|
Now in Japan
|
|
Monday, 23 April 2007 17:00 |
 One last look at Zegapain, now that it's been licensed. Kyo's still trying to figure out if Shizuno and the battles he's been fighting are real or virtual - if he'd just pay attention to the TV news, he'd probably figure that out a little bit quicker, but then we wouldn't have the fun of seeing the pieces click together. Will dawn eventually break on Mr Slow-On-The-Uptake..?
3 - Deutera Area
Out in the real world, Kyo receives a package from Celebrum - a copy of the game, Pain of Zega. Not much use to him as he doesn't have a game system to run it on, but clearly a hint that he should be getting some practice in. Unfortunately, he's still more concerned about recruiting for the swim club, than worry about what other people want him to do, but a run-in with the student council - also Celebrum members, of course - persuades him to at least take a look at the game, and he soon finds a message left within it that's specifically addressed to him: "Don't get involved with Misaki Shizuno". Who just happens to have another mission waiting for him...
4 - Shanghai Server
Kyo's beginning to become confused by what he's getting himself involved him - are his battles in Zegapain Altair real, as he believed they were, or are they some sort of elaborate virtual reality game? And what do the messages he's been seeing really mean? While Kyo ponders those questions, he's top of Celebrum's list of worries - specifically, how his behaviour isn't quite what they'd like it to be, and what sort of effect his involvement will be having on his mind. While Kyo goes back to playing Pain of Zega after being told that all he needs to know is there, if he'll just play it through, a new Deutera Area is detected near Shanghai - and Celebrum's regular forces are having problems dealing with it...
5 - Deja Vu
Shizuno angrily tells Kyo that the world he's fighting in is very much real - but before he can ask her how that can be he finds himself dumped back into the outside world, and none the wiser as to what's really going on. As the days go by and he continues to go into battle for Celebrum, Kyo gets more and more confused about which world is the real one. Things don't improve when one of his teachers tells him of the "Butterfly Dream" - where people who want to be special create new worlds in their mind, and soon can't tell their dreamworld from the real. She even has a word for people whp suffer from the problem: Celebrants. The same name that Celebrum happens to use for their pilots. So are Celebrum, Shizuno and his battles just a figment of his imagination? How can he tell..?
The whole question of what's real and what' virtual is very well handled here - from the information that's being given to Kyo by the various parties, he really does have no way of telling, and it also throws a few questions into the mix: who are Celebrum? If there more to their fight than they're telling? Kyo's teacher obviously knows more than she's letting on - who does she represent? The same people sending him in-game warnings? I could go on, but you get the picture.
As far as the vieweris concerned, it's fairly clear that Celebrum are being honest with Kyo up to a point and that his battles to have real-world consequences - how that can be is still up in the air, but the link is there, as is the information that Kyo's suffering from some kind of memory loss linked to previous events with the 'game'. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice once said - there are various little plot points that are only just beginning to click together that are clearly going to play a key role here, and it's all being done in a fairly well-paced in intriguing way. Colour me impressed.
The more visual, action-oriented side of the show also continues to impress, although there's not a huge amount of it in these episodes (2 real battles, and that's your lot). That's the aspect that first attracted me to Zegapain - there's a lot of the mecha junkie in me - but the show's slowly moving beyond that and becoming more rounded. It certainly makes for an interesting series, and if it hadn't just been licensed I'd be rushing off to see more. As it is, I'll have to wait for the DVD release - but that's a wait that should be worth it. |
Reviews Archive 
