Sunrise. Ok, I'm treating myself again pretty early, but so what. I need better series to post about.
A typical episode in Horizon
Season one of Horizon was a mess for English viewers. The job of subbing it mainly fell to the infamous Hadena fansubs. I thought it wouldn't be that bad, but...
...I was proven wrong. I couldn't understand what the fuck anything really had to do with anything else, so I ended up raging at the story instead of the subbers. For that, I apologize. Hadena, you ruined an entire series for English viewers. Thanks a lot.
Anyways, Horizon II seems to simply be a continuation of the story. Don't fix what ain't broke, especially if the plot continues between seasons. And Sunrise definitely followed the above statement and continued on trucking.
Fucken coolest weapon of the year
The graphics are very shiny and smooth, same as ever. The action scenes are great, but the animations for everything else are also very smooth and pleasant to watch. Sharp lines, nice gloss, lots of frames, makes 720p look like 1080p, especially compared to the fuzziness of some other series. Can't complain about proportions, or really anything in the animations. A good job of continuing the same splendid graphic style that was displayed in Horizon season one. sunrise will be Sunrise, after all.
The audio is also damn good. The soundtrack fits in noticeably nicely with the episodes, and the OP/ED combo packs quite a punch, beating their predecessors in season one with flair.
The OP (ZONE//ALONE by Chihara Minori) is already in my MP3 player and a prime candidate for a Soundtrack Pick post, whereas the ED (Kanashimi wa Dare no Negai Demo nai by Aira Yuuki) is a bit more standard but still better than a lot of the OPs this season. Furthermore, the animation for the OP was fantastic, as were the drawings of the girls in the ED. Great job done by the music department.
And now on to the (entirely too much to explain) plot. By the way, Horizon is starting to be translated on Baka-Tsuki, so take a look. It'll take a while to translate though, so good luck. One volume of Horizon is about the thickness of a reference book. Not exactly a 'light' novel, eh?
What the fuck
Well...how should I explain this? A lot of really random shit happened in the past with a lot of worlds and a lot of countries and a lot of beings colliding with each other and causing the usual absurdly large amounts of destruction. In the end, there was an international organization that was formed in the new world. This international organization wants to control everything and does the usual oppressing Japan etc etc whine etc. The point is, according to a book called the Testament, for good shit to happen in this new world, history must repeat itself. This means that all the events that have happened in human history so far - such as the naval battles between England and Spain - have to happen again.
Except in the future, with random powers, and many more crazy bitches flying around.
But this is actually a side-story of sorts, something to merely perk interest.
This man...doesn't seem gay at all. Especially not with the high-pitched voice he has.
THe MAIN story revolves around a girl named Horizon Ariadust, the rightful heir to a city-ship, and one that got run over by a now-deceased villain. Why did she get run over? Because apparently she's special enough so that each of her emotions (e.g.: anger, sadness, jealousy) could be used to form a weapon of mass destruction that can also fit in one hand. Asin, they're cool weapons that do all sorts of shit, from blowing up mountains to screwing with your opponents' bodies. These weapons are then spread among the nations so ensure a power balance (except Japan, who doesn't get one trolololo).
Now this would be all well and good except Horizon gets the short end of the stick. Because the emotions were used for weapons, Horizon has now effectively lost her emotions and acts almost like a robot. Her lover, Aoi Toori, along with others in his school (of which he is the lackadaisical leader), don't appreciate that and plan to get all of the weapons - andthus all of Horizon's emotions - back to their rightful owner so Horizon can become fully human again.
So what does that mean? It means Aoi will, in effect, have to conquer the world. Good luck.
He's also your Chancellor.
Personally, I really like the idea of this plot. The whole world minus your friends are aware that you are against them, and they will do anything and everything that they can do to stop you. And you won't stop - all for the sake of teaching a girl what it means to be human, all over again. Add a few fights and struggles, and this becomes a very nice mix of introspetive talking about humans and an action-adventure series.
HOWEVER, it doesn't please me that Horizon is simply a 24-episode, 2-season series. This means that only the very beginning part of a series that should rightfully be read as some sort of an epic will be broadcasted to viewers, and that's simply not right. If Sunrise had the sense to risk doing a mass-peisode series for this, I have little doubt that Horizon would have been up there with the likes of Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu. Unfortunately, all we can see right now is a couple of catfights and then a brief series ending. Slightly disappointing, if I may say so myself.
If this ends up with a couple more seasons or even a mass-episode season, I would actually not mind it so much. The series has so much potential to look forward to - not just because it has interesting characters (much more interesting than most of the series out so far this year), not only because it has an interesting plot, but because it has an interesting world that has been so painstakingly created - and we need to preserve all the fictional worlds that we can, for our benefit.
In the end, Sunrise simply didn't fix what wasn't broken, but didn't work on what was faulty either. Horizon II is a good continuation from season one, but something seriously needs to be done about the pacing.
Recommendation: It's still damn good, watch both seasons of it.
Good question.
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