Aquarion

Overall Rating: C
Summary: Set eleven years after an event called the "Great Catastrophe", which is basically when most of the world got destroyed and lots of people died. Really a pretty accurate name for such an event. It's not really made clear, but presumably the "Great Catastrophe" was caused by the "Shadow Angels", who are basically humans with wings, who are capturing humans and treating them like cattle. Apparently, Shadow Angels live off of the life force of humans. They use huge spaceships to collect the humans for harvesting, which are guarded by giant robots (of course).

The humans have found (excavated actually, but they don't explain that much) their own giant robots, but have also discovered that they can only be piloted by people that can harness the elements. These robots can then be merged into one super robot (this sounds VERY familiar). Also, apparently merging with the other robots is like sex for the pilots, which is made even weirder by a brother and sister being two of the pilots that "merge" in the first volume.

In the first volume, we meet Silvia and Sirius de Alisia (the brother and sister I mentioned) who are nobles, and Apollo the protagonist who is a street urchin and apparently the reincarnation of a Shadow Angel who betrayed the others for his love of a human (it's strongly implied that Silvia is the reincarnation of the human).

Supposedly, this is a homage to the giant robot shows of the 70's and 80's, but it comes across as simply derivative. Good space opera is hard to pull off in my opinion, and when you're essentially using the cliches of the genre to tell your story I think it hurts the plot. If you're a fan of giant robots, you may enjoy this one a lot, but I can't recommend it.