Cross Ange is an anime about titties and explosions, and mechas too. It’s gory, it’s funny, it’s entertaining and it usually doesn’t pull its punches (we’ll get more into that later). Now, I get why this show won’t be for everyone, as with its weird tone, the mix of silly fan-service and gory/crude drama will be a turnoff for many. That said, I honestly thought it made the series twice as entertaining and funny, and the tonal whiplash can make for some seriously impactful scenes.
The plot of Cross Ange is nothing you’ve never seen before, the classic story about a privileged person who loses everything until they hit rock bottom, and how they deal with it.
In this case, Ange, the princess of the kingdom, is outed as a Norma (a person without magic) on the day of her coming of age ceremony or something because of some conspiracy plot coming from her own brother. Ange is detained after her mother is killed and is brought to a concentration camp, where she is stripped of every last piece of her human dignity.
Now I’ll get on with the positives and negatives about the show:
-Great character development and progression, and not only for Ange.
-Great fun, mechas, explosions, titties, unga bunga and all that.
-Interesting enough setting.
-Great villain until a certain point.
-Music's great
-Some types of character interactions that I’ll later get more into
Negatives:
-Some weird logic jumps and a couple situations requiring a little bit more suspension of disbelief than normal.
-It has one of the worst decisions of anime direction I’ve seen in my life.
-Ending is alright, but villain is nerfed.
Now, as I’ll explain some of these pros and cons, I’ll get into some minor and later some major spoilers.
Character development yeah, Ange is great; she starts off as the most sheltered and spoiled brat on possibly the whole planet. She never had to do anything by herself so she didn’t even know she couldn’t use magic, and her maids did literally everything they could to cover it up.
Now she gets sent to this concentration camp for Normas (people without magic) where you get abused, raped and all that for sport, and either you fight some literal dragons or you die.
Ange, being the spoiled little shit that she is, doesn’t want to do anything and actually still believes that all this is just a misunderstanding and that her family will soon come rescue her, denial and all that.
The thing is, every selfish, sheltered action Ange takes, will later become a slap in the face for her, getting other girls and even her own commander killed (who had actually raped her before whoops); she will be obviously hated and ostracised.
Ange after being forced to pay for the graves of her fallen comrades
she'll learn to be strong independent wahmen and make friends
Major spoilers for villain, but he’s kinda great. At least up until episode 22.
He’s menacing, he’s clever, he has everything under control. He’s one of those villains that will be waiting for you drinking tea everywhere you go. He’s op, has control over space and time, is immortal basically and can control human sensations with a mere touch. Don’t forget he can also control all magic users telepathically. He’s in no rush to accomplish his plan and revels on manipulating people and taking them to his side. I was actually invested and wondering how they were going to defeat him, he seemed too powerful to even defeat. But oh well, he kinda got nerfed for the finale and that’s it.
casually sipping tea while torturing the protagonist
Before I get into “the great stink” I have to point out something that actually surprised me involving some character interactions. With anime, and actually also western media it usually happens that when there is a confrontation, everyone is very polite and listens to every word the other has to say, as if it was a Dhar Mann video. For example let’s say some character betrays another, and usually you’d expect something like “wah, you betrayed me!” “yes, you see: cue the 5 minute flashback or whatever explanation they come up with”. Not in Cross Ange though, people get interrupted or shot without a word when their intent is made clear; and that was honestly refreshing to see.
Now drum-roll, for the actual reason i made this review, to vent about the shittiest decision, the biggest stinker of them all, and this involves some major spoilers.
How great was episode 21, how intense it was, how fun and unexpected and all that, great sacrifices from some important characters to save the ones they love etc; just to be shat on by the last 5 minutes of episode 22 in one of the most glaring “fuck you” moments I’ve seen in my life.
You see, Momoka and Tusk weren’t really dead, and didn’t sacrifice themselves to save Ange. Even though Momoka was shot in the heart, then ran over by a car, then fell down a cliff, then the car fell on her, then exploded, she had a literal pan, like a cooking pan on her breast so she was fine :) . And the biggest offender Tusk, he literally blew himself up, terrorist style, with an explosive belt and everything. But no, it’s actually revealed in the episode preview for chapter 23 that, in the exact moment the explosion went off, he ninja changed into some anti explosive armour and then used a body double technique to get out of there, and this is canon, I’m not even making it up i swear.
"nobody likes persistent men!"
"hey babe did you miss me, that plot armour sure came in handy"
Overall a great experience, has the best and worst of anime, really fun to watch with friends or family, loved it and hate episode 22 with all my soul: 8/10
Feel free to disagree with me of course, but know that if you do, you’re wrong and have no taste.