Aquarion MoE Ep 12 Review: Rise Against the AI
This is it! This is the final chance that Aquarion: MoE has to redeem itself and prove that it isn’t a myth. And Voila! It did….unsurprisingly bad. The final episode of Aquarion Myth of Emotion rushed us through what feel like 3 episode worth of content, while resolving each conflicts in a matter of seconds before we even know what the hell is happening, and the mecha combat in this episode was also very boring, with nothing that makes Aquarion “Aquarion”. Let’s take a look.
So…uh…we got the entire story of the Mythical Era – where Nanook finally rebelled against the goddess Mulua Satene – who has taken Sedona’s body as her own. So basically the goddess will absorb everyone’s mana or emotions or whatever, and will fly off to create a new universe while leaving the old one to die. The people finally woke up to the goddess’ true intention and chaos ensued. Through this “revelation”, we learned that Nanook took the original mechanical angel – Aquarion – to fight against the goddess. And that’s about it. There’s no other loose ends that were tied up with this – in particular the twins as well as other side cast like Sukuna and Haida. The “original” Aquarion fight is also very boring, as it’s basically two identical weird statues just….punching each other.
Back to present day, the team is trying to stop the union of two worlds by defeating the Mythical Beast and rescue Momohime. However, Momohime had another plan, she wanted to sacrifice herself so that she can knock the worlds’ alignment off – basically making them unable to fuse and prevent the goddess from reborn and destroy the universe again. Even so, she was unsuccessful. The out-of-nowhere orbital colony laser just straight up fire upon her and everything just went kaboom.
Back to present day, the team is trying to stop the union of two worlds by defeating the Mythical Beast and rescue Momohime. However, Momohime had another plan, she wanted to sacrifice herself so that she can knock the worlds’ alignment off – basically making them unable to fuse and prevent the goddess from reborn and destroy the universe again. Even so, she was unsuccessful. The out-of-nowhere orbital colony laser just straight up fire upon her and everything just went kaboom.
Now here’s the kicker! It’s revealed that the Hakobune is not actually a colony ship. it’s actually just a giant server! Populating it are large-language-model AIs – basically a convent of ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, DeepSeek etc… just having conversation with each other in different languages and figure out a way to survive for them. There are ZERO humans involved. The pointy teacher revealed that the “ticket” that Munakata-sensei mentioned for her family is basically worthless. And that ticket means that their brain and thought process will be copied and made into another AI (with their personality). I don’t know why this blatant AI propaganda is added into the series but it serve zero purpose whatsoever except being a propaganda against AI in general.
The AI and the goddess basically created two final bosses that the team has to take down in the span of 15 minutes. And they were defeated in a very stupid way too. They defeated the AI by formatting the hard drives by hand, and basically just punch the Goddess to death (maybe she’s dead, I don’t know). The series didn’t really explain most stuff that happened. However, in the end, Momohime was shot by the AI (with light panels lol), but surprise, surprise! It turns out the universe “corrected” itself and Sun took her place. When the world’s union failed, Sun had no purpose anymore so he will return to his dream and await a new world once more. So in the end, Sun basically led a cult to awaken people, then he himself changed his mind and just screw off to sleep forever. His “directive’ is very confusing in this series, and with only 12 episodes, there’s zero explanation whatsoever.
The AI and the goddess basically created two final bosses that the team has to take down in the span of 15 minutes. And they were defeated in a very stupid way too. They defeated the AI by formatting the hard drives by hand, and basically just punch the Goddess to death (maybe she’s dead, I don’t know). The series didn’t really explain most stuff that happened. However, in the end, Momohime was shot by the AI (with light panels lol), but surprise, surprise! It turns out the universe “corrected” itself and Sun took her place. When the world’s union failed, Sun had no purpose anymore so he will return to his dream and await a new world once more. So in the end, Sun basically led a cult to awaken people, then he himself changed his mind and just screw off to sleep forever. His “directive’ is very confusing in this series, and with only 12 episodes, there’s zero explanation whatsoever.
And the worst thing is the Aquarion action. This episode is even more boring than the previous episodes. The Siegel didn’t do squat aside from doing another Mugen Punch – but this time piercing both dimensions yada-yada. In the original, we had the funny 3 Aquarion heads battle, in Evol, we had the new form and giant silver Aquarion, and even in Logos, we have an Aquarion duel that was really hyped and well done if anything. But here, the Siegel just…glow gold and that’s it. The other forms also didn’t make an appearance this episode, and the time for mecha action is extremely short.
In the end, there is a “happy ending” for the cast – well, for most of them. Sayo is still dead. and Momohima and Sakko became a couple because…they were a couple as Nanook and Sedona. I don’t even know if they were a couple since they seemed platonic as hell. It’s one of those “I hold you in my heart, but we won’t be shown doing the deed” kinda thing. It’s Aquarion and the emotions are absolutely forced and implied. It truly is a myth since it doesn’t exist! I don’t know why Satelight only gave this 12 episodes, because it’s clear that they need a lot more. And if they are making a 12-ep anime series, you gotta make less subplot and unnecessary fat. You have to trim them down and stuff. In conclusion, I don’t recommend this series at all. I thought this was a “return-to-form” since the Aquarion design is REALLY cool, but sadly the content didn’t turn out that way.
=Aaron=
In the end, there is a “happy ending” for the cast – well, for most of them. Sayo is still dead. and Momohima and Sakko became a couple because…they were a couple as Nanook and Sedona. I don’t even know if they were a couple since they seemed platonic as hell. It’s one of those “I hold you in my heart, but we won’t be shown doing the deed” kinda thing. It’s Aquarion and the emotions are absolutely forced and implied. It truly is a myth since it doesn’t exist! I don’t know why Satelight only gave this 12 episodes, because it’s clear that they need a lot more. And if they are making a 12-ep anime series, you gotta make less subplot and unnecessary fat. You have to trim them down and stuff. In conclusion, I don’t recommend this series at all. I thought this was a “return-to-form” since the Aquarion design is REALLY cool, but sadly the content didn’t turn out that way.
=Aaron=
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