Long-ass rant behind the cut. Don't click if you don't want to see spoilers for a 33-year old anime.
Ok, I'll just say it right out. This series, to me, was very flawed. The biggest fucking problem it had was that 90% of the time, this was the formula it followed for each episode.
-Buff Clan attacks Solo Ship/Ideon
-Solo Ship/Ideon struggles in battle
-Ideon suddenly reveals new powers/manages to overwhelm the Buff Clan, thus repelling them
-Buff Clan vows to try and capture or destroy the Ideon/Solo Ship in the next episode
-Rinse and repeat
There were battles in literally every single episode. I paid attention. And so many of these battles were just filler. That kind of pacing just wore me down over time. Sometimes, when an actual important battle was happening, it could get fairly interesting and exciting. But much of the time, it was just "OH NO THE BUFF CLAN IS ATTACKING SEND OUT IDEON THE IDEON GAUGE ISN'T GLOWING OH WAIT NOW IT IS TAKE THIS BUFF CLAN YAY WE WON BUT HOW LONG MUST WE CONTINUE RUNNING FROM THE BUFF CLAN? Tune in next episode to find out." There were plenty of ridiculous, illogical things and character behaviors as well.
What frustrates me the most is that this was a 39 episode tv series and they wasted so many goddamn episodes on pointless filler battles when they could have spent that time DEVELOPING THE CHARACTERS. This show was seriously lacking in character development. Now I'm not saying there was none at all. There was. But not nearly enough, when there could have been plenty. Don't even get me started on bullshit like the episode where Moera died. He spends the entirety of the show being a background character with zero development, then suddenly near the end of the series, in a futile attempt to make you care about him, they give you one episode where they suddenly focus on him, making it transparent that he's going to die at the end of the episode. And I'm supposed to feel sad that this character I know jack shit about is dead? It's a cheap attempt to create drama. So much time was wasted with fighting, running around the Solo Ship, exposition, things like that, that I never came to truly love the characters. I liked them well enough. But I didn't love them. The first time I watched End of Evangelion, I was devastated. I cried. Because the characters, who were complex and interesting, the characters I had come to love, died. The show made me fall in love with them. I related to them. I cared about their fates as individuals. It's not that I didn't care at all about the crew of the Solo Ship. But not nearly as much as I could have. Really, people who compare Eva to Ideon are only looking at Be Invoked. I admit, there is definite similarity between it and EoE. But taken as a whole, Ideon couldn't be more different from Evangelion apart from the fact that they're mecha animes.
I also feel like mentioning that A Contact, which attempts to condense most of the tv series into a less-than-an-hour-and-a-half film, felt like a complete waste. Things move so quickly that it's actually laughable if you've seen the tv series.
All that said, though... Be Invoked impressed me. It was like what the tv series was trying to achieve, amped up to the max. The powerful score, the movie-quality animation, the no holds barred, in your face death, chaos and nihilism... but it was more than that. There were so many powerful, moving, emotional moments that I was thinking goddamn it, why couldn't the tv series be this good? I felt like, in the face of such hopeless odds, the characters really came to life. Harulu's tearful confession to Doba that she killed Karala out of jealousy, Bes showing weakness when crying over Karala's death, the sweet, adorable moment when Cosmo and Kasha tried to kiss and their helmets prevented them from doing so... scenes like that affected me. I'd honestly disliked Kasha at the beginning of the show, then I grew to like her more, then I went back to disliking her again due to her over-the-top behavior... but seeing her in this film made me care about her once more. I cried when she was killed. And seeing Cosmo finally be broken upon hearing that she died... goddamn it, this movie was so powerful. Also, the ending, with the souls flying through space, the children singing Happy Birthday, the live-action shots of the ocean... I truly enjoyed this film, even if it upset me.
So in conclusion, I guess what I'm trying to say is: Ideon was a decent but very flawed tv series but Be Invoked was seriously one hell of an ending and a damn fine piece of animation imo, even if it does seem like an anime snuff film at times.
tl;dr Ideon was alright but I like Gundam better. :P
