Aquarion Evol / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation: Alicia and Izumo. In short, they are either good parents who did what they had to do in order save Altair or despicable parents who deserved their deaths at the hands of Mykage for abandoning their own son.
Ass Pull: Apollo from the first series and by extension Kagura/Amata, is revealed to be the reincarnation of Apollonius' dog that fell in love with Celiane. Not Apollonius. Really.
Awesome Music:
- Yoko Kanno's music is recycled from the first series with the addition of new songs.
- Still, the opening theme, Kimi no Shinwa ~Aquarion Dai Ni Shou, must deserve mention. Truly a worthy successor to the original series' theme.
- The first ending, Gekkou Symphonia, deserves a mention as well.
- Both of our resident Beast Man rival Kagura's Leitmotifs: Beast Beat and Fragments of Eve.
- ZERO, the insert song used in the final episode.
Broken Aesop: Throughout the series you get the message that you should love someone by who they are rather than by things like fate or Big Bangs. Amata tries to illustrate this by fighting the fate of Mikono being with Kagura. Kagura and Amata are basically the same person, and they were both the split parts of Mikono's past life's lover, Apollo. By the second half of the series no one's entirely sure whether Amata is fighting fate or going along with it, or what is the fate Amata's trying to fight in the first place. In the end, it turns out he was fated to be with the girl he loves anyways.
Contested Sequel: A lot of fans were not happy with it, but others were.
Die for Our Ship:
- Mikono, from those who wanted badly to see Amata choose Zessica instead.
- Amata himself also received a fair amount of this from the more rabid Mikono/Kagura fans.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Andy, MIX, Yunoha, and Sazanka are rather popular supporting characters. Even some of the less important background characters that aren't even named in-series have fanbases, such as the one female student who wears a bag over her head.
- Yunoha, Yunoha, Yunoha. The revelation of what she really looked like and then her subsequent interactions with Jin made her an instant favorite among the artists of Pixiv. Her popularity culminates in having the entirety of the second ED, titled ''Yunoha no Mori'' (literally "Yunoha's Forest") focused on her.
Esoteric Happy Ending: That blank face of Zessica at the end wasn't necessary, writers...
Fan Nickname:
- "Team Useless" for Amata and Mikono, after the latter's self-description of them as "a useless pair" in the first episode.
- "Brownka" for Sazanka, being a blatant black-haired, darker-skinned Expy of Ranka Lee — complete with the same voice actress for a good dose of Casting Gag, and a double helping of Company Gag and Creator Gag (Satelight and Shoji Kawamori, obviously).
- "Bag-chan" for the one NEO-Deava student who wears a paper bag over head.
- "Finland" for Suomi Conebi whose first name is the Finnish word for Finland. Her swimsuit even resembles the Finnish flag.
Fan-Preferred Couple:
- It seems that a lot of people, at least in the U.S., preferred Amata to be with Zessica and Mikono to be with Kagura.
- Yunoha and Jin. The production staff as a whole openly admitted that killing off Jin was not the brightest of their ideas, in light of the pairing's surprise popularity with watchers. To give you an idea of just how popular the pairing of Yunoha and Jin is, the crossover OVA between Genesis and EVOL titled Sousei no Aquarion Love focuses on an alternate version of the two. Really.
Faux Symbolism: Literally everything Zen says, such as equating DONUTS! to the shape of the universe and the meaning of life.
Hilarious in Hindsight: A few months after this anime started airing, a videogame that also was inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism and has a 12,000-year Time Skip in its story was released. Among its characters are Asura and his daughter Mithra. Izumo and Kagura pilot the Ahura^note Gnis and Mithra Gnis respectively and it turned out, several episodes later, that they're father and son.
Ho Yay: Cayenne and Shrade get this in spades, which is surprising considering their screen time together (or lack thereof). They're rarely seen together but if they are it is either Shrade teasing and Cayenne reacting or Cayenne taking care of Shrade. It's one or the other, no exceptions.
Jerkass Woobie: Kagura. He's been treated and raised more like an attack dog than as a child by Mykage with a parent who knew about his existence but never did anything about it. Mikono was literally the only thing in his life he had to keep him going since he knows that there has to be someone who will care about him.
Moe: Yunoha definitely.
Memetic Mutation: Portraits of Mykage are used by /m/ to show their disapproval of Ranka's actions. ^note
Moral Event Horizon: Mykage crossed it BIG TIME when he murdered Jin and he continues to cross as the series goes including killing Alicia, pulling a Grand Theft Me on Zessica, and mind controlling Kagura into killing his father Izumo.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: As expected, the shippers are bitterly divided over whether Amata should end up with Mikono or Zessica, and whether Mikono will end up with Amata or Kagura.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: Mykage can be this for some people. He might have reasons to be angry at Fudo/Apollonius if you think that he got cheated on, Apollonius never apologized, in the OVA he unwillingly got an abortion, then he got lied again and gattai'ed with a dog. He has gone through something...
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mikono can come to be this at times. The show tries to make her come off as a shy girl that despite having daddy issues and insecurity problems because of her apparent lack of powers as an element, tries her best to help and understand the people around her. But to many, she comes accross as uncaring, spoiled, indecisive and useless (both in and outside the Aquarion!) throughout the entire show, as she does nothing to solve the problems between Amata and Kagura, and only makes up misunderstandings that Amata must apologize for, showing no concern over his issues or how her indecisiveness causes him and Zessica trouble. If polls and general fan reactions are to be trusted, she's one of the least liked female characters of the show.
Vanilla Protagonist: Amata is The Protagonist but the story uses him to show off the side characters.
The Woobie:
- Amata. This page◊ describes his life rather well.
- Zessica. Like Kagura, she's messed with, broken, and bodyjacked by Mykage and whenever she tries to do something good for Amata it only ends up with her suffering even more at Mykage's hands.
- Shrade as well. He was born with a talent for music and, coincidentally, with powers to alter peoples emotions through it. Because of this he accidentally kills his parents, is then turned into a political weapon and made to kill dozens of people. Then he gets recruited but it turns out that he can do jack because his powers are too strong and would kill him. It goes so far that, by the time he gets introduced, he frankly doesn't care anymore. He gets better thanks to Cayenne and the others but he still dies.

YMMV / Aquarion Evol

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