Brake Blade (Broken Blade)

The parallels that can be drawn between Gundam and Broken Blade (AKA Break Blade, the phonetic pronunciation of the title by several of the characters) are obvious.  Giant Mechs, world on the verge of total war and a mysterious young man with the ability to pilot a unique weapon against overwhelming odds.  If you’ve seen it, Turn-A Gundam jumps immediately to mind, but the connections are pretty universal.

Instead of a sci-fi setting, we have a selectively advanced industrial revolution that feels very reminiscent of the Valkyria Chronicles.  The protagonist in this war is Rygart  Arrow, one of a very small number of people who cannot use ‘magic,’ the ability to freely manipulate quartz crystals that is shared by all the nations of the world.  Their technology is heavily based on this ability, rendering un-sorcerers uniquely unable to function in society.

At its highest level, this magic allows for the creation and manipulation of flexible quartz ligaments which are the underlying technology of the Golems used to fight wars.  The Kingdom of Krishna comes under fire from its neighbors when a weak stabilizing power abruptly collapses.  Researchers from Krishna discover a pre-historic Golem which their magic-users are unable to pilot.  But when Rygart falls in, the machine hums to life and despite being old beyond belief, dramatically outperforms all of the most advanced Golems on both sides of the war.  This Golem, with its mysterious broken blade on its back, becomes a symbol of hope for Krishna.
The show is gorgeous.  Production I.G. spared no expense on these lush, smooth 50 minute movies.  Unfortunately, the pacing of the whole thing seems to suffer from the bulky target time.  50 minutes is a long time to play with a single literary arc, and as a result, the story bogs down with lingering face shots, redundant conversations and awkward cuts to the mech pilots or observers in the middle of heavy action.  I’ve only watched two of the 6 films, but they both suffered from just a little too much padding.

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EPISODE 01
EPISODE 02
EPISODE 03
EPISODE 04
EPISODE 05
EPISODE 06