Score: B

Concluding my Zegapain rewatch with the latest Zegapain movie. It was certainly an unusual one! I wasn’t sure what to expect after the last movie being a prequel and this one opening up…with what felt like an eternity of recaps! It was like going back to early seasons of Boku no Hero where they spent a whole episode just saying what happened in the previous seasons. But after getting through the real content of the movie…I definitely have thoughts about it. It was a strange adventure, but maybe that’s proper for Zegapain.

Not what I expected!

But yeah, this franchise is so damn weird! I think that’s the best way to sum up the second movie. The only major accomplishment is that it takes care of the love triangle situation by spitting out another Kyo that she can end up with. Although I find that a rather questionable choice for the story. Because living Kyo is both versions of Kyo. He’s the guy that fell in love with Ryoko to be sure, but he’s also the guy that fell in love with Shizuno. Is he ok just letting that be? I guess he can tell himself that leaving her to another version of himself is the best thing for her. Still feels a bit weird considering how they had those tender moments near the end of the original series.

He was technically in the movie

Honestly the movie really was a collection of very random and weird stuff. Like Abyss is somehow alive and reappears for 20 seconds! The man is a cameo! He’s totally just hiding around that base being a bro because what’s left of Sin is inside of Ryoko. Although it’s really just a very small bit of her. Not sure what the future of that guy is honestly. Eventually once the Celebrants have time they are going to blow up Claude with him in it! I guess he can escape at some point, but not like he’s going to be welcome on a restored Earth either. They introduce him in this cameo, but his very existence raises so many questions!

There’s just so much random stuff in this movie. They talk about how other Kyo is maxed out on dry and wet damage, but he doesn’t show that at all. There’s no physical problems that he has later in the movie and his memory problems are very limited. For a guy that’s maxed out on damage, he has way less of it than Arque did! I think that AI’s measurements are rather iffy. It feels as if once they got to this movie they lost that taste for tragedy they had during the show. Other Kyo survives, Abyss is alive, Shizuno gets her memories back, and it’s all good! I half expected the to revive Arque through some nonsense with how casual they were being! Poor Chris never gets a break.

This happened for some reason!

If you don’t take the movie seriously it was mostly good fun. At this point I can’t help repeat myself, but it truly was a bizarre experience. Olta Moda exists. They provided an excuse for Kyo to get a mech arm and Lu-Shen to fight with digital spear for a bit which was kind of fun. They get defeated and despite saying they weren’t coming back…they all came back with their own ship at the end of the movie! How did they survive? I have no idea! No one dies in this thing!

Except maybe the random restored guy that shows up for the last few minutes only to get quickly defeated by the double Altair assault. Yes, it did allow old Kyo to do his suicide move but with a more hopeful message behind it. But I just find it funny that this guy shows up just to be defeated. I’m both not surprised and kind of surprised that Gards-orm had the free time to be invading and destroying alternate worlds while not being able to fully control the one they already had!

Wish May-Yu had something to do

It was nice to come back to Zegapain and I don’t regret rewatching the show on BD before diving into these movies. But they certainly weren’t quite what I was expecting to see here. Nothing that takes away from how great the franchise was and how I still consider the show a classic. Not many shows would go down the strange paths this one did and it remains memorable for that reason. It was also kind of nice to see the Zegapain mechs done in a more modern time. They looked great and in a way that didn’t take away from the old series. I certainly won’t forget this movie anytime soon.