I can understand why you may have decided not to watch Aquarion EVOL. It’s a sequel to a show made in the early 00’s that wasn’t particularly well received. Even if the sequel is set 12,000 years into the future, it probably wasn’t worth checking out. Let me tell you now, as a person who never watched the original Aquarion, that EVOL is glorious. Gloriously stupid, gloriously cheesy, gloriously insane, full of the dumbest metaphors and overblown characters with fantastic speeches. Instead of trying to convince you to watch it with a review trying to talk about its positives in a vague fashion, I will instead list out a number of the things that occur during the series. Keep in mind that Aquarion EVOL does (almost) all of these things with a totally straight face. You may stop reading when you have been convinced.
1: When piloting the giant robots, the characters discover they can detect incoming missiles better the more skin they have exposed, so each pilot starts enthusiastically tearing off their plugsuits.
2: When the robots combine, the characters go into a sparkly otherworld where they fly through space naked while exclaiming how exhilarating the feeling of ‘combining’ is.
3: There is a character called Andy W. Hole. Because he’s an artist like Andy Warhol, except he uses holes to make his art.
4: A villain infiltrates their school to find information, but gets won over to the good guys side by the power of moe.
5: Each character gets buried underground as a form of intensive training, where they each go through an existential crisis.
6: One of the female’s boobs are routinely referred to as her “Big Bangs”.
7: When the lead male character gets really…into piloting the giant robot, he can unleash a special move called “Infinity Punch”, which is essentially a metaphorical erection.
8: There’s a scene where the adults are all in the Evangelion NERV style control room where each character tries to form a meaningful metaphor out of the doughnut they are holding.
9: It includes the line “I would rather have my body broken than my heart”.
10: The wall separating the male school and the female school is called the “Berlin”, which gets knocked down by the aforementioned “Infinity Punch” so the girls and boys can finally mix.
11: In the above mentioned sequence where the characters start tearing off their clothes to detect missiles better, the glasses-wearing piano-playing blonde-haired bishie, who is nowhere near the fight scene at the time, gets so into their overflowing energy that he too starts to button down his shirt.
12: The fujioshi character has a special power of ‘decaying’, which causes metal to rust when she’s in the giant robot.
13: A villain character, whose power is reversing other people’s’ powers back at them, constantly tells a girl that she stinks horribly and that he hates her and wants to kill her, but it turns out that this is because he talks in reverse and is actually hopelessly in love with her.
14: Andy W. Hol tries to chat up the girl whose power is to fill up holes by saying “let my dirt be the dirt to fill your hole”.
15: When the main character gets turned on, his ankles grow wings and he starts to fly. When one female character squeezes her boobs against him and he starts floating, the girl he was supposed to be hitting on sulks and says “so you’ll fly for anyone”.
16: This is called a cat.
17: So is this.
18: When the boss is away, instead of giving them simple orders in a letter or on the phone, he sends them a box with a doughnut and ants inside and forces them to work out what metaphor he’s saying today.
19: There’s an episode where the characters take a hot spring in the giant robots and the water is filled with bananas.
20: That moment where you discover the title of the show is Aquarion LOVE BACKWARDS.
The Cart Driver 
I tried to watch this once with a straight face…Boy it was hard
BRB gonna dig some holes and see how high I fly while feeling the missiles as I use my infinity punch with a woman getting killed.
Wow, I hadn’t..hadn’t realized 20!
Anyhow, being the completionist that I am, I watched the original show as the first two episodes of this were airing. It was great, but this is even better. Who thought metaphors, that thing vile literature teachers stuff down our throats, could be FUN, something I’m eager to wait for week after week?
People use metaphors far more frequently than they realise. For example, you just used the phrase “stuff down our throats” 😉
Has the line “Ants carrying out their antsy antics!” (thank gg for this, plus lines such as ‘bros over holes!’)
Super-powered infinity punch causes a rip in time that causes the cast to travel through an oh-so-convenient flashback of the original series.
23 Zessica decides to dress less promiscuously by copying Mikono’s modest fashion sense. However, she somehow manages to display more breast than even her previous outfit.
24 The cursed enemy civilization is being destroyed by a deadly ‘trap’ affliction, which makes women androgynous.
The ‘trap’ one is depressing. Oh those big bangs~
You know, I have seen the original Aquarion and I gotta say this sounds like basically the same thing. Except all the philosophical themes are treated tongue-in-cheek rather than taken completely seriously.
The original was mediocre at best, but I might breeze through EVOL just to because of Andy W. Hole.
Aww.
13th spoiled the show for me, since I put it on hold at 3 episode or like.
You can start from the OP theme
You should really watch the original series as it is much, MUCH better than this one – a work of pure genius, I’d say. Don’t let yourself be deterred by the fact that it ‘wasn’t particularly well received’. It’s better than EVOL on so many levels, that I don’t even know where to begin. And I’m not saying this because of some ‘nostalgia googles’ or anything like that, as I’ve marathoned the original series just recently (after the 13th ep of EVOL, I think). So yeah, just give it a go if you ever happen to have too much time to spare. I’m sure that you, of all people, would enjoy the hell out of it.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Genesis was absolute shite. So much potential, all gone to wast thanks to the most unconvincing and lame characters imaginable. Evol is genius because it’s so honest about what you’re getting. Scamp also neglected to mention the pink hearts scene after the ground-breaking episode that’s a hot springs episode and a beach episode at the same time.
