Cross Ange: Tenshi to Ryuu no Rondo Ep 1 [First Impression]

Eva’s First Impression
Everything was great and all (the hauntingly eerie melody in the beginning was spot on, gave me the chills)… and then took a VERY dark turn. Ugh… it was disturbing and difficult to watch and made me want to throw up.
For sixteen years, Angelise was living a blissful life as a Princess, in a world where if you do not possess the ability to wield the Light of Mana, you are identified as a Norma: A mana-destroying mutant (limited to only affecting women). For her entire life she thought she could wield Mana, but unfortunately the ugly truth was revealed when her Baptism Ritual was to take place, no thanks to Prince Julio (who is now: Holy Emperor Julio the First). The punishments and reality that Norma have to face is excruciating. They lose all their rights, their personal belongings, their name and title and ultimately- themselves. When taken to the exiled island of Arzenal, whoever is sixteen and over is forced to train as a soldier.
It was in a way, hard to watch, knowing that there was going to be a domino effect the second Ange started preaching to a mother (who was trying to protect her Norma baby) about how she couldn’t keep her child and that she should have a new baby to love and raise. Knowing that things were going to get very ugly was very nerve-wracking because at the time we didn’t know what happens to the Norma when they are “quarantined”. Now we do, and it is extremely disturbing. The worse part of it, it doesn’t look like that disturbance is going to end anytime soon. This is the island of the exiled of “things” with no rights to protect them, and where the weak will be squashed. Of course after undergoing countless gruesome trials, she will eventually become strong and resilient Ange we have met in the very beginning of the episode, not the First Princess of the Misurugi Empire who we have seen her as today.
One of the things I appreciated was how Angelise’s parents continued to love and protect her despite the fact that she was a Norma. They didn’t treat her as a ‘thing’, and did the best to protect and conceal her darkest secret. Even when her secret was out, her mother didn’t abandon her, she did whatever she could to help her beloved daughter to safety- and ultimately took the bullet of death in her steed, wanting her to live on.
I certainly hope that in the future that we will be given the chance to see Ange KICK JULIO’S ASS. Like seriously, I have the mighty need of seeing that. But hey, first we gotta seen them slay some wicked dragons! Speaking of which, I am curious to see whether these Norma have always been used to go off and fight the these wicked Dragons that will probably be threatening the rest of the world.
Overall as long as the gruesome parts of this storyline doesn’t become a pattern, I certainly see this as one of the shows I would definitely love to cover this season. Yes there is a TON of fanservice, but I will do my best to overlook it since I am very interested in the direction this show is going to go.
Possibility of Blogging: High
Possiblity of Watching: High
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FLIES IN, WHAT WAS THAT, AN EPIC BOOBIE ANIME ABOUT A STRONG WOMAN WHO GOES FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING? WELL GOOD SIR YOU’VE SIGNED ME UP FOR A FIRST IMPRESSION AND NOW I SHALL CRY! This entire ENTIRE episode is made painfully transparent from the beginning if you read the summary, you know Ange is a Norma. So seeing Angelise, the great princess of the Misurugi country, be haughty and yet strong at the same time is oddly comforting and also painfully awkward.

I’d say this first episode has a very important point. It’s very interesting, but it also gets the worst parts of the show out of the way. Angelise being haughty? Gone. Angelise undermining Norma’s as people? Gone. The transparently evil brother? Revealed. Let me explain to you the first few minutes of the show, Angelise loses at a sport in order to save a friend, then her brother is all smarmy and snarky about it. Let’s call him Evil Clovis. Because he is A LESS CHARISMATIC VERSION OF THE GREAT EMPEROR CLOVIS WHO DID NOT DIE AND WAS IN FACT THE GREATEST CODE GEASS CHARACTER OF ALL TIME

Then the show makes a RIDICULOUS emphasis on Angelise meeting a norma, the ‘plague’ of the world she lives in that cannot use and in fact rejects Mana. She even goes on to say really mean shit about them and declare she wants to destroy them. IT’S SO TRANSPARENT EVEN IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE SUMMARY THAT SHE WILL IN FACT BE REVEALED AS A NORMA. THERE IS ALMOST NO QUESTION IN MY MIND AND I WAS LIKE “wAIT…ISNT SHE SUPPOSED TO BE ONE? SHE’S GONNA BE ONE!!!”

This anime already has a lot of things I like- break the haughty, is a good one, as from the getgo we see Angelise can be a good person but her major character flaw is one NEWLY introduced in the episode. It feels kind of cheap to have it shoved in our faces like GET IT GUYS, SHE IS A JERK but she was only recently a jerk and needed to be re educated. It was very painful to watch her life break down in a few short moments as her brother betrays her, she finds out she is nothing to the world she loves and should be ruling over, and on top of it all her mother dies trying to protect her. Evil Clovis just makes me so freakin angry.

