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Wow...
Now, I know that a lot of you have written this off as a cute lesbians with mechas fanservice trash, and this is bound to produce a countless number of "ZOMG! Teh Yuri! posts, however, I must stress now that this show deserves.. no, demands respect and deeper, more careful look.
From the first look at it, Simoun is nothing short of simply amazing. The music is excellent, ranging from classic operatic pieces to Astor Piazolla-like deadly tango. The background art is simply gorgeous in it's static picturesque form, reminiscent of Shinkai's backgrounds and the BG art for Adolescense of Utena movie (the later more so, actually).
The morphing of 2D art and 3D objects is seamless and peerless. Even the recent Noein, which had excellent 2D/3D combination scenes would be hard-pressed to produce something as perfect-looking as this. Honestly, I am not overstating my case here, it is THAT good.
Those looking for yuri smut, honestly, Strawberry Panic would probably fit that bill much better. There are scenes that might seem like gratuitous yuri (yes, lots of kissing), but they actually manage to convey a boatload of conflicting emotion ranging from lust, friendship, comraderie, disgust, uneasyness...
In short, Simoun feels like it has a tremendous story to tell and it is giving us these juicy bits that promise quite a range of feeling.
Character designs look very "kawaii", which put me off for a second when I saw the trailer, but I felt like this is highly conceptualized as well. If you know the premise of the show (girls being kept artificially immature to pilot mechas in war), it seems like this is actually done on purpose and will have further plot attached to it, rather than just fanservice.
In any case, this is the best show of the season for me so far. I encourage all of you to check it out. If you like a great story with sweeping visuals of the type of Last Exile, you will appreciate Simoun.
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