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Fafner Vol. #1 Arcadian Project
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January 04, 2006
by: Patrick Sutton
It's exciting new mech action with a very familiar feel.
Review Hardware Used: Sanyo 20 Flat Screen CRT and XBOX 360
Disc Description
THEIR PARADISE WAS A DECEPTION...
The youth of Tatsumiya Island believed that they had ordinary lives until extraterrestrials called Festums invaded their island. In the midst of the sudden chaos, their once peaceful island transforms into a high-tech military fortress built to counter-attack the hostile aliens. Their shock and terror intensifies as the young men and women learn that they must join the battle and pilot the Fafner, a class of humanoid-type robots that represent the final defense against the Festums and their divine powers.
Disc Features
4 Uncut Episodes
Japanese 2.0 Audio
English 2.0 Audio
English Subtitles
Clean Opening & Clean Closing Animations
Reversible Covers
Disc Review
Content: (This section may include spoilers)
Fafner is a bit of a different kind of show. It has the same type of mysterious feel that you get from Evangelion and Rahxephon. The series also looks a bit like Gundam Seed. This is due to the fact that they both had the same character designer Hisashi Hirai who is notoriously popular for having his characters from his entire works look quite a bit alike which hurts the show a little regardless of the fact that they are not bad looking designs.
The series starts you off in a town on Tatsumiya Island which in all appearances is an old Japanese style town with narrow walkways and small homes. With the first few minutes of the show we are introduced to a bunch of the series’ characters and there simple care free lives on the island. Following that we are introduced to Soshi a young man arriving back at the island from a supposed trip to Tokyo. It is from there that we are finally introduced to the main character of the show Kazuki. He is you stereotypical tough guy that just cares for himself and nobody else. We learn of all the other students such as Kenji, Koyo and Mamoru three boys that Kazuki attends school with and Maya and Shoko two girls that are very close to each other with Maya taking care of Shoko who appears to be confined to her bed with some sort of illness.
Now this is where the show gets a bit more interesting. All of a sudden every single screen on the entire island turns red and displays the single word ALVIS. All of the adults in the village lead the children to shelters without telling them what is actually going on. After bringing all the children to the shelters the adults all go to some sort of high-tech base for there operation. It turns out that some sort of alien known as a Festum has found the island and has begun attacking them. The Festum is a bizarre gold creature that sort of looks like a floating woman with a ring behind her. Its attack is as bizarre as it is. It causes these big black spheres appear and wherever they appear when they leave everything there is gone.
Now they begin a counter-attack on this Festum. To do so they sent out a squad of fighter planes to battle with the creature. They quickly realize that the planes have no effect on it when it completely obliterates there squad. It is at this point that the man in charge of the force decides they have no choice but to deploy their most powerful defense the humanoid robot known as Fafner. Now this is where some more troubles hit them the pilot of Fafner who was on her way to the battle is attacked by the Festum and killed. Now this is when Kazuki really comes to the forefront of the show. You see the kids on the island are all raised for the purpose of one day piloting Fafner. So they make the decision to bring Kazuki the child with the highest scores for compatibility with Fafner in to pilot it in the battle with the Festum even though he has know knowledge of what is going on out there.
Soshi is sent to bring Kazuki to Fafner and have him pilot it. He decides that he must do it and battles with the Festum in the Fafner which costs the leader of the defense and Soshi’s father his life leaving Kazuki’s father as the leader. After the battle Soshi reveal to Kazuki that there is no safety elsewhere on the planet and tells him that Tokyo and all of Japan was destroyed nearly thirty years ago and the U.N. is constantly on the search for the island. Now after that it is decided that the next few kids with high scores are to be taken to the base and trained to pilot Fafner as a contingency plan. We see Kazuki’s father and the Doctor going around and telling the kids parents that there kids need to go to train now. They are all taken there and have to start a huge training program and realize that they are involved in something a lot bigger than they ever expected. The disc ends with Kazuki battling another Festum while trying to protect the island from being detected from a U.N. search plane.
Video:
First airing in 2004, Fafner features a very well done full frame transfer. There are very bright and vibrant colors on the screen and luckily none of them feature any errors and all come out well. The backgrounds are well done with a very lush design and lots of detail.
Audio:
Fafner features very well done theme songs that are very engrossing and get you set for some fun. It also feature’s very creative background music and sounds that just suck you into the strange atmosphere of the show.
Menus:
The DVD features very bright menus that animate in the background behind you. They are designed to look like the peculiar DNA style monitors from the show. The disc features very quick load times and smooth animated transitions. It is also quite easy to navigate through these menus thanks to them being very straight forward and easy to read.
Extras:
Unfortunately, the extras on this disc are very lacking. The disc only features the obligatory previews for other Geneon releases, 2 textless openings which encompass the opening for the first episode and the main opening for the rest of the series, and the textless ending.
Dialogue:
The original Japanese audio for is really well done. All the voices fell natural and distinctive for their characters. The English unfortunately isn’t as well done. The voices for all the characters feel out of place and lack the emotion needed for this series. Luckily the subtitles for this series are very well done to make up for the lackluster dub. They are a nice bright yellow with bold black outlines so they are very easy to read and don’t blend into the series.
The Bottom Line:
This disc ends with a lot of questions. What happened to the rest of planet? Where did the Festum come from? Hopefully these questions will be answered soon because I am just itching for more of the excitement. The art style, though not completely original, is a very good look. The sound is well done and fit the show perfectly. All in all, everything is very exciting and hopefully will just keep getting better and better as the story.
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Content |
Very intriguing series, but it took some time to get to the action and get it really moving. |
8.5 |
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Video |
A very good looking show with lots of bright colors with no real flaws. |
9.5 |
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Audio |
Great music that fit in well with the atmosphere of the show. Unfortunately there was no 5.1 Surround Sound support. |
8.0 |
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Menus
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Very well done menus with nice background animation and very easy to navigate. |
9.4 |
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Extras
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Hardly any extras just clean openings and endings and some previews. |
7.0 |
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Dialog
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The Japanese audio is well done and the subs are really easy to read, but the english dialog falls flat and is dull. |
8.5 |
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Verdict
Although the show starts up kind of slow, it is very interesting and hopefully will maintain that type of feel for the rest of the show with the characters getting more and more screen time.
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9.0
[not an average]
+ Very well done lush animation.
+ Interesting story with lots of excitement
+ Great background music that sucks you in.
- Characters that look too familiar
- Lack Of Extras
- Cruddy English Dub
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