Houkago no Pleiades

So, in the end Houkago no Pleiades consists out of four five-minute episodes.. For those who don’t know, this is basically an anime, animated by Gainax and sponsored by car producer Subaru. I have no idea why Subaru found it a good idea to advertise its cars to otaku, but apparently they saw an unexplored market here.

In any case, Houkago no Pleiades pretty much is an experiment in visuals. Gainax gratefully took the budget that Subaru provided to them and just tried to create something interesting looking here, at the expense of inserting a bunch of strange car references here and there. And granted, the action scenes have some pretty visuals and animation. At this point it’s definitely mission succeeded.

In exchange though, the story and characters are all pretty bad. The creators really did not put any effort into them at all: the story is just there to show the interesting visuals and it makes no sense whatsoever, while the characters are all just shallow cardboard cut-outs. By far the worst part of this ova is the parts in which this OVA thinks that it can actually get some drama out of them.

So yeah, this is pretty much a one trick pony. Watch it if you’re looking for some nice eye candy. Otherwise you can give it a pass. I will say this, though: for a car commercial, it could have been much more blatant. The Subaru-references are all kept in the background and we don’t even see an actual car appear during these past 20 minutes. But seriously… brooms that make engine noises?