Ok so I'll be going through each Horizon episode with the first impressions I had when I first watched them. Then at the end I'll give out a conclusion of how I see the series so far.
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Important! Need to knows: I watched from a few different sources and found out that there are different subbs with different translations. So depending on what subbed version you watching will determine wether you understand it or not.
From the trivia I'm reading in wiki, most terms, factions, families, names and other stuff are directly taken from Japans history. Which is a given since the series has based itself on the future race reenacting history.
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First off, I'll assume that you don't really understand the basis of the entire story. So I'll explain it. And since the story is quite complex, feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me if any of my explanations are unclear or wrong.
This story is set in the distant future where humans decide to leave a devastated earth for space. But due to some phenomenon they can't get to space. So they go back to earth only to find the entire place uninhabitable except for Japan which is now called the Divine States. And so accommodate all humans they create Harmonic Divine States. Now in order to get into space, they decide to "reenact" human history from the year 10,000 BC using the book Holy Book Testament. All goes well till the year 1413 of the testament era. Where the nations of the Harmonic Divine States invade and conquer the Divine States and divide the nation into different factions. The original inhabitants of the Divine States flee to a city ship known as Musashi.
Testament Union is the authority that runs the re-enactment of human history. But then they stop revealing what happens after 1648 which sprouts wars and rumors of an apocalypse.
Now our story begins in Musashi, the flying city ship with our hero, Aoi Toori.
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Episode 01
This episode is more of an introductory episode where we get to meet the important characters. Oddly enough we meet our hero in the final scenes of the episode.
The first scene opens with someone singing a song that I find myself liking a lot. Based on the trailer and opening songs, she seems to be our heroine.
Aoi Toori comes in late in the episode but none the less he is the chancellor of the Academy and President of its Student Council. He seems to be a very lax and carefree character, one we don't see all the time. Hopefully we get to see his awesome side which is hinted by the first scene of the opening song.
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Episode 02
We got a few of things going on in this episode.
Shocker when I found out that Masazumi Honda apparently has had to become a guy to get into some place. But she only lost her breast since the surgery was stopped halfway. Yay!
Other than that we got Aoi and his firends decide on how to do his confession.
And we got Musashi landing on Mikawa, the capital of Far east. Also some new characters. Guess these scenes are to just build on the story and whats coming up.
Need to know: Our heroines name is P-01s. She’s an automaton whom the Blue Thunder shop keeper found with no memories. And apparently Aoi was a regular guest of the Blue Thunder shop till ten years ago but started coming back since P-01s arrived. So I guess P-01s is someone who means something to our hero. They also mention the path of remorse, so I guess that place is something to keep in mind.
Conclusion: Overall this episode seemed to be a supporting episode which can be a good or bad thing depending on what the director is trying to portray. Hopefully we can get the story moving though.
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Episode 03
This episode ended up to be another supporting episode.
Aoi's classmates talk about the festival they're gonna have, Aoi's confession and his relationship to Horizon.
Masazumi Honda decides to go to the path of remorse to learn more of Aoi and everyone. There she meets her father, Masanobu Honda and Konishi.
Testament Union's Muneshige Tachibana and Gin Tachibana land on Mikawa. This hints that the plot points are going somewhere. Gawsh! That Gin has some arms! You'd think that those things are just side armor or something but no, they are her armz... wow...
After this scene we see some place going to be invaded by some people. Guess they're gonna leave the details of that event for the next episode. Oh well, at least we get to see some action in that next episode.
Need to know: Masanobu Honda and Konishi explain that Aoi is the master of the path of remorse and that it's very hard for him to be in the path since it where his beloved Horizon died. Horizon was a member Matsudaira family and so her death was a big deal.
Conclusion: This episode is more of a supporting episode and a prologue to a war episode, which I guess is good. Still waiting on the "awesome" plot point to pop out and the action to really get grinding.
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Episode 04
Some action in this episode and a number of things to know.
This is the turning point of the story, the part where our characters are sucked into a war and lose their normal ways of life (Though it still would've changed if Aoi confessed to Horizon).
Need to know: So we got three factions here right now. The Testament Union, who are the guys in red and are led by Muneshige Tachibana.
The Mikawa faction, aside from their human leaders they've got automatons maids as soldiers. They are led by Motonobu Matsudaira.
Our third faction is Musashi, which is where are main characters are at. The faction is led by Tadatsugu Sakai, well kinda, he's really just the principal of the Academy.
So we got the Testament Union visiting Mikawa but Motonobu Matsudaira has got a surprise "fireworks display" for them and a plan called the Genesis plan. The purpose of the plan? Dunno yet.
We also got Sakakibara trying to warn Tadatsugu Sakai about the genesis plan. So Tadatsugu Sakai tries to stop his long friend Tadakatsu Honda but fails.
Also Futayo Honda trying to stop the genesis plan to save her father even though she is of Mikawa.
Conclusion: Nice turning point episode. Things pick up and we got to see some awesome action! Really if an anime is to have battle scenes, they should invest more money into those like this episode.
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Overall Conclusions: I blame the director for not giving out a proper explanation on things. They did explain the important parts but it wasn't clear.
I guessing the creators of the series assume we know Japanese history. Cause like I said, this series seems to be based heavily on Japans past history.
Ep 01-04 Rating: If they did better in explaining then this would be a good anime series.
~OkamiSan~
------------------------------------------------------
Important! Need to knows: I watched from a few different sources and found out that there are different subbs with different translations. So depending on what subbed version you watching will determine wether you understand it or not.
From the trivia I'm reading in wiki, most terms, factions, families, names and other stuff are directly taken from Japans history. Which is a given since the series has based itself on the future race reenacting history.
