(L+CR) Ginga Kikotai Majestic Prince

[MisaoFan]

Spoiler for Episode 1:

The first episode was really good. It sets an awesome sci-fi setting where genetically-modified children named "Princes" pilots giant robots to fight for the faith of humanity. Five teenagers : Izuru, Asagi, Tamaki, Kei and Suruga finally get their first mission to attack aliens. It was pretty simple at first glance, but things gets a lot complicated later. Visuals turn out to be better than I thought, I loved their humorous expressions that appear occasionally, the fight scenes are superbly done, the side characters are amusing to look and the slightly retro music that comes from early 2000s. It appears to be the most comedic out of the mecha trio of the spring, and the seriousness was okay. Will try a few more episodes to see what's offering more and I especially liked Tamaki's omake at the end !

[leokiko]

It was fine, really. Nothing special, it felt very Gundam-like but a bit dumb. I mean, why would they send the so called "Fail Five" on such an important mission? Why didn't they explain how the JURA-SYSTEM worked before they went into battle?

How come some weird kids managed to own everyone when no one else could(this will obviously be explained though, but still was very random)?

Overall, 6.5/10. I will keep watching it, of course (I just drop stuff I rated <5).

[duckroll]

Episode 1

That was a good but rather safe and predictable start to the show. It's very much what I expected from it, maybe a bit too by the books in some ways but it's a fairly standard opening episode which introduces the setting, lays out the basics and characters, and includes a major action sequence to show what the show has to offer.

Right off the bat I will say one thing which I know some people will probably disagree strongly with - Hirai's character designs absolutely work on the show. They're not cool designs nor are they good art, but he does have the ability to turn out a huge number of characters who look distinct and can be visually identified by the audience by their quirks. This is important because the show has a pretty large cast, and it helps to be able to make that connection early on. The other thing is that it's a pretty goofy show, so the characters all looking kinda dumb fits really well with the tone.

The CG action is really well done as we would expect from this being a major project for Orange. I think the action is well composed and uses the CG camera as would be expected for exciting looking action. The only downside is that similar to their work on Akito the Exiled, the CG explosions still look off. That's something they have to work on as they take on more of this sort of work I think, because they stand out from the rest of the visual composition.

Story-wise there isn't much to talk about at the moment. It's still very early on, but the comedy+action element works for me. The pace is pretty fast, and it doesn't waste time on drawn out stuff. The comedy feels a lot of a stand up stage production to me, where a lot of what makes the dialogue work is from the performance of the voice cast in delivering the lines. It doesn't rely on intant gags so much as setting a constant tone of lulz for most of the characters. We'll see how it progresses, but I like what it's doing.

Overall I'm just glad a show like this is even made at all. We have mecha shows every year, but most of them tend to be serious, and those who aren't tend to be over the top super robot stuff, or filled with perverted lewd jokes. It's nice to see someone actually produce a mecha show which is a mix of more "serious" shounen style action scenes and lighthearted character comedy about goofy characters while not in combat.

tl;dr - This was enjoyable, will keep watching.

[shadow1296]

just watched the first episode and I have to say that I have high hopes for this series

Spoiler for episode1:

though the first episode says here are main characters deal with it, that's probably the only complaint about it, the rest is what really got me the characters go from unsure failure rookies to badass pilots able to hold back an entire fleet in a matter of seconds, that surprises the rest except for the guy in the metal faceplait honestly if the mecha battles stay like this i'll definitely keep watching it

[konart]

Ugly. And I'm not talking about the Hirai's chara design, but about overall quality, animation and CG.
Just... fail.

[ookamigirl]

The first few minutes were all battle like.
After that the characters took over.
The animation is not very good, that's pretty much obvious.
On the other hand, I kinda liked their general behavior which was lol
Basically, they're either funny or mad about something.
The plot is shooter oriented which doesn't leave much room for anything else.
I won't be watching this one.

[HighGuard]

Not sure if gonna keep watching. They start out as bottom of the barrel rookies with the worst scores to suddenly getting hand picked to pilot elite 5 different highly specialized mecha and then holding off an enemy armada by themselves. Urgh.

[Dop]

I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to bother watching this, but as I had the time and most of the stuff I'm planning on watching hasn't started yet, I thought I'd give it a go.
I enjoyed it more than I'd expected, so I'll be giving this one at least a four episode trial to see if it grabs me or not.

[ZGMF-X10A]

First episode was alright nothing too special. The ending song was pretty good. I hope this anime have some decent mech action.

[U<3Anime]

Not really digging anything else but the CG. Pretty impressed by how smooth the CG looks in this show. It's better than the janky mess I see in a mecha series(or any anime) most of the time.

