(L) Reideen

[Sonhex]

With 2007, being 'the year of the mecha', REIDEEN is Production I.G's entry into the foray with a 're-birth' of Tomino's classic 1975 series Yuusha Reideen.



Cast:
Masataka Azuma as Junki Saiga
Saeko Chiba as Akira Midorino
Shinichiro Miki as Taro Maedasaki
Takako Honda as Hana Hoshikawa

Staff:
Director - Mitsuru Hongo (IGPX)
Character Design - Takuya Saito (IGPX)
Mechanical Design - Atsushi Takeuchi (IGPX, Innocence), Shinji Aramaki (Fullmetal Alchemist, Appleseed)
Music - Yoshihiro Ike (Ergo Proxy, Blood the Last Vampire)

Broadcast: March 3rd 2007 on WOWOW
First Trailer: here
Official site: http://www.reideen.jp/

Blurb (from Animenfo):

Spoiler for saving space:

The story takes place in near future in Japan.

Saiga Junki enjoys his school life as a normal high school student. One day, he hears that his father who was an archeologist and has been missing for 10 years was found dead in remains, and he goes to Mt. Kurokami of Iwate Prefecture. Junki loses his conscience in the remains, he sees strange illusion, and a gold bracelet is left beside him. On the bracelet, mythical letters are curved, “The Great Reideen…”

At the same time, with a fall of a meteor, a big mechanical beast appears from a lake. What is the gold shining thing appeared from Mt. Kurokami as if it responded to the beast?

The story shows the protagonist who comes and goes between normal life of days and abnormal fighting life of nights, people’s embarrassment, conflicts, and human drama in detail.

The large power the protagonist happens to obtain…it is glory or fear?

Thoughts based on the trailer:
The CG mecha is rather reminiscent of IGPX (understandably) but Reideen itself, funky bow intact in all it's glory, is rather impressive. I rather like the character designs too, thankfully they seem quite mature. Seems Production I.G is aiming for an older audience than IGPX too. Interesting music and the vocals in the trailer, very atmospheric. This is one of 2007's numerous mecha shows that I'm really looking forward to (along with Gurren Lagann and the VOTOMs remake) .

[Grv]

I really hope they put this in the prime time slot and go whole-hog on HD/5.1 - would be awesome.

[Sety]

The trailer doesn't actually work...on a sidenote.

Thats no Reideen boy....no Reideen...

[Sonhex]

I think there's a problem with audio the 120s trailer that crashes Quicktime. However if you view it in MPC or Zoomplayer (assuming you have Quicktime Alternative installed) it works fine.

Grv, WOWOW broadcasts Chevalier in HV, so fingers crossed.

[Nightengale]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EVvpXHhkU

The trailer in YouTube.

The use of CG even in the characters looked somewhat convoluted... They're probably going to go for fluctuation between cell-animation and CG for certain situations like character and eye close-ups. The feel of the whole trailer, music, atmosphere and what-not seems to be going for the whole hybrid-mystical mecha ala Rahxephon and Eva closer than the original blue-and-red bird's original... The gold CG REIDEEN looks sleek...but I'm not sure I like it, considering how far off it is with the original Yuusha Reideen, only the bow withstanding.

[Darkman.exe213]

Wow.......I'm getting some Rahxephon vibes from this series.....probably because the original was Rahxephon's main inspiration.

Anyway, I thought the original Reideen was a little cheesy, but this new one just looks really awesome.

[Sonhex]

Some news - according to the website Reideen will officially start on March 3rd 2007 but the first ep will be previewed a month earlier on February 4th 2007 on WOWOW and hopefully in drool inducing HV.

[Shinndou]

Originally Posted by Sonhex

Some news - according to the website Reideen will officially start on March 3rd 2007 but the first ep will be previewed a month earlier on February 4th 2007 on WOWOW and hopefully in drool inducing HV.

I hate it when the first episode of an interesting serie gets aired so early, because if it happens to be extremely good it makes me wait and crave for the following episodes even more.

Honestly said, I generally do not like CG mecha in anime shows (with very few exceptions), but I have faith in Production I.G and in the team that is going to work on this. The trailer looked nice enough to make me really interested in this and yes, as you guys said it does resemble Rahxephon (which was inspiried from the original Raideen itself ).

[BluWacky]

You know, I've always wondered what that stopwatch shot at the start of the RahXephon OP was for. Now I know!

I'm tentatively looking forward to this one; unlike Giant Robo, this looks like a pretty interesting remake. Hopefully IG will put a bit of money into it.

[physics223]

This reminds me of Ghost in the Shell ...

[Kaioshin Sama]

Rahxephon is essentially Raideen, with the Mu empire story, the way its piloted right down to the attacks it uses.

-Raideen was built by the Mu empire similiar to how Rahxephon was built by the Mu.
-Raideen sucks the pilot inside of it much like how Rahxephon does.
-Raideen uses a bow and arrow attack called the God Gorgon and Rahxephon uses a similar attack.
-Raideen has an attack called God Voice which is its most deadly attack and so does Rahxephon.
-One episode of Rahxephon even mimics how Akira calls for Reideen to come to him.

