Heroic Age
ヒロイック・エイジ
26 episodes
Genres: adventure, comedy, romance, science fiction

Heroic Age has definitely been the show with one of the most ambitious premises of the past season. While other series have dealt with the fate of the universe before, no other series does it with such a massive scale, no other series has armies as massive as with Heroic Age, and no other series has characters as powerful as some of the ones we see in here. This truly is a space-epic. The story tells of a Golden Age which once existed in this universe. They had the power to foresee the past and the future, they could create planets and stars, and sent out a message to the different tribes and races that populated the galaxy. Three races responded: the Silver Age, the Bronze Age and the Heroic Age. Then, as the Golden Age was about to leave the galaxy, a fourth Age responded: humans, or the Iron Age.

This would have been better if the characters were interesting to watch, but alas: they’re just too focused on the story. They either spend all of their time worrying or fighting, and the illusion of “depth” quickly vanishes from this series after a bunch of episodes. To add salt to the wound, nearly every member of the main cast is a teenager, eliminating any sense of realism this series already had, but worst of all, the male and female main characters have some major annoyances: they’re too perfect. The only flaw of the main female is that she’s too angsty and the main male just doesn’t have any flaws at all. This quickly becomes rather one-sided. The side-characters could have saved them, but a lot of them just lack development.

But lo and behold: this is one of those flawed series that manages to redeem itself in the end! Around episode seventeen or eighteen, the writers wake up and turn up the pacing three gears, and the plot finally starts getting interesting as it develops in the right way, into a finale that doesn’t disappoint. Sure, the first half is boring, but it does build up for the much better second half. While the last part was nowhere near the best part of the season, at least it managed to redeem the lacklustre first part. At least it’s not the opposite way.

you’ll like this one if you like epic science-fiction stories, because things can’t get more epic than this series, not necessarily in the good ways, but neither in the bad ways.