On April 1, 2007, the first episode of Gurren Lagann aired in Japan. Widely regarded as one of mecha's last great hurrahs, Gurren Lagann would go on to become a beloved anime all over the world (and this reviewer's personal favourite). The next day, April 2, the first episode of Heroic Age aired. But despite sharing in Gurren Lagann's message of hope in the future and the power of humanity, Heroic Age would go on to be mostly forgotten, swallowed up by the sands of time and the ever-increasing seasonalization of anime. Outside of series like Gurren Lagann and Code Geass, mecha as a whole in the 21st century has had little staying power in the anime community, and despite the fact that I actually quite like this show, Heroic Age is a good example as to why.

To get the technical stuff out of the way, the show looks and sounds really good. The animation is fluid and pretty consistent throughout, which is pretty much all I ask for. I do have my issues with the CGI, but it wasn't so egregious that it broke my immersion. The character design is something between Leiji Matsumoto and a 2000s shounen, which I feel was intentional and spoke to the series trying to craft the tale of an epic hero while staying true to its mecha roots. And in that vein, the orchestral soundtrack really works in the show's favour, adding a layer of tension to what is, in some points, pure melodrama.

The story of Heroic Age takes its inspiration from Greek mythology and Hesiod's Five Ages of Man, but brings it into a space opera setting. The premise of the show is that the Golden Tribe, the original master race of the galaxy or the universe (this isn't really clear), eventually reached such a stage in their evolution that they left this universe for another. Before they did, though, they called upon other "Tribes" to step forth and claim their place among the stars. The show follows the Argonaut, a ship of humans (in this world known as the Iron Tribe) as they try to find their Nodos, a boy named Age, and reclaim the Earth from the ruling Silver Tribe who are hellbent on destroying them. Complicating this relationship is the presence of the Nodos, five individuals who contain the power of the extinct Heroic Tribe within them. There are the main "mecha" of the show, although calling them mecha is about as accurate as calling a bicycle a motorcycle. Nevertheless, the show presents the Nodos as giant-robots-in-spirit, and in doing so sets itself up in the vein of things like Mobile Suit Gundam and the Twelve Labours of Hercules simultaneously.

For the most part, this combination tends to work well. The political elements of the show, such as Dhianeila being forced to stage a coup against her brothers, or the Silver Tribe splitting into factions over how best to deal with humanity, makes the fantastical elements feel more believable and this world feel more real. At the same time, the show is trying to do a lot in its combination of classical and retro anime inspirations. Twenty-six episodes, despite seeming like a lot by today's standards, feels like it wasn't enough to explore this universe as much as I would have liked. This isn't necessarily to say that the story was rushed or cut short, but there elements of the worldbuilding, like Dhianeila's psychic powers, Age's backstory, or the technology of the Silver and Golden Tribes, that weren't as fleshed out as I thought they should have been.

And I think this issue is compounded by the fact the main character of Heroic Age is somewhat unclear, and thus the show isn't really sure who to focus on. You would imagine, from the title, that Age would be the show's protagonist. He is caught somewhere between a Greek mythological hero and a messianic figure, but there are times when he vanishes for episodes at a time, locked in combat with another Nodos as the focus shifts to the Argonaut trying to navigate a space battle against the Silver and Bronze Tribes. In a way, I appreciate this more than the monster-of-the-week format of older mecha anime--the trouble is that it pushes Age to the margins of the show. In fact I was surprised, watching it 14 years after I saw it as a kid, how little Age speaks throughout the series. This time around I've come to see the main character as Dhianeila, trying to navigate her people through the conflict against the Silver Tribe and trying to create peace in the galaxy. The problem I have with Dhianeila, however, is that she is a little too one-note to be a main character. There are only so many times you can sit in front of a tv and watch her gasp, "Age!", and she, too, is a sort of large-than-life figure with her powers and how the other humans venerate her as royalty. And, to make matters worse, the show develops this strange admiration/love between Age and Dhianeila that isn't all that believable because Age has the mentality of a five-year-old and the two really only share a bond through fate. This isn't to say that I dislike either character, but I didn't really find myself to drawn to either of their personal stories.

The side characters, though, are all quite enjoyable, and for me, that's where the real characters arcs lie. The characters of the Argonaut, like Iolaous, Anesha, Mobeedo, are all really likable, the other Nodos have interesting personal conflicts that carry them throughout the show, and as the series progresses and the Silver Tribe becomes more and more pressed by humanity and their own dark past with the Golden Tribe, characters like Rom Ror, Prome Ou, and Paeto Ou are all given the spotlight. I would say this is where the show feels most like an 80s space opera like Zeta Gundam, where the story of the side characters is just as compelling as that of the main characters.

At the end of the day, though, Heroic Age is an anime driven by its plot. Even if things are abstract or unexplained, you never get the sense while watching that anything is really out of place. Despite the slow pacing of the first few episodes and the seemingly endless fighting between Age and Karkinos, once the Argonaut returns to the new human planet, Dewey, the show picks up steam and really gets going on its epic journey. Beginning on a ruined, backwater planet and ending with the opening of a portal to another universe, Heroic Age takes you across the galaxy in a melodramatic, interstellar battle for the survival of humanity and universal peace.

And I think, ultimately, this is why it was mostly forgotten. Heroic Age is heavily indebted to two traditions, Greek hero myths and 80s mecha anime, that are largely antithetical to modern anime storytelling. As opposed to something like Gurren Lagann, where we follow and get invested in a personal journey of growth, Heroic Age is far more impersonal in that it speaks to something bigger than one person. It isn't really a story about anyone in particular, though it tries to be with its pseudo-love-story between Age and Dhianeila. Rather, this is an anime about everyone, about humanity as a whole and our place in the universe, in a way that comes more from hard sci-fi than the individualized, shounen-eqsue tropes of Gurren Lagann and many modern anime.

This isn't to say that one is better than the other, and if you look at my favourites you'll see which one I prefer personally. At the same time, I think there's a place for stories like this. Unfortunately, they don't really get told anymore. The space opera is a dying genre, and though Heroic Age isn't nearly the best that I've seen, I do give it credit for trying to do something new with its retro mecha inspirations and bringing them into the 21st century. Eighteen years after it first aired, it's fair to say that it hasn't really translated to the rest of the anime industry like Gurren Lagann has, but I do hope that, like Age, shows like this come back at some point--and when they do, they bring us to a new world of space opera mecha that speaks to our own times the way Gundam did to the 70s and 80s.