The best parts of the episodes were well…many. And few. It’s really hard to explain but imagine you see something you know is going to play out to be REALLY fucking amazing. The introduction where we see the future as she is fighting in mecha. SO AMAZING AND I WANT IT I WANT IT RIGHT NOW. The smug actions of her brother, and us knowing THERE HAS GOT TO BE A FUCKING CUT DOWN ON THIS SHIT SOMEWHERE. Somewhere in this show that little fuck twit is going to be punched in the vagina hardcore. Oh did I mention he has a creepy rape kinda thing for his younger crippled sister Sylvia??

Let’s just be for real here, this show already seems like it’s going to have A LOT of creepy rape overthemes. The brother seems to have it going on and as Angelise is taken into custody to be ‘used’ elsewhere, she is actually HELD DOWN and given a physical which requires her being PENETRATED while fucking handcuffed down. Imagine you woke up as a princess on your happiest day and ended it as a worthless piece of garbage whose mother died protecting them and having that information revealed to you by a woman who holds you down and basically rapes you. CROSS ANGE EVERYBODY!!!

But don’t let my harsh judgement of it’s themes fool you- I am immensely interested. I am saying this right now, if I had to fucking drop my shotgun of Psycho Pass to cover this I might just do it. I am that interested in this show and it’s plot. I know it has AMAZING potential. The battles seem amazing and the happiness I felt watching this show REMINDED me why I like anime- because it is exactly what I needed in an anime. A really strong female cast with the potential for romance, if the opening is any indication, and the promise of growth and badass fight scenes. Cross Ange even has fanservice that almost seems to bring home a point- you shouldn’t be enjoying these boobs. This nudity is not really voluntary. This is forced. It makes me feel dirty to find people attractive. I am a bad person for enjoying the pain these girls go through. AND THAT’S HOW WE ALL SHOULD FEEL
THESE WOMEN ARE PEOPLE AND THEY AREN’T BEING TREATED AS SUCH
THIS IS AWFUL
I MUST SEE IT RESOLVED
I WILL BE COVERING THIS SHOW EVEN IF HIDEKI AND EVA BOTH SHARE IT WITH ME. IT’S MY SHIT. MY NEW SHIT. Give me a romance and I’m just done. DONE IN A GOOD WAY
AAAAAH IS IT SUNDAY YET
Oki
 
Hideki
(Tastes) mmm. Super sloppy thirds. So. Now I guess we see this from a dude’s perspective. I don’t have to recap any of the episode (hooray!) because it’s been done twice. So I can jump right into the First Impression.
First things first, I wasn’t very impressed with the generic woman shooting generic dragons with generic mechs out of a generic portal. True Ange was singing, but I really wasn’t like “Oh boy why is she singing?” I was like “SHUT UP BITCH I’M TRYING TO WATCH WORLD TRIGGER IN THE SKY!”
Then of course there was a flashback. Because apparently every show that’s not a slice of life wants to give me a flashback. There were several things that made me laugh. Like future lacross.

It’s like, are you serious? You put lacross players on flying motorcycles. So you can tell it’s the FUTURE! True it showed her as a benevolent friendly person….until 2 minutes later when she rips a mother from her baby to imprison the baby. This makes her not a good person, but I’m a horrible person, so I thought it was funny.

Then of course there’s evil Clovis. Yes I adopted that name too. as both me and Oki came up with the name at the exact same time. This guy doesn’t even TRY to not act evil. I’m surprised nobody he was evil up to now. Like…You would have sworn someone would have heard him maniacally laughing or he killed the castle dog or something. THIS MAN IS NOT A VERY SUBTLE VILLAIN. and also like oki said, he wants to bang his not-Nunnally sister. um… hot? Is that hot? (checks hot-o-meter) umm….i guess? ah fuck it why not. They’re royalty. Those guys always bang each other right?  Eh, fine. I’d watch ’em do it.
I guess I really don’t care they were betrayed by evil Clovis because of JUST HOW TRANSPARENTLY EVIL HE WAS. These guys deserve everything if they couldn’t figure that out. If he had an “I am evil” sign on his chest, they’d probably think it was his new favorite band or something.

Also the whole “She’s a norma thing” was COMPLETELY expected. That did not surprise me even slightly. I was waiting for it for 1/2 the episode. As soon as she condemned that baby I was like “whelp, here we go” and the rest is milf dying, clothes ripping history.
But despite what it may sound like, I’m actually interested in continuing to watch this show. I want to see where it goes and I want to see where the fighting dragons comes in. The episode didn’t impress me, but the show did. Which is a strange concept. As for blogging, yea, if I could I would like to keep blogging it.
Head: 7
Eye: 8
Heart: 5
And because I’m a horrible awful person, I’ll leave you with this.

-Hideki