Scrapped Princess

[Roarkiller]

I dunno if its a new series or not, but meh. I juz finished watching the last few episodes juz now (broadband pwnz) and id say its a really good series. The story develops w/o boring filler eps and includes some great twists. The plot is decent, even if slightly unoriginal, and humor is mixed well to prevent the series from being too religious or philosophical or anything.

Btw, i say really good series cuz it doesnt deserve the great rating. Nah, really good means better than great, albeit not w/o flaws.

Tho i must say some of the characters resemble too greatly with characters from other series. Most noticeable would be Winnia, who could be mistaken for Ayanami's twin, and Raquelle's voice and face reminds me of Hibiya from Chobits, and Zephiris would be Kotoko. Shannon looks familiar too, as does his character, but i cant put my finger on exactly who. Meh.

[EngiMatikul]

There may be some spoilers. :P

This series is decently new, finished airing in Japan around September-October. It was very popular among the fansubbing group and hence I refer to them now as the SP Cult. :)
But back to the review.
On the whole plotline, the thing that attracted my attention the most is, of course, the variety of plot twists and the originality they brought to an otherwise very cliche theme. However, though the plot twists I admired were very nice, they apparently made so many twists that they couldn't tie it all together in the end and made instead a very disappointing ending IMO. However, up till episode 22, or whenever Shannon asks Pacifica if she wanted to live, I enjoyed it quite considerably, and probably would have been happier of the episode ended right then and there and developing more maybe in another season rather than... the rather unsatisfactory ending. (Come on they had like 22 dragons and a whole gang of aliens missing from the scene!)
I found that even the "fillers" before episode 22 were interesting because, even if they didn't have much of a point, they did twist the plot a little more in each episode. Its because that I didn't know what to expect, that's what was very cool about the series. The fight scenes are nice, but I'm not one to grade that since I don't watch lots of fighting anime. :x
The characters are typical of a fantasy style setting character, except that all the "fantasy" stuff is not really fantasy but actually sci-fi... The whole originality of putting fantasy within scifi is what sets otherwise cliche characters apart from these characters. Their powers, anyway. The character designs were nice too, and I didn't recognize them as unoriginal. I certainly didn't see Winnia as Ayanami from the body structure, facial expressions and hair color; even the hair, with its weird horn-like updos which makes her look kinda evil, wasn't that coinciding with Ayanami. But I didn't watch enough Chobits to confirm Raquel. Ah well.
Music. Because Music is important. I didn't like the intro or ending. However, background music was very nice for old medieval style setting and mood; the intro sounded like American Country with a japanese singer, and though I don't mind country music I usually skipped the intro while watchin the show. The ending just didn't appeal to me.

Overall, I'd say this anime is overrated by the SP Cult. But it does deserve some credits. Probably above Kiddy Grade but not as good as Stellvia IMO. (Stellvia has original (well close) theme! good points for that!)

[Roarkiller]

On the aliens and dragons part, they did say that most were already perished.

And the ending was a little unsatisfactory, tho it was prolly cuz i read too much into the entire series prior to the ending, so i had already knew what was going to happen. After all, i did say it was a little unoriginal, and the main character dying and coming back to life is one of them, as is the actual meaning of the prophecy (they gave away too many hints).

[EngiMatikul]

On aliens and dragons, its probably just me, but I really would like to know more about them. I mean... in the end, how they showed the past lives of Raquel and Shannon, it woulda been nice if perhaps for several episodes they had a complete flashback of the time aliens invaded, dragons fought, etc etc... but perhaps that's just me. To me, it was rather lose ended.

I never regarded plot too much. It's originality in content that moreso appeals to me, such as the plot twists and converting Fantasy to sci-fi. That was fascinating. Theme may be cliche, but hey in a philosophy class all questions seem cliche but they never get answered eh?

EDIT: Furthermore, wasn't the end kinda quick? 2 Artillary Peacemakers knocked down in less than 10 minutes. Whoot, so much tension there. -_-;;

[Last Exile]

Scrapped Princess is the equal best thing released this year, along with Full Metal Panic? (Fumoffu). Stellvia is pretty good but not quite as. Last Exile is also a standout. Haibane Renmei is pretty amazing too. Even people that normally like the heavier stuff like Haibane Renmei for some reason. But yeah, Scrapped Princess rules. High quality drawings, sensational plot, great characters, good balance of humour and harsh reality, never a dull or irrelevant episode. That can rarely be said.

Enough said.