Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince Episode 1: Sloppy Start [First Impression]

Eva’s First Impression:
…..
I honestly don’t know what to think of this because it felt so… strange, out of place… I don’t know. All I know for sure, is that I’m seriously disappointed and found it to be quite boring.
This is only the first episode, I already have a list of concerns. First of all, I hate to say it, but I found the animation and character designs to be incredibly sloppy. Did they even try? Is this really going to be the best they can do? I certainly hope not. I am so sorry to say this, but lets be honest: they are horrible.
Then we have the CG animation, which I am not particularly enjoying right now (and it doesn’t help that I despise CG in general). I think the explosions are even in CG- it’s hard to tell, but it’s not that great. You look at all the other animations of explosions and this is so weak- it is pathetic. At least the mobile suits are cool, I love their designs.
The next problem is the lack of understanding what kind of characters our main cast is. They each have their own quirks, and they were introduced as the Five Failures and then they were ordered to on a mission to interfere with the enemy and buy time so that they can fulfill an evacuation and abandon the base. However not only did Team Rabbit succeed in buying them time, Hitachi disobeyed the order to come back and fought the enemy head on to the point they finally decided to retreat. But even so, it is not clicking with me. Yes, the mobile suits that they have been assigned to is a vital piece to their success, but even so we aren’t given any sort of actual solid information besides the description of what it can do. It feels far too random! You can’t have these things happen on a whim. I hope they will eventually address why they chose Team Rabbit (preferably within the next episode), who I will remind you once again have the worst grades. I am not going to lie, I thought they were going to be treated as scapegoats.
Now the plot, what is the plot? They didn’t even give us a “quality” hint. So Hitachi wants to be a hero. Okay, great! Now what about the attacks, who are these guys (aliens whatever), what kind of war is going on, and- I mean come on, give us some background here. Don’t make it so vague unless it’s a happy-go-lucky day and BOOM an ambush happens. You kick off the show with a fight, I expect you to EXPLAIN or GIVE US A HINT on what the fuck is going on.
I will give this show three episodes because this episode quite frankly failed to live up to my expectations. The PV was so much more entertaining, so I was expecting a better, more lively debut. Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince is really going to have to work for it over the next two episodes because unfortunately, it left a poor first impression on me.
Possibility of Blogging: Unlikely – but will wait watch/cover 3 episodes before final decision.
Possibility of Watching: Yes, just to see where it goes.
Chris’ First Impression:
I’ll be honest, it was kinda messy. The plot was explained poorly, the characters are extraordinarily cliche and I hate CG robots… oh wait, no, that last one was entirely personal preference… ANYWAY…
 Allow me to explain why I don’t like the characters very much (so far), primarily, our ‘main’ character, Izuru. He wants to be a Hero. Why? I don’t know and I don’t think we’ll ever know. Now I get that this anime ‘isn’t meant to be taken seriously’ but still, a little back story would be nice? Now I know what you’re saying, ‘Chris! It’s only the first episode! Give it time to delve into the characters!’, and I hear you, I feel the same why too BUT the important thing to remember is *ehem*, quote: “this anime ‘isn’t meant to be taken seriously'”. What that means is that we’ll probably never find out why good ol’ Izuru wants to be a Hero and if we do it’ll probably be some half ass reason that makes no sense and is only there for comedy purposes. Phew. Rant over. Now as much as I like to complain about ‘cliche characters’, there’s noting really to complain about. I actually feel sorry for writers these days! You know why? Because everything has already been done! Every personality, every back story, every quirk – done! There’s no place for ‘surprising’ originality anymore and I feel for writers, I really do, so that’s why I’m saying… I like these ‘cliche’ characters. If I’m going to watch this (and I am), I’m going to watch it with no expectations in mind. It’ll be that anime that I watch to clear my head and laugh at when I get home from school or to warm myself up for upcoming anime later on. But I digress, the characters are okay. I thought Toshikazu would be the headstrong male but he turned out to be the bland and uninteresting male… lucky him eh? Ataru is the cliche pervert extraordinaire who enjoys nothing more than sucking on other ladies lollypops… yeah. I guess I MIGHT grow to like him… eventually? Tamaki is the dopey girl who just wants to be loved and well… I guess I MIGHT grow to like her… and finally Kei is another bland character, who barely has more than ten lines and likes to complain about everyone else… Firstly, she should definitely get with Toshikazu, and secondly, I doubt that I’ll grow to like her… although I might grow strangely attracted to her at some point… WHAT AM I SAYING! Moving on…
The animation was… ‘alright’ and I – no, stop. Time for a rant. I absolutely HATE terrible character designs, more specifically, terrible character HAIRSTYLES! Three out of the five have TERRIBLE hairstyles, I mean, please, allow me to PERSONALLY call their barbers and give them an almighty slap. Ataru, Tamaki, Toshikazu… they have absolutely horrific hairstyles… why! Plus, aren’t they meant to be ‘genetically engineered’? Surely you would have thought that they would have designed them with better hair… Okay that sounded much smarter in my head… Let’s just end this rant here shall we?
The plot. Meh. Let’s go through some basic points, 1. Why did they choose the worst team possible to go and fight the enemy? Team Rabbits was it? Don’t they have the worst grades? I mean, sure, if there are no other Princes send them out as bait BUT if you have other, better trained Princes then why not use them? Plus wouldn’t you deem genetic engineering a failure if you produce failures? But let’s not delve too deep into this, I mean, it is meant to be quite light humored, y’know? 2. When Izuru decided to save the civilians and defy orders I was like, ‘saw that coming from a mile away’. I’m not sure if this is purposefully cliche, but anyone, unless they were A. 6 years old or B. had never seen a ‘dramatic’ anime/tv show before, would have guessed that this would have happened. It annoyed me even more when Izuru tried to lone wolf all like 100,000 of his alien assailants but I’m glad that the other decided to help him in the end. I’m guessing that the moral of the story in this anime is ‘team work rules’ and ‘if you try hard enough you too can become a hero’… but that’s just me guessing…
Anyway… it was okay. Nothing special. Just okay. I didn’t hate it, don’t get me wrong, but it certainly won’t be winning any anime of the year awards.
Possibility of Blogging: Maybe… depends on what the next episode’s like…
Linzz’s First Impression:

