Xenosaga: The Animation Part 2 Episodes 5-8

Shion Uzuki and the few survivors of their massacred fleet are on the run, pursued by multiple enemies across the stars.  Not only are the dreaded Gnosis hot on their tail but agents of the U-TIC organization seek to claim a young girl in Shion’s care, as well as the 12 collected Zohar Emulators.  Even after finding refuge with the powerful Kukai Foundation, Shion and friends soon find themselves wanted for acts of terrorism that bring the might of the galaxy most powerful military bearing down upon them.  The only thing more frightening than the insurmountable odds against her is the question of who Shion can trust as she falls deeper into an intergalactic conspiracy.

By the time I wrapped up watching the second set of episodes for Xenosaga: The Animation, my head was hurting.  Normally, I do take notes for reviews so I know what to touch on and talk about.  With Xenosaga, however, I’m doing so much notetaking that I feel like I’m barely watching the show, mostly because the more I listen to Junior aka Little Master deliver endless exposition dumps the more lost I become.  This is a universe that wants viewers to know it has a grand history spanning millenia and has been lived in.  But it’s doing so at a cost.  There’s so much lore and info dumping going on in these four episodes that it feels like theyre all just setup for something bigger that hasn’t happened yet.  And to be honest, I’m so bored, tired and frustrated with it, the end result will hardly be a letdown because my expectations have become that low.
 
Looking at the notes I took for this review it’s pretty hard to keep everything organized.  I feel like a lot of what happens is discussed more than it is allowed to actually happen.  And when things do happen, theyre over in an instant so we can listen to Shion or Junior exposit some more.  Even KOS-MOS is largely out of action for the bulk of this set.  Her biggest moment is when she reveals she has a freaking hentai mouth on her belly button that can suck in Gnosis like it’s a Black Hole.  But even that “what the heck just happened” moment kind of gets brushed aside, along with the Gnosis themselves, as we focus on endless amounts of world building and detailing the multiple groups and agendas circling around the Zohar and planet Miltia.  It’s not exciting and the more I listen to Junior pull out another Wikipedia page from his script or whine about something, I kind of want to punch him (also he’s much older than he looks so I wouldn’t feel bad about it).
 
This set of episodes also demonstrates why it was a dumb idea to make Xenosaga: The Animation a short run of twelve.  I imagine each game in the trilogy is incredibly long and there’s more time to breath in the sea of endlessly long cutscenes (I once heard someone say Xenosaga was the best Video Game they ever watched).  But a meager 12 episodes, there’s a huge increase in speed during the middle episodes to the point where the characters are all exclaiming about events we barely get to see, like “WHOA HOW DID THAT BIG THING WE JUST SAW HAPPEN THAT DEFINITLEY HAPPENED JUST NOW!!!???”  There’s some kind of crime and quick cover up and blame is placed on Shion’s group just so U-TIC can get their hands on Momo and the 12 Zohar Emulators.  One could argue that expanding the episode count could hurt the pacing of the series and slow it down even further.  That’s not an unfair assumption but also the pacing sucks to begin with and any actual action that does happen doesn’t last very long anyway.
 
Poor Shion.  I feel bad for her and her alone because I want to like her…mostly because she is pretty cute and yes she does rock a bikini like you’d expect.  But sadly, even the sight of the lovely scientist on a beach can hide that she’s just as much a victim of The Animation’s poor pacing and lack of follow through.  At one point, it is revealed that people can survive getting grabbed by a Gnosis only to end up slowly changing into one…and Shion definitely got grabbed several episodes ago.  There’s hardly any follow up to that terrifying prospect and even when Shion is forced to confront the death of her parents and revisit the place where KOS-MOS 1.0 (I guess) executed her partner (and boyfriend?) Kevin barely feels touched upon.  Part of the latter is because the episode where this happens is split between Shion’s dark history and Juniors and listening to him wail hurts my ears more than makes me feel bad for his history.  Is the show really just going to overlook Shion’s horrific potential Cronenberg fate or the fact that she’s the Head of a project that killed her boyfriend?  How can she still hang around KOS-MOS with that giant elephant in the room.  Nope, we’ve gotta chatter about pointless politics and watching Junior show off Gun Fu while Momo turns into a Magical Girl in a virtual simulator…I bet that makes more sense in the game.
 
It's hard to tell where things are going to conclude with Xenosaga: The Animation but I can assure you it’ll have to work super hard to make me care.  Between the show refusing to focus on Shion’s complicated history properly and not in cryptic glimpses and Junior being the Xenosaga Wikipedia with his dialogue, I cant see this series getting a proper conclusion, much less act as a promising lead in to an adaptation of Xenosaga II that’s never gonna happen (does The Animation even cover the entirety of the first game?  At the rate it’s going I highly doubt it).  I’m sure that it’s gonna be a made dash to a finale and an even madder dash to make it mean something.  Either way, this has become Pilot Candidate all over again, just with a much more attractive girl at the forefront who deserves better.  See ya Monday for the Series Finale of Xenosaga: The Animation right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.