------------------------------------------------------
First off, I'll assume that you don't really understand the basis of the entire story. So I'll explain it. And since the story is quite complex, feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me if any of my explanations are unclear or wrong.
This story is set in the distant future where humans decide to leave a devastated earth for space. But due to some phenomenon they can't get to space. So they go back to earth only to find the entire place uninhabitable except for Japan which is now called the Divine States. And so accommodate all humans they create Harmonic Divine States. Now in order to get into space, they decide to "reenact" human history from the year 10,000 BC using the book Holy Book Testament. All goes well till the year 1413 of the testament era. Where the nations of the Harmonic Divine States invade and conquer the Divine States and divide the nation into different factions. The original inhabitants of the Divine States flee to a city ship known as Musashi.
The Flying City Ship, Musashi
Testament Union is the authority that runs the re-enactment of human history. But then they stop revealing what happens after 1648 which sprouts wars and rumors of an apocalypse.
Now our story begins in Musashi, the flying city ship with our hero, Aoi Toori.
------------------------------------------------------
Episode 01
This episode is more of an introductory episode where we get to meet the important characters. Oddly enough we meet our hero in the final scenes of the episode.
The first scene opens with someone singing a song that I find myself liking a lot. Based on the trailer and opening songs, she seems to be our heroine.
Aoi Toori
Need to know: Apparently he is gonna confess his love for someone named Horizon. Now it looks like this confession thing is quite an event to them since Horizon died ten years ago. Now how is he gonna confess to someone who isn’t there? Well, I’ll assume he’s just gonna confess in front of her grave.
Conclusion: Like I said, the episode is an Introductory episode to the important characters. But character wise, they've got a good list of unique and colorful characters. Which is awesome, I don't get to see this much diversity all the time! We've got our ninja with his eyes on his hat, a grey-ish haired chick with hair that defies Bayanetta, two winged-witch chicks, a woman with the arm of a gundam, a money man, bucket head, fat dude, curry man, pink naked guy, a freggin poporing and some others. I do find too much "bounce" some of the female characters "boings". Which is nice if they didn't make them the size of melons bigger than their heads...
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Episode 02
We got a few of things going on in this episode.
Masazumi Honda
Shocker when I found out that Masazumi Honda apparently has had to become a guy to get into some place. But she only lost her breast since the surgery was stopped halfway. Yay!
Other than that we got Aoi and his firends decide on how to do his confession.
And we got Musashi landing on Mikawa, the capital of Far east. Also some new characters. Guess these scenes are to just build on the story and whats coming up.
Need to know: Our heroines name is P-01s. She’s an automaton whom the Blue Thunder shop keeper found with no memories. And apparently Aoi was a regular guest of the Blue Thunder shop till ten years ago but started coming back since P-01s arrived. So I guess P-01s is someone who means something to our hero. They also mention the path of remorse, so I guess that place is something to keep in mind.
P-01s, our Heroine
Conclusion: Overall this episode seemed to be a supporting episode which can be a good or bad thing depending on what the director is trying to portray. Hopefully we can get the story moving though.
------------------------------------------------------
Episode 03
This episode ended up to be another supporting episode.
Aoi's classmates talk about the festival they're gonna have, Aoi's confession and his relationship to Horizon.
Masazumi Honda decides to go to the path of remorse to learn more of Aoi and everyone. There she meets her father, Masanobu Honda and Konishi.
Masazumi meets her father
Testament Union's Muneshige Tachibana and Gin Tachibana land on Mikawa. This hints that the plot points are going somewhere. Gawsh! That Gin has some arms! You'd think that those things are just side armor or something but no, they are her armz... wow...
Muneshige Tachibana (right) and Gin Tachibana (left)
After this scene we see some place going to be invaded by some people. Guess they're gonna leave the details of that event for the next episode. Oh well, at least we get to see some action in that next episode.
Need to know: Masanobu Honda and Konishi explain that Aoi is the master of the path of remorse and that it's very hard for him to be in the path since it where his beloved Horizon died. Horizon was a member Matsudaira family and so her death was a big deal.
Conclusion: This episode is more of a supporting episode and a prologue to a war episode, which I guess is good. Still waiting on the "awesome" plot point to pop out and the action to really get grinding.
------------------------------------------------------
Episode 04
Some action in this episode and a number of things to know.
This is the turning point of the story, the part where our characters are sucked into a war and lose their normal ways of life (Though it still would've changed if Aoi confessed to Horizon).
Need to know: So we got three factions here right now. The Testament Union, who are the guys in red and are led by Muneshige Tachibana.
Muneshige Tachibana
Motonobu Matsudaira
Our third faction is Musashi, which is where are main characters are at. The faction is led by Tadatsugu Sakai, well kinda, he's really just the principal of the Academy.
Tadatsugu Sakai
So we got the Testament Union visiting Mikawa but Motonobu Matsudaira has got a surprise "fireworks display" for them and a plan called the Genesis plan. The purpose of the plan? Dunno yet.
We also got Sakakibara trying to warn Tadatsugu Sakai about the genesis plan. So Tadatsugu Sakai tries to stop his long friend Tadakatsu Honda but fails.
Sakakibara (Left)
Futayo Honda (Right)
Conclusion: Nice turning point episode. Things pick up and we got to see some awesome action! Really if an anime is to have battle scenes, they should invest more money into those like this episode.
Awesome fight scenes FTW!
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Overall Conclusions: I blame the director for not giving out a proper explanation on things. They did explain the important parts but it wasn't clear.
I guessing the creators of the series assume we know Japanese history. Cause like I said, this series seems to be based heavily on Japans past history.
Ep 01-04 Rating: If they did better in explaining then this would be a good anime series.
~OkamiSan~
