A post in the ‘Released and Relinquished‘ series.
(In case you missed it, go see Part 2: GaoGaiGar over at The Gaming Dungeon) Simoun is one of the most recent anime we’ll be talking about here, having aired in 2006 in Japan and been released between November 07 and 08 here in the states by Media Blasters. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many of the people who’ve seen it, Simoun deserves to be called one of the greatest anime of our decade. Let’s check it out!
The show takes place in a steampunk fantasy world and has lots of great art and cool locations that fans of stuff like Final Fantasy will appreciate. The show’s story is very complex, but it centers around a war between two nations, one of which is an industrial nation in the middle of a longstanding depression who is launching war against the seemingly unstoppable forces of a theocratic nation where the main characters are all from.
Now, in the world of Simoun, everyone is born female, and it is only when you reach seventeen years of age that you head to a magic spring and choose whether you want to become male or remain female. The main characters are all young girls who are nearing seventeen but don’t have to go to the springs as long as they continue to pilot their sacred machines, the Simoun, in defense of the kingdom. So there is a lot of political, social, and religious background to the show, to the point that you could easily write a spin-off series just with the established universe if you want to, and I think I might one day myself!
The first thing you’ll probably learn about Simoun is that it is a serious yuri series – for those who don’t know what ‘yuri’ is, it means that the show features lots of lesbian characters. In fact, the ships called Simoun that the characters pilot take two people to fly, and to activate the machines, the two pilots have to kiss each-other and then kiss the ship, so you see a LOT of girls kissing in this show.
And I do mean a LOT of kissing. This is all in the first minute or so.
However, you have to understand that this is a part of their culture so it’s not really sexual. That said, there is still some great girls love in there!
Even though the show is about a war and about airship pilots, there isn’t much action in there and the politics pretty much are all in the background. The real meat of the show is the characters, who are some of the deepest and most well-written characters you can probably expect to find in anime. The show is very straight-up drama – there is no comedy whatsoever and there are some moments that will probably move you to tears that occur throughout. It’s really heavy, powerful stuff like an old-school war story ought to be.
Everything about this show is just done perfectly – the background art is fantastic and is done by one of the most famous art directors in the field, the script, the character designs, all of it is just fantastic. The director, Junji Nishimura, is a genius who worked on seasons six and seven of Ranma 1/2 and the OVAs (which were all the best parts!) as well as Soul Hunter, True Tears, and Kyou Kara Maoh! which some of you may be a fan of.
Now, Simoun is actually one of the few cases where not selling well didn’t hurt the series because Media Blasters knew it wasn’t going to be a big release. They released all 26 episodes on just five disks which were sold for only 18 bucks at full retail, and they did not do a dub. So if you only watch anime dubbed, I’m sorry to say that there is no way you will ever see Simoun dubbed, but if you’re like me and you think dubs are a sin anyway, you’ll be fine — really, you should check out this amazing anime regardless! The DVDs also have a TON of excellent bonus features like commentary and cast interviews, and you can find them literally anywhere that sells anime DVDs so there’s really no excuse not to check the series out! I cannot recommend it enough!
Anyway, because this show doesn’t really have a whole lot of action and because I didn’t want to spoil any of the great twists for anyone, it wasn’t easy to find a good AMV, but I thought this one was okay just for giving you a sense of the show’s general feel, how it looks, and kind of some of the show’s underlying religious themes there as well. Remember to check out part 4 of the Released and Relinquished series tomorrow at The Gaming Dungeon!
(for those reading on the blog, I recommend checking out my spoiler-free Simoun review from a few months back to get a deeper sense of the series in far more words lol.)
My Sword Is Unbelievably Dull 
#1 on my rewatch list. Incredible series. Love the OP and ED. Love the plot. Love the characters. Love the themes. The ambiguous lesbianism is cool too.
:D Yes. It’s truly an amazing anime, and I am a very proud owner of the DVDs. Could rewatch this any time.
I liked this series, but I found it hard to relate to the two main characters. My favorite pair