Fafner:Exodus 1- Extended Edition
Holy fuck, those first 15 minutes were goddamn amazing. Seeing the Hawaii base get decimated like that, gave me a better appreciation of how horrific the human side of this conflict is. Those first few minutes had it all: comrades getting brainjacked, teammates having to kill each other, the captain having to remote blow up his own subordinates (some of whom were begging for their lives), civilians getting massacred as they try to escape, a person refusing to bomb their own people and pulling a gun on their XO, Hawaii getting nuked, and people walking in the radioactive wasteland. Just absolute despair with the larger connotation that because this base fell, millions of people are going to starve. On top of all this, you have some absolutely jaw dropping storyboarding and art direction. Talk about starting your season off with a bang.
That part was so good that it made the rest of the episode look somewhat dull, sorta like Symphogeah S3's opening episode. The rest of the episode is mostly about reintroducing the old cast who have again aged and are fitting into new roles on the island as mentors or learning new trades. There is definitely a mono no aware angle with the whole generational Fafner piloting. Everybody is growing up and it's nice to see how the pilots are adjusting to a period in their life where they aren't fighting for their lives and actually enjoying it. Many of the characters also look significantly different compared to earlier entries, better reflecting their older age. Soshi's glasses are a significant improvement and both him and Kazuki are rocking longer hair. This is the part where I'm glad I marathoned the show after Exodus came out as I liked the surprise of seeing the older cast in the episode instead of having it ruined via PVs. Seeing everybody mostly fulfilling their dreams also worked to bolster the notion that the island's culture is advancing and Japan is regaining what they lost. The episode is reflective on the underlying sadness and tragedy that many of the people there have undergone over the franchise's running time. There's numerous zoom-ins on things like photographs or the passing down of that stupid Gobain helmet.
It's interesting that Kazuki is running off borrowed time at this point. It seems like he is mostly at peace with his
but I wonder if Ubukata is going to delve into that a bit. There's also way too many pilots running around, so I wonder if this season is going to be a bloodbath to whittle those numbers down. It's also starting to become somewhat hard to keep track of everybody with the new pilots being added into the mix.
It was interesting looking at the differences between the extended edition and the TV broadcast. The TV broadcast seemed to cut out most of the Hawaii battle, which feels like a poor decision as that sets up the ending for the episode and presumably the season as a whole. I wonder if this is going to go the direction of Childhood's End, with a bunch of psychic kids and the rest of humanity being extinct. Either that or BSG with the Cylon baby stuff. The extended edition doesn't feel bloated nor any of the 'extra' material tacked on. I guess though that unless you're Ufotable, you don't get to air one hour specials whenever you feel like it. Anyway it should be interesting to see how well the art direction holds up to both
Heaven and Earth as well as OG
Dead Aggressor. I'm curious because so far this looks shockingly close to the quality seen in the movie, despite things such as more CGI for the backgrounds. I wonder how much of this improvement can be attributed to outsourcing the fights to Orange so that Xebec could focus on the character animation. It's also possible that changes on the directorial staff, with Takashi Noto being brought in for more involvement, helped. I guess this could serve as a possible litmus test for how well Xebec has improved over the past decade.
