[Tremalkinger]

Originally Posted by tanuki

It's the kind of series that could benefit from the addition of a prologue/introduction at the beginning to help the audience understand the story. Kind of like what was done for the fansub of Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito...so those in the audience who are going in cold can get some basic info to help them understand what's going on..

Um... what do you think Noto Mamiko was doing during the opening sequence involving all the enemy fighters? At the very begining of the first episode, she explains the premise of the show (at least insofar as the war between the 'good guys' and 'bad guys' goes... not the world, so much).

Originally Posted by froinlaven

The lesbian kisses make me say yes, but the crazy jargon makes me say no! Oh, what am I to do!?

Do you mean all the latin? I had a lot of trouble understanding the raw, mainly because I kept thinking the proper nouns of latin roots were words I should be understanding. Still, Simoun is hardly the first series to pull lots of crazy words out of nothing, and with subtitles (Go Doremi!) its not hard at all.

Originally Posted by Guido

Then, I just came about a week from finishing Mai-Otome, and Simoun delivers a similar premise. War to take control of a powerful technology that the other party employs to, figuratively speaking, safekeep world's peace in accordance to God's will. Simoun machines playing the Remergion dance either correctly or incorrectly easily obliterate entire fleets with little effort, and Auer portrays her best to mimick Arika except she isn't much with the 'dream' fad and hops into the heat of the battle right away; please no "oba-chan" references from Auer.

Thematically similar to Mai Otome it may be... but I didn't even really think about that until you mentioned it. The general feel of the two shows are completely different, as well as the art styles. Auer and Arika are polar opposites as well: Arika was naieve, overly friendly, overly genki and staunchly against war, while Auer is brusque (borderline rude, but I don't think she means it), eager to fight, is direct and has a deep seated strength of personality that's extremely fun to watch. It doesn't hurt that Auer's voice acting has started off superbly (as compared to Arika, who goes from irritating to tolerable). In fact, Auer may be the first female lead of an anime who I like more than the side characters for the first time... ever.

Originally Posted by Tiberium Wolf

I find it disturbing that those elder males have female voices.
I find it disturbing when that girl said she wanted to be a male.

It's just these 2 things that gives me chills in this serie.

I'd be more than willing to bet that, due to the fact that they dedicated more than half of episode 2 to the 'gender decision' issue, that it will become prominant in the plot. You probably will want to stop watching, but the ultimate decision is yours.

I, for one, found the concept to be quite unique and interesting (in a 'such a thing could only originate from Japan' sort of way ) I'm looking forward to seeing where they take it.