inside a great cave. There are worn steps and ancient statues around as Elly tries again and again to thing of what gender she wishes to be. Then the prophet across the water call to her and she steps into the water. Still she can't decide and her panic grows higher and higher. At the fever pitch of indecision there is a flash of colors and light that hint at the double helix and the prophet tells her that god helped her choice. Outside Elly in shock talks to Princess and tells her in a horse voice that she will be a man now. Her voice will slowly change, her breasts shrink, and his name is Elif now. Then Elif breaks down into hysteric crying.

There is another scene or two of Meatballhead bonding with Princess and them deciding to fly together but it is very clear what the show cared about. This isn't the kind of show that hints at it's big ideas it pushes them into your face and forces you to engage with them. So far that is also when the show it at it's best and also it's worst. It is either long dry dialog about it or just big emotional gut punches and nothing in between. Here's to hoping the show has less of the long dry dialog and more things like this.