Geekatana Anime Review: Heroic Age

I was really having second thoughts about this anime when I first saw it. One of the reason is that the plot is rather confusing when I first started it. Not to mention it reminds me some much of Gundam since its the same manga artist. The artwork was really nice though and thats probably part of the reason I stick with the series until the last episode and boy was I so glad I did.

Heroic Age was aired back in September 2007 and by that time anime's like Gurren Laggann, Naruto Shippuden, Gundam 00 was already out and is dominating the anime scene so this one had a lot of heavy hitters to compete with. It went under the radar for a lot of people and I was lucky enough it had a short run in one of the local channels in the Philippines.

Heroic Age is a science fiction anime which takes a lot of inspiration from Greek mythology with the main character Age a reference to Heracles (Hercules) and his Twelve Labors. And a lot of the characters name are loosely based on Greek characters too. Even the five Tribes that represent the races in the anime is somewhat based on Heriod's Five Age of Mankind. Even the giant human ship in the series is named the Argonaut which was Jason ship in Iliad.

The concept of a sci-fi anime based on Greek Mythology might sound boring to a lot of people but this is where Heroic Age shines. The series has enough action and well executed plot and twist to keep casual anime fans interested. In fact if your a fan of Attack on Titan, Evangelion, Space battleship Yamato or the latest Battlestar Galactica you will feel similar beats with this anime.

Heroic Age makes use of hand drawn animation mix with 3D cgi effects effectively and the battles are always epic in scale specially when the main character transform into a big hulking Nodos being that can literary one punch a planet into pieces. Yes folks Heroic Age has being doing this one punch thing before it was even cool.

The only down side of this anime for me is the pacing which slows down a few times specially when we get to the political aspects of this series. It serves to move the plot but a lot of folks might find it a tad dragging at one scene or another. Some of the characters lack personality specially if the character design reminds you of Gundam Seed every time. Those are minor flaw in my opinion though.

Theres also a time where the pace slows down in the middle of the series that could turn off a lot of folks but just stick with it to the end since pace picks up again. This is one series that could probably use another season in my opinion. 

Overall Heroic Age is one of those underrated anime a lot of anime fans should give at least a try. It has a decent plot and grand scale space battle that can only be matched by very few anime to this day. if you're a fan of space anime and big freaking robots and Titan like creatures then you will feel very at home here.