8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Series and an Intriguing story, May 17, 2002
This review is from: Pilot Candidate - The Academy (Vol. 1) (DVD)
Now I haven't seen the whole series (because it is not fully released in the US yet), Candidate for Goddess (also known as Piolit Candidate) is a great series. It is of a SiFi Drama about the human race trying to stay alive in mysterious attacks from "Victim" (notice the name, which most likely has hidden meaning). In this battle humans use robots controlled buy humans with EX power (actually it's more like an evolved form of human, which basically is a person with a self inhancing ability). The main characters face internal struggles while trying to become piolits of Robots to save their colony. The robots themselves are also mysterious, especially the Goddesses. It seems to hint of the fact that they may not have been man made.
Altogether it is a great series and I recomend it to anyone, however the 2nd eppisode in this volume contains a good amout of nudity that was edited out of Cartoon Network's version. However it is not graphic (so it isn't Hentai) also on the Cartoon Network version the cigarette has been changed to a tooth pick. (I thought this was important to mention to parents)
I am what one would call a hard core anime fan, but unlike others I do not see the extremely exaggerated "borrowed ideas" of what others see to be true. The only similarities between anouther series and this is slkightly with the way the robots are piolited and the way they are piolited in Neon Genesis: Evangelion (another series in which I highly recoment for adults to watch, very enlightening series). The main differece though is that in an eva you sit down and in a Goddess you float. However, I assume some people consider it borrowed because they both have the piolots link up directly with the mind to their crafts. I don't believe it resembles gundam at all (which is a war series), if the reason it is believed it is similar because of the colonies then it is incedibly mistaken because many space series in all over the world have people live on space colonies and ships. This makes it laughable to think it was started by Gundam Wing (which is a good series also), a series which basically is the original gundam series in 79 conbined with other gundam series (hince the catagory it's under: Alternate Universe Gundam Series) remixed with a cupple of original ideas and a more political view on things.
The animation style is mixed 2D and 3D (similar to the way Blue Submarine No 6 is (a miniseries that should be perchaced by all anime fans)
The music is very nice with orchestrated music and great vocal music. It really makes the series even more enjoyable.
The English voices are not too bad, they are not of the superior caliber of Cowboy Bebop (which had the best dubbed voices for an anime), but they are not horrible and are still pleasant to hear.
Also, like I said, the story is also excellent, though from what I've heard it is a short series (of the OVA size, which is about 13 eppisodes).
The extras are really great, however it is better on the second dvd where you get to see what it's like to do the dubbing for the show the japanese stle.
The only main problem I see is the translation errors in the english subtitles (though it doesn't hurt the fun in watching subtitled anime) and the fact that there are only three eppisodes per DVD. (which is why it didn't get a perfect)
All in all a very great series that I'd recomend to anyone (over 13)
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you saw Pilot Candidate it would be your favorie to !!!!, April 1, 2003
This review is from: Pilot Candidate - The Academy (Vol. 1) (DVD)
This series is the BEST!!! I have seen all the episodes shown on adult swim. I taped all of them and watched them over and over, but unfortunatly the tapes were corrupted and now I'm buying the whole series on DVD. The series isn't a copy off of anything, but the only disappointing part is that the series is cut off when it could have and should have gone a lot further.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Animation, good story, bad sub, November 11, 2001
This review is from: Pilot Candidate - The Academy (Vol. 1) (DVD)
Let me start off by saying that this is NOT subtitled, it's "dub-titled". This means that they wrote sub-titles for the English dub, not the Japanese language. So what you get is lines that appear early (and really aren't properly translated... ask anyone who knows what 'kso' means in Japanese...), or they appear late, or, annoyingly enough, they pop up for no reason at all, which tells me that for some reason the English director decided to add lines. In my opinion this makes for a very confusing and annoying viewing.
The story is decent, with the main character being a candidate to pilot a "goddess". Goddesses are giant robots that only certain people can fly, only certain people can repair, and they fight off an enemy called Victims. It just so happens that the main character accidently begins pilotting one of the godesses before his training has even begun, which causes all kinds of problems for the current pilot.
The animation is pretty high quality. I'm not a huge fan of CG and "cell" animation mixing together (usually because it's REALLY obvious). Well, it's just as obvious in this, except that they try to texture and shade the 3D images using normal cartoon colors and shades. It works really well, but they still stand out.
If you can get over the dub-titling (if you only watch English tracks, you should be OK), this is a good title to own.
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