Sousei No Aquarion, Fin.

I finally finished Sousei No Aquarion, a 26-episode series that at first seemed to be a riff on just about every anime genre that ever existed: giant robots, mysterious mentors, bizarre love triangles (in the case of this series, made completely manifest), Lovecraftian enemies, reincarnated heroes, and whacky marital arts maneuvers with Kanjiified names. This show must have been an absolute hoot to write for every week. And it's fun, for the most part. You can tell that the writers and animators are having a great time, and their fun is infectious.

The one thing everyone noticed when this series started was that it was unbelievably cliche'd. At first, it seemed to be a badly-written giant-robot show with a stereotypical cast: two incredibly talented but annoyingly cocky leads at odds with each other, a girl besotted with her brother, an honest-to-Horus goth-loli vampire chick, and those shouted-out martial arts maneuvers. The heroes are summoned to pilot the Aquarion, a giant mecha found in the depths of the ocean that requires three pilots who must have some kind of psychic ability to make even their component move, and need it to battle the Shadow Angels, a dark force that is "harvesting" humans for their psychic energy-- for reasons unknown. At first, the show seemed to be so cheesy that it bordered on ridiculous.

( But it was worth it all. )