[Kunagisa]

What did people expect from episode 1 of a 2-cour mecha show? Plot wise most mecha shows are either highly political, which often are not laid out in fine prints in the pilot episode, or of super robot genre, then there is barely any plot. Majestic Prince's episode 1 did everything an intro episode is supposed to do, so I cannot agree with some of the complaints. Lack of originality is also synonymous with standard procedure, something that is not a bad thing unless you're one of those revolutionary hipsters that demands new and never before seen storytelling in everything you watch (hint: TV-tropes prove that's not possible). Either way, just the fact this series has an unit with head that snaps to the side for the sniping is more original than most mecha designs in the past 2 years.

I can understand if you find Hirai-faces ugly as sin (I am mostly neutral toward them), but CG and combat screenplay wise this is the best of the season so far. Much better than another "mecha series" this season, which has mostly long-zoomed out camera angles with all laser spams fights that are merely light shows with patterns that are as impressive as one watching a Touhou gameplay. Though I do concede that (thus far) "MS" vs. "Bugs" is less interesting than "MS" vs. "MS".

For her debut song, Kon Natsumi did a fabulous job, and the jokes are funny so enjoyable episode for me. I did have a chuckle when someone saw Suzuki Takaaki's name and said big boobs military personnel confirmed.

[Kaoru Chujo]

Yes, good CG and combat. However, there was nothing else good about ep1, for me. I'm not basically a mecha fan, so if this has no strong points except the mecha fighting, then it's not for me. I'll be back next week to see if the members of Team Rabbits have more going for them as characters than they showed in ep1.

[DuelGundam2099]

Is there anyone other than me in this thread that actually is a mecha fan by any chance?

[ars89]

I actually liked the goofy character design, it works for me. Liked the mech designs as well. This has a nice combination of action and comedy. CG looks great.

[creb]

That was good. A better Gundam than AGE was, though the production values aren't really up there. Love the constant facial shots.

Seem to be using that stylized video game like effect, the term is at the tip of my tongue....in video games its done to eek graphics out of aging console hardware, though I imagine that's not why it's being used in the anime. Perhaps it's cheaper to draw/ink? The sparse/flat inking/coloring with highlights, for lack of a better word. The Killer blah blah Sudo games tend to emphasize that type of artwork, as an example, though they're far more extreme than what was seen here.

The music was largely uninspiring as well. With the amount of practice they have with Gundam and ballads, that seems like an area impossible to fail at, but oh well.

It's certainly not some deep story or anything, but as entertainment, it looks like it'll serve, especially as I'm a mecha fan. Still thinking Gen's mecha will be the mecha to watch this season, but this one surprised me, as I was assuming it was going to be a melodramatic high school kids in space, though one episode hardly defines a show.

As for the actual story, if I had to guess, the machines have a will of their own or something, so that's why he chose the worst students in the academy, and we'll come to that realization slowly over the next umpteen episodes. You know, because we obviously need a plot hook of some sorts to explain away using Team Rabbit to save the day.

[Guardian Enzo]

Occasionally funny, but those oatmeal faces... It was like Gundam mated with silly putty for the character designs.

[Kakkou]

Majestic Prince ep1: Cool looking mechas and good CG work by Orange. The OP sounds nice and Hirai's designs... yeah. I'll begrudgingly admit that the Hirai faces work decently well for the stupid antics scenes cause they're well, stupid. But then you get to what I assume should be a serious moment and they backfire spectacularly:



Also was this shot necessary? =/



It's not even a sexy angle.

[Elestia]

First episode didn't really hook me. I was put off by the character designs, the animation quality, and the overall story.

[HandofFate]

Why 5 rookies at the bottom of the class gets handpicked to pilot 5 cutting-edge custom mechs and thrown into a suicide mission, no idea why. Unless we find out their individual test scores are actually really high, just that they sucked in practice matches.

Did enjoy the fight at the end though. Is the leader the one that was always drawing by himself on a notepad?

When Red was like "Why did it move by itself?" Did he mean that it called for the Cannon to be sent to it by itself or blocking the thing that was gonna attack him on the right? Because it seemed like he wasn't paying attention to the Controller girl when she gave him an alert.

[aeriolewinters]

Why 5 rookies at the bottom of the class gets handpicked to pilot 5 cutting-edge custom mechs and thrown into a suicide mission, no idea why. Unless we find out their individual test scores are actually really high, just that they sucked in practice matches.

probably to highlight the bleeding edge tech their prototypes have. they can easily say that : "It's because of the prototypes."