This story reminds me of the movie Pacific Rim. The robots controlled by humans fighting some alien race has an uncanny resemblance. There are key differences though; one person operates the robots and that person isn't directly linked to the robot.
Towards the end, the story reminded me of another story we read in this collection- "Weep for Day." The end of both stories deal with the realization that the supposed bad guy may not be much of a bad guy at all.
Did anyone else see these similarities?
I also thought, "Wow this is pretty much Pacific Rim. I guess you could also compare it to Gundam or Neon Genesis Evangelion or other mecha animes but it just felt so similar to Pacific Rim with the pilots in a secret robot base and having them be different nationalities and so young.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the ending confused me a little. Had Tanimura met the alien before and that's why he "disappeared" for a while and seemed so down or was he always sort of quiet and stolid? I understand Maddy's reaction but I really couldn't tell what she concluded about Tanimura's interaction(s) with it.
I have to agree, this was pretty much Evangelion and Pacific Rim all rolled into one. I would say though that the pilot ages are more similar to Evangelion than Pacific Rim; the Russians and one of the Australian pilots were much older. I almost felt intentionally cliche, it checked several Mecha-Anime thematic boxes but used them well.
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