Argento Soma

The 21st century was supposed to mark the beginning of mankind's golden age of space travel. However, humanity's lingering dreams of the stars are shelved when Earth suddenly comes under attack by alien entities. Trampling across the planet's surface, these giant invaders leave nothing but death and destruction in their wake.

Having suffered personal losses from the invasion, Takuto Kaneshiro s the fight against the extraterrestrial enemies. In his quest for vengeance, the disillusioned young Takuto must seek out any possible allies, but the line between friend and foe is dangerously thin. When old powers crumble and new opportunities arise, many are prepared to capitalize on the chaos. Takuto soon realizes that the aliens may be the least complicated obstacle to uncovering the greater truth behind the catastrophic invasion.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kaneshiro, Takuto Main

Hoshi, Souichirou Japanese

Bartholomew, Harriet Main

Kuwashima, Houko Japanese

Frank Main

Takada, Yuji Japanese

Harris, Sue Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Ines, Lana ing

Sayuri Japanese

Noguchi, Ernest ing

Chafurin Japanese

Sheriff ing

Madono, Mitsuaki Japanese

Miss Stacey ing

Mayama, Ako Japanese

Harriet's Grandfather ing

Sawaki, Ikuya Japanese

Colonel Kilgore ing

Nakata, Kazuhiro Japanese

Kobayashi, Shinichirou Producer

Katayama, Kazuyoshi Director, Storyboard

Fujino, Sadayoshi Sound Director

Motonaga, Keitarou Episode Director

Reviews

Sep 3, 2009

shellshock

Recommended

The anime was fantastic, yes the main character may might have been a bit villainous, but he shows his true self in the end. The anime is very mysterious, and it does have its fun moments, but it is a serious type of anime. I personally thought this was a masterpiece, and beats all the junk. Yes it was a bit repetitive in the middle, but it was all in the plot.

Overall 10/10 and it is a must watch, if you think the main character is too "emo" like the other review, then DON'T EVEN bother watching this.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Dec 6, 2007

twillit

Mixed Feelings

This Anime was almost dropped. There are some problems with this show and they mostly revolve around the primary character Ryu .... err sorry Takuto is his name in the beging and this guy is an exreteme emo! He is a victim and he wallows in it. I won't go into his reasons for victim hood, but I will say that he starts as a emo and ends as one and I get the feeling he would be a wife beater. Needless to say, I greatly dislike Ryu. Fortunately, he is not the only character, more on that later.

Aside from Ryu, there is another annoying ... aspect of this show, the music. Music was by Katsuhisa Hattori, a famous and accomplished composer / conductor. Argento Soma is a military show, based in the US, so they used military style music, kind of. It was more like music from a military graduation ceremony. Maybe in Japan, that is what they think of when they think of American military music. I don't know, but it didn't work for me.

But wait, the show is based in the US? Well, that is different and I like different. Also it is a military show, meaning adult characters, something else I like. In fact there is only one child, Hattie, in the show and she truly acts like a kid. Wow, an anime that realistically portrays the characters! Now, don't get wrong here, all is not peachy with the characters. Yes you already know I dislike Ryu, the others are likable but a bit shallow. After a few episodes they become fairly predictable but there are some surprises toward the end, so yeah, it's okay. They really take the edge off of dealing with Ryu and any one of the characters can carry a single episode with ease.

There are more things to like fore this is a Giant anime. Giant Mecha, Giant Aliens, and a Giant Robot. Yeah, the Mecha are pretty cool, the design is nice, and I really like the flight conversion, they are pretty unique although a bit underpowered. The Aliens, well they all look the same, but react differently, too bad they have no personality. The Giant Robot, Frank, I think he is the real star of the show. Frank is just a big bruiser, to fix things you just run up and hit it. If that doesn't work, hit it Harder! He also has a thing for young blonds, go figure.

Now the story. You have Giant aliens landing on earth for an unknown reason. The military is helpless to combat them. A special force is formed with advanced mecha to fight the aliens. The name of this force is NERV....... no no no it's Funeral.... Heheh, okay so the basic story is pretty much a rip of Evangelion without the religious overtones or teenage angst. But there is Ryu, he is full of angst! He is Shinji all grown up and he is still a whiner! Still the story does heavily borrow from Evangelion, transplanted to the US with Pilgrimage Point replacing Tokyo. It's okay though, there are no EVA's attached to extension cords, at least not really, there are no cords and the Mecha are not really EVAs , for the most part that is. Oh, yeah, and the ending is completely unlike anything in Evangelion, in fact it's pretty different and unique. Which is why I am glad I did not drop this anime.

Over all, it's Okay. Ryu is nauseating, the music is bad and the story is formulaic, yet I held out to the end and that is saying something.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Aug 29, 2017

UnfortunateEvent

Not Recommended

First of all, DO NOT start watching because you liked the promo photo. The protagonist in the anime has very little to do with this intriguing and mysterious guy. He is, in fact, a whiny child with no goals and no basic thinking abilities. Someone ready to panic for no reason whatsoever to the point of being ridiculous.

Honestly, I am not sure what was worse in this anime - the Swiss-cheese-like plotholes or the mostly-abysmal characters, who acted with no reasoning, so let's say both.

I am still struggling to understand what this was all about - was it love or was it aliens? ... Anyway, it was ALL very bad.

The screenplay is terrible. I have watched the anime on double speed and still had some moments, which dragged on endlessly, needlessly.

The story began with a walk through the lives of two (supposedly) genius students and quickly turned into a sci-fi mess with "superbeing" elements. One of the students was fascinated with the other. We, of course, were in the dark why, while the other student was very attached to her professor. We, of course, were once again not informed or shown what made him so great.

Later on, we met a little girl and her grandpa, then moved in with a super-squad fighting the super-bad aliens. Suddenly, our protagonist appeared with a new name and a brand new background, and guess what - we had no idea how this happened and what part of the new story was reliable (if any).

In episode 20, few somewhat new heroes appeared and the story finally began to make sense. Why, oh why they had not chosen a different protagonist or at least given us some background on the key characters? This would have helped save this mess or at least would have added something to grab on to.

The final battle was also a useless effort, as none of the characters ever grew on me, so I could not care less what was happening to them.

The end was disgustingly stupid and came out-of-nowhere. No background, no reason for any of the events shown or the relationships demonstrated.

The final nail in the coffin was the "soma" itself. One would think a word, so pretentiously used in the anime title and as a very prominent alias would mean a lot, wouldn’t it? No. I would not disclose any details, but this “subject” was shortly mentioned as something VERY important at the beginning of the series only to reappear shortly in a newspaper article and never to be mentioned again. Ever. Did the anime creators forget about it?

The storyline was a mishmash of many different stories, which collided at some point and got badly mutilated in the process, leaving us with nothing to see and no one to care about.

ittedly, the opening and ending were beautiful.

Still, avoid this anime at all costs. It is poorly made, boring and lasts far too long.

TL; DR: Do not watch this, it is not worth it. Characters are weak and uninteresting or totally undeveloped. The storytelling is sloppy and full of plotholes. People calling this anime a "hidden gem" are either devoted hipsters or actually meant "jam".

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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