First of all, I would like to mention how good the animation is except for one thing: CHARACTER ANIMATION SUCKS. No offense but they do. The general’s character animation was so good at the beginning and I was really enjoying the CG and environment animation in an overall manner but when it went down to the main characters with a better design, the animation went… duh. D8 What was the studio that did this again? Dogakobo? This is the first time I had watched a series from this animation company and why do I get Gundam feels whenever I look at their characters? And to be honest, Hitachi’s drawings actually look better than they are. HAHA Other than the characters, background, CG animation, lighting, effects were really well done and they blended so well with my taste. The designs on ships and all the futuristic stuff were also well done and I love how I got those Phantasy Star Online feels whenever I look at them.

The AHSMB designs were actually pretty cool and the ones for the girls were really sexy. I could say, it levels well with the models appeared in Star Driver. And I like how they used RPG-based Party vs. Enemy type of teaming. Like the leader is supposed to be a forward and have the characteristics of a Knight in an RPG and the rest of the members follows and has their own role – Control for support, Gunner for long range-damager and etc.  But, dude, THAT TAKE OFF SURE TAKES A LOT OF TIME!!! They have to start up the Red-thingy then it will puke the Pits that will emit the ASHMBs and they will take off. LOL Takes a lot of time.

The characters – well, they are okay for a first episode introduction, at least. They kind of reminded me of the five new pilots from Candidates for Goddess (which is a good series if it had a long run and an ‘ending’). Another similarity would be the JURIA SYSEM that their units has – it’s like those of the Goddesses (units) of Candidates for Goddess that identifies their pilot and at the same time, connects with their pilot for commands. But apparently, MJP’s team of five doesn’t have at least a character that suits to my liking. I mean, usual anime series does have at least one minor badass or super cool character, right? Now these reasons just sums everything up for calling them the “fail five” – giving it justice. I can’t even retaliate to this title based on what I have seen so far. But for starters, I’d like to pick my favorite character upon first impression. I’D GO PICK THE GUNER, SURUGA. Maybe because of the influence of Rin and Len Kagamine’s signature color, yellow and my favoritism over Bumblebee from Transformers… well, whatever. XD By the way, plus points for the main character that draws. LOL
Overall, the story… still confusing since the enemy weren’t really that briefed at the beginning and we don’t even know what they are up against but one thing came to my mind: It’s like Candidate for Goddess except for the crappy character animations. So I’ll watch this and see how this goes. The ending of the episode was kind of… cliché, as what Chris had said, and can be actually seen in every mecha anime you’ve encountered but… WHAT THE HELL, IF THEY HAD WEAPONS WHY NOT USE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? D8 Save the best for last? LOOOOOL
Possibility of Blogging: Medium and if ever their character animation gets better, I’d love it.
Possibility of Watching: Yes since this kind of mecha animation is what I like.