Well, I’ll be watching it anyway, so I’ll take both your opinions into consideration
I just realized that the person who posted the first response in named “Kagura”
I’ve just been had
….oh god, you’re right
I think you’ve convinced me to watch Guilty Crown now. I know that wasn’t your intent, but I think I’d rather have unintentional comedy than intentional unintentional comedy.
Honestly, the real great thing about EVOL is how likeable the characters are. That’s just less interesting to write about
Really I was convinced by number 13.. xD then the two examples of the “cats” really pulled me into it. I watched the first one.. thats why I was a little slow to checking this one out.. but now that I know there is such stupid things to look to. Its worth checking out.
You had me at “Big Bangs.”
10: The wall separating the male school and the female school is called the “Berlin”, which gets knocked down by the aforementioned “Infinity Punch” so the girls and boys can finally mix.
You got me.
Okay okay, I’ll give it a shot once this season dies down.
I’ll miss you, “big bangs”. ;_;
They will live on in our minds
You write editorials that pull people into watching such a stupid glorious show.
Seriously, 5camp, what da fuq are you doing
Just doing my duty for a show that deserves more attention 🙂
I want to watch this show cause I really love the character designs and then Uchiyama Kouki voicing one of the main characters, but your list only convinces me further that I will detest this show every second its on. Like seriously, this show sounds like my anime villain; I want nothing to do with it.
You just hate fun or something
Nah, to be fair I recognise how this sort of ridiculousness might not appeal to some people, but you’re reading the blog named after Code Geass. I love this sort of completely ridiculous stuff
I love Code Geass and ridiculousness just fine; its fanservice (which was awful in CG) and sexual innuendos and anything sexual that I hate. I’m about as asexual as it can get; I don’t get any enjoyment or giggles out of things like numbers 2, 3, 7, 15, etc. Thus this show being like my perfect anime villain.
If i weren’t already watching this you would have got me at #18
Okay… then..
i think i better start from 2 episodes ova, “maybe” some wikipedia and finally start the Aqua Evo.
I guess I should watch aquarion EVOL then.
Specially since the is no more Gintama, I desperately need a portion of silly in my cartoons.
BTW I haven’t seen it at all but is believed that the real shape of the universe is actually a doughnut.
Doughnut of the thought I guess.
You know this very strange thought finally hit me. In the first Aquarion the commander kept talking about arrows and giving metaphors to arrows more then once. Now I see the commander is trying to metaphors via the use of doughnuts.. Its just me.. but maybe it has something to do with a Arrow and doughnut and possibly how you use them together! Maybe by putting the arrow in the doughnut or something like that.. things will make since!. Just Sayian though.
In other anime I might think that was a mistake, but not Aquarion
I can’t think of a show I’ve had more fun watching with other people. Sitting down with two other people and shouting about cats at a TV screen is far too much fun. Unfortunately I’m way behind, but once my assignments are all handed it it should be the perfect show to dumb down to.
It’s awesome that we have an immediate successor in the form of AK0048, which after the third episode I have to wonder if this may get even more silly (was it me or did all the soldiers and enemy mechs in ep 2 look like space marines?).
Still haven’t gotten to AKB0048 yet, but from what I’ve heard it doesn’t have quite the same charm as EVOL but all the ridiculousness
Zetman did it first.
Well shucks, guess I’ll have to follow this one after all 🙂
First time saw it (evol backwards) was with the game ‘Noitu Love’, which written backwards is evolution and ever since evol is auto fix’t to love.
Could do with some mindless fun after finishing my exams in a month’s time, thanks for drawing my attention to this!
I think I’m actually indebted to you for introducing me to several shows now… >.>
“3: There is a character called Andy W. Hole. Because he’s an artist like Andy Warhol, except he uses holes to make his art.”
Sold.
Well, it’s not that bad if you somehow manage to tune all the fanservice and the most annoyingly obvious innuendos out. This said, the first series was way better on many levels, if only for its plot. It had its moments of evident idiocy, but it was tolerable. I loathe fanservice, so I tend to skip the parts where it’s most blatant (which, much to my chagrin, are becoming more and more frequent) and enjoy the story…
Lol, wow….
I actually liked Genesis more than EVOL, to be honest.
The first season came out with movie length OVAs, which wasn’t disappointing when I watched it, thankfully.
The reason why I wanted to watch EVOL in the first place, was because of the art style (I actually saw some scenes in an AMV, and it looked interesting)
I hated the fact how Apollo died in the end, and in EVOL they made Apollo the reincarnation as Pollon or Pollo, when he was CLEARLY proved that he was Apollonius (The OVA was proof enough).
That’s really the only reason why I didn’t like EVOL as much in the end
I still liked Kagura though c: He really kept the true reincarnation of Apollo.
Amata was the complete opposite! xD