Epimondas

I have to admit, it is kind of hard to absolutely love this anime.  It has way too many frivolous bits like girl shots for no reason and pointless gratuitous violence and bloodshed.  This maybe one of the worst or most offensive animes where girl bits are show in such shameless and purely for show kind of ways since there is no logical way they would get stripped the way they often do in the show in reality. It has alot of very uncomfortable situations as well such as the incestuous violent thug abusive rapist brother who, I am sure, everyone wishes was killed first and perhaps in the most nasty way ever seen in the show.  It makes even less sense how she still behaves around him or treats him as human at all let alone still talks to that monster.  Frankly the whole thing confuses the hell out of me, no human being would ever in my wildest imagination act the way she does with a monster like him.  It is very uncomfortable to watch bits about her past or when her brother comes into the story at all.  His nasty ways have not simmered either as he found a new weakminded and guilable masochist to abuse.  

In some ways, this show loves to demonstrate what is the absolutely worst things possible in humanity.  The down side is, that it is also so often done in the most pointless, illogical, unrealistic, uninspired, tragic, shameless, grotesque, and flashiest ways possible.  First off, the setting is a bit odd, why is it always underage students?  Why in this case girls?  And why the hell do they wear skimpy outfits that offer absolutely no pratical combat protection or benefits.  The whole thing screams a joke on us.  Since however, they do dabble in the way way way over cliched use of underaged children in adult situations such as frontline combatents, that is a huge point off.  It is very unimaginative and unrealistic.  Seriously, if such a threat were so massive would the world really just send and rely on a handful of Japanese high school or middle school students or just girls out of those?  It's a joke.  Weak as the setting maybe, at least they do suggest only girls can do it however, there is no mention of how long they can nor do I see many examples of post high school contributors.  

My complaint is probably the way things are foreshadowed but lead nowhere such as the special set of attatchments our lead male character has.  It is strongly suggested they are unique and only his sister who was the most powerful and skilled fighter against these dimensional creatures since the original, aka, his grandma, so its natural that we as viewers are forced to assume most men have fewer attatchments than women and he has more than any female even so... logically we would conclude he must have skills far beyond any man and maybe many if not all other women yet we only see slight improvements over other men.  Major misleading letdown there like a lie they planted in the foreshadowing to play with us.  Yes I know he is pretty skilled and powerful but given that only his sister and his grandma has as many or more, I should expect that he likewise should have far more than that to show for it.  It is naturally implied in the circumstances and what everyone else has and what they can do.  I feel way let down like they forgot he was so different.  There are a few other examples here and in season two where characters are set up one way in a sort of foreshadowing but do not live up to the strongly implied overall character that they are supposed to be. 

It is not just there however but that aside, false forshadowing is a no no.  Satellizer is cute and strong at the same time.  She has clear vulnerabilities that only those close to her can usually see.  She is a well balanced character aside from the fact that she seems to be ok with a molestor family and never says a thing about it or avoids the ahole altogether.  By the way, it is often quite amusing how goofy Engrish names are.  I rarely see names that make any sense in anime especially if they are Western ones.  The Chinese transfer is a bit more shallow echo of a character and we never really get to see a great deal of depth or development from her, it is as if she really is a sidenote that they just added her to add fluff or more characters for the sake of adding more characters.  However, they do at times make modest attempts to try to make her a solid well rounded character but they are usually just dressing.  Another major issue I have aside from all the idiotic pointless garbage added for the mere sake of adding them, is too many characters minor and what appear at times to perhaps be or become major characters are dropped off long before we have a chance to know them at all in a way far worse than the "red shirt" phenomena seen in the Star Trek original series.  It would be much safer to be a red shirt in the first season of Star Trek in the '60s than to be a new character introduced after like episode 4 in Freezing.  That is how bad it is.  We pretty much see nothing but cat fights for keeps with the most brutal methods seen in most animes even of the more mature and violent nature.  There is alot of outright gory bloodshed often for no reason whatsoever and in such pointless ways that do nothing to aid the story nor the particular scene they occur in.  Often they introduce characters just moments before they kill them off.  Of course that makes it rather difficult ot feel much empathy for someone we just met in the story another major fail for the series.

Mostly, it looks like a promising series that is very hard to stomach and get past the utter crap filled within in it that would only logically appeal to the most sadistic, twisted, and violent of minds.  Like those you might find in the high security section of a mental ward or on death row.  It even makes me wonder what kind of person creates such dribble.  It is so filled with the most disturbing crap it is hard to see the story behind it.  There is a story though it feels a bit unrefined or maybe incomplete or not quite polished.  It is like how they falsely foreshadow things as if they are not sure what direction to take things so they started a story in the middle of something and throw out a few teaser clues as to what is going on but remain murky on finer details yet they lead you on as if they will reveal more but never do.  It is not a well thought out series.  It needs far more development and refinement and a few things filled out better and more completely and a few things removed completely.  We get it is adult and there is sex and violence, but we do not need to see it with every student cat fight or battle or thrown in just for good measure to keep us aware it is filled with that.  They could use lessons on adding a few suggestive scenes without showing needless detail and a better intertwining build up of what why and when such things happen so it actually feels like its integral to the story not just there to try for an X rating.  

Wrapped up its an unfulfilled promise full of pointless gory violence, abuse, unclothed women shots, and sexual situations.  The story easily gets buried in the immation crappy sci fi porn movie attempts this series seems to try accomplish.    

It might be worth a viewing, one or two episodes and if you can take it the entire series, but I doubt it is worth watching it more than once.  I really wanted this to be a good series and it does lead you on for a while to think so with such an interesting premise, but it just kept letting me down over and over.