[physics223]

Production I. G. is pretty good with their productions, so I'm expecting something delicious from them.

[BluWacky]

Looks like WOWOW's doing their usual preview broadcast thing for Reideen's first episode; 4th February is the date, so that's just under three weeks away.

[Sonhex]

Yep, I'm really looking forward to the preview. But like Shinndou said it'll probably be incredibly awesome and then it'll be total agony waiting for a month until ep 2. Still I'll definately catch the raw of the preview...

[Deathkillz]

oooh im getting slight Demonbane vibes from this trailer and it looks pretty much *roar* ^_^

[Sonhex]

The first episode of Reideen is now online, for FREE. Click the red arrow at the bottom of the page, no registration required but you do need Windows Media Player for the DRM.

I'm downloading it atm, I'll post some thoughts/screenshots in a while...

[Nightengale]

Once it's downloaded, please do mention of WMP 11 is needed. If not, then I can do so as well...because my PC/laptop hates WMP 11 with a passion.

[Sonhex]

I have WMP 10 and it works okay for me.

Here's the direct link to the stream (83mb). If you want to save it to your hard drive, you'll need a download manager (like Flashget), that can handle mms:// streams.


EDIT: Well this is a promising start. Reideen looks great and the production values are very high...

Spoiler for Ep 1 thoughts and screenshots...:

Ep kicks off with high schooler Junki Saiga plagued by wierd dreams (of giant mecha) which started when his father, an archaeologist working at a dig at the Japanese Pyramid, Mt. Kurokami, vanished 10 years before. Out of the blue, belongings of his father are found and with his mother and chirpy imouto Kuraka head off to Mt. Kurokami. While they're here, they meet Maedasaki, who I think was an investigator for the company sponsoring the dig, not 100% sure though. Anyway Junki (looking alarmingly like an older Harry Potter) collapses when he finds a strange bracelet in the area where his father was working. Shortly after a meteorite comes to earth, from within a huge dino-scorpian mecha emerges and the military attack with helicopters, but fail and are destroyed. Junki and co try to escape when the dam bursts, and the dino-scorpian closes in on them. Trying to recover his father's belongings, Junki is swept away by the tide from the dam, puts on the bracelet and with the words he read in his father's journal, calls on Reideen. From within the pyramid, Reideen answers. Junki then finds himself naked and without spectacles inside Reideen's armour just as the dino-scorpian intercepts him. They face off, with Junki realising if Reideen gets hurt, so does he. On the hill a mysterious girl watches the two mechas about to engage. End.

Like I said the animation and production values are very high, this is a Production I.G anime afterall. The character animation is surprisingly realistic and with minimal but natural movements. No wild exaggerations like Blood+ for example. There's a good use of light and shadow adding to the realism, like in the school room and the police station where Junki and his mother look over a collection of his father's belongings. Backgrounds are all excellently detailed, expecially the Mt. Kurokami scenes. Non-CG effects, like explosions and the deluge of dam water, are all done rather well, but some of them (water especially) feel a little unfinished. Perhaps the TV broadcast will have improved on these to some degree.

The characters are convincingly drawn and portrayed. I really like the naturalistic design, but it is quite stylish all the same, even with side characters like construction workers and bored officials. Junki's weary mother for example, actually looks like someone who has struggled with the tragedy of her husband's apparent death. Junki himself is not a typical happy-go-lucky hero, he's quite reserved, a little aloof, but popular all the same. Not some punk social reject or troublemaker. In fact he's surprisingly normal, maybe even a little dull. You can't call him hot-blooded, at least no so far. I suppose it's quite refreshing really.

The mecha are pure CG and while Reideen looks majestic and powerful with its shiny gold armour, its dino-scorpian opponent seems out of place, but the design is quite imaginative. Interestingly the mecha are slow and sluggish, an attempt to convey the sense of scale and weight of these behemoths. The camera shakes and particle effects seems to add to this sense of massive machinery. I do wonder how this approach will work long term and whether it can sustain urgency in the battles. There was a one dodgy CG scene, with the helicopter crashing into the dam, which ended up being unintentionally funny. Overall though it was okay, I'm getting used to CG mecha, so this won't bother me.

Anyway rather like Giant Robo, the problem facing Reideen is over-familiarity. It's a story that mecha and action fans have seen many times before (high schooler gains mecha, mystery girl appears, epic battles ensue etc...) so how Reideen takes this forward will be critical. There are many similarities between this and recent mecha shows (ZEGAPAIN springs to mind), and that may not be a bad thing. But Reideen will need to take us in a new direction if they want to inject life into old mecha. Maybe this subdued realistic approach will do the trick. So far so good though.

Screenshots:

Remember that this preview of ep 1 also airs on WOWOW on Sunday (hopefully in HD). It should afford a closer look at the pretty animation and CG.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Shin-Getter should be releasing part of the original Raideen soon.

[Shinndou]

I'll have to wait till Sunday then, becayse my dorm's firewall blocks any video files/stream on my browser and I can't really the first episode online. :[