Influenced by Neon Genesis Evangelion, but it's more than a rip-off, or is it?
It's the year 2012 and aliens have landed on our planet. Humans last hope is the mecha Devadasy which can only be piloted by some chosen children and there's always needed a pair, man and woman, to control it. Kei, his jealous friend Naoki and the mysterius Amala are some of the chosen children, now it's up to them to save the doomed world. The organisation SPIRITS trains them and takes care of Devadasy, but there is a lot more to the whole as it seems in the beginning. What do they know about the aliens, devadasy and the danger which appears in our solar-system.
The animation is pretty decent, but it can't compare with other animes from the same year. The style overall is the same as used in many other mid' 90s animes. Backgrounds are detailed, there's nothing wrong with the characters, I would even say their designs are the best part of the animation. The battles are ordinary, but are missing more motion and it looks like AIC was saving on the special effects part (e.g. explosions).
Sound was ok, there wasn't much background music, only some depressing tunes, an opening was missing and the ending was nice and fitting.
The voice-acting on the other side was good and fitting.
Kenichi Suzumura, better known as Kamui from X did Kei's voice. Naoki's seiyuu was to my surprise Ryoko Nagata (Eclair - Kiddy Grade), who did a good job on expressing Naoki's feelings and give her more depth. And Amalas voice was done by Kotono Mitsuishi, who is a really good seiyuu, one of her best known roles was Misato from NGE.
Though they all did a good job they weren't able to make up for the great lack of depth the characters had. They were too stereotypical from the beginning and instead of making them more understandable for the viewer and explain a bit more of their background, the makers raised even more questions.
There is Kei who didn't want to go to school and signed up to be part of SPIRITS to get away from school, what are his relations to Devadasy and what exactly happend in his youth/when he was born. Naoki is his childhood friend and of course she has feelings for him but can't express them. Then there is Amala, who is she and why does she appear on a photo from 20 years ago, what are her connections to Devadasy and Kei's grand-father.
Ok, now let us get straight to the plot and what Devadasy really is.
It is a clone of Neon Genesis Evangelion (from now on called simply NGE) by all means. The main characters from Devadasy share a lot of similarities with the ones from NGE, but lack their drawbacks. The design of the aliens and mechas is taken, not to say copied, from NGE and Blue Gender. The best exaple would be Devadasy itself, which is just a modified EVA01 (take a look here: http://www.anime-int.com/works/devadasy/ova/image/deva0000.gif ).
The plot takes its background ideas not from Christianity but from Hinduism.
So the question appears, "Why did this OVA fail?"
It's easy to answer, I think. First of all, too much happens in a too short time, too many questions are raised but in the end nothing is solved. The idea behind this ova was to make a series which simply borrowed elements from other successful animes and to see if it's appealing to the users. So the end is open and the beginning is confusing with a lot of flashbacks and time-jumps to make the story interesting for the viewer. In the end all this things and the lack of character depth make this anime average at its best. The japanese viewers seemed to felt the same as a further continuation in form of a series never was released there.
If you liked NGE or Blue Gender, you can take a look at Devadasy. With three episodes it's really short and not very time consuming and perhaps you will even like it. But beware, the end is very open and don't expect any answers on the questions which were brought up.
Explanation by spownsk on Tuesday, 14.08.2012 11:12