Aquarian Age – Sign of Evolution 8/10

Based on a card game this anime is, stunningly, not complete crap. In fact it's pretty good.

Airing in 2002 the 13 episodes of Aquarian Age look really good. Lots of detail and consistent quality throughout the series. I liked the OP and ED, and music during the show is pretty good but I found some of the singing by the main character sucked HARD! I really liked the character designs since they were a little unusual and you could really tell that the animators liked drawing as many female characters as possible. A labour of love I suspect.

The premise is a little reminiscent of X in my opinion. The world has been engaged in a secret war for centuries. Five opposing factions with super powers vie for control but the overall war isn't really explained. Of course it wouldn't be an anime if the groups weren't completely made up of young girls (Ah anime!). The players are:

Arayashiki: All those Japanese priestess girls you see in every other anime.
Wiz-Dom: All the magic girls from the western countries.
Darklore: Cat girls, vampires, fairies, various other animal-girls.
E.G.O.: The psychic girls straight from the set of X.
Polestar Empire: Bad girls from another dimension. (Like the Splugorth but cuter.)

There is another group but they are less a faction and more another class of people, these are the male Mindbreakers. They can call and control girls of any faction and can awaken dormant abilities in previously ordinary girls.

We learn at the start of the series that the main character Kyouta is a mindbreaker. He's unaware of this of course and is in a band with his friends. He's a senior in high school and is sweet on Yoriko, a childhood friend who is a year or two older than him. We also find out that Yoriko is one of the Arayashiki and not only that but their new leader.

She rebels at this and with that and thinking she and Kyouta are drifting apart she becomes vulnerable to the machinations of another mindbreaker who plans to turn her to evil. He accomplishes this and the rest of the series is about Kyouta learning about his power and trying to save Yoriko from herself.

There are some pretty good minor characters in this show like the two E.G.O. girls who become Kyouta's friends and his wacky bandmates. Yoriko is also quite interesting as Evil-Yoriko since she becomes the bitch from hell.

Since the show looks so good and is pretty interesting I'll recommend it as a light romantic show. It has a pretty good ending but the epilogue was kinda crappy.