Zegapain has a very good sci-fi plot that was not given the attention it deserved, thus sharing the same fate as Shinsekai Yori. It was a side project that was given a smaller budget and a less capable director, while most of the attention was placed on making Code Geass, which had a complete pile of shit for a script, but the colors were pretty and the themes were pandering most casual demographics, so why bother with an experimental title that would be thought provoking, but wouldn’t make as much money?And indeed, Code Geass was so successful, to the point Studio Sunrise changed its focus from creating dark and cerebral shows, to producing the worst possible cringefests ever since. Because that’s what was selling, not Zegapain, the final title of the dark sci-fi era that began a decade earlier with Neon Genesis. Since the Big Three were the only thing 90% of the community was watching, and Code Geass was labeled the only good mecha at a time when your average otaku had lost his interest in giant robots and was dancing like an idiot by mimicking the ending of Haruhi Suzumiya, Zegapain was forever left in obscurity, and was known only by the very few who would be were curious enough to try something that wasn’t one of the 5 shows everybody was watching, at a time when the industry was producing 40 of them in every season.As it usually happens, the titles most end up remembering are the flashiest ones, not the well-written ones, and Zegapain happens to belong in the rare well-written category. It’s not one of those shows they make on the fly, and they don’t expect anyone to care by the next season. It’s not some run of the mill moeshit or romcom, it doesn’t feel like something you are watching playing out in the exact same way as half of everything else. It stands out amongst mecha titles, a genre which got really saturated by the same studio that made it. Thank you Sunrise for making people to get sick and tired of seeing the same bullshit in mecha and jumping ship to moeshit. What an improvement. And I am not implying Zegapain is good just because it’s different. Aka, it’s not a subversion for the sake of being one. It’s actually doing something with what it subverts. And it stands out because not many others did it as such. I mean, we can easily label this a Matrix clone, since the premise is pretty much the same; people living in a computer simulation and the machines have taken over the real world, which is destroyed. But doesn’t handle the premise as a power fantasy, which is pretty much what every anime about videogames does nowadays. Thank you, Sword Art Online, for making people being trapped in videogames a thing, you f-ing piece of shit. And by the way, SAO came out at the same time as Shinsekai Yori, thus repeating history exactly as it happened with Code Geass and Zegapain. And then you wonder why I became a snob. My point is, it’s a show that deserves far more attention, because it had a great concept, it explored it, and it didn’t ridicule itself with tasteless fan service or off-putting comedy. We live at a time where people watch mecha only for Rikka’s thights, so you might want to see how captivating something can be, when it’s not made just as an excuse to masturbate. And yes, there are issues with it, so it’s not like I’m trying to sell you a masterpiece nobody has heard of. It was not a good action show even back when it was airing, and after a decade, the CGI makes it look even worse. The robots don’t have a cool design, the characters look generic and behave in a plain manner, the plot is very slow and kinda repetitive when it comes to having fights with mass produced identical enemy droids. You have to dedicate your time on something that looks dull, with the only promise being good theme exploration and legit character development. Which I understand it’s not what the majority of anime fans want today. They just want a power fantasy where the hero goes to a magical videogame world, kicks the crap out of everyone, and grabs boobs.And basically, if we go by the typical “Zegapain is like the Matrix with giant robots” it is instantly judged unfairly because it lacks cool karate, bullet-time and fancy acrobatics. There are no bankais or nine-tailed demon foxes, or a main tsundere waifubait that gets constantly sexualized, so the audience can spend most of its comments talking about her than anything else in the damn show. At the same time it’s not about man-machine codependency. Really, the machines do not need people in the show, so there goes that comparison. It is otherwise heavy on existentialism and good sci-fi ideas that are not trashed in favor of sexualizing minors. It just doesn’t look cool, and that is all it took to be unfairly forgotten almost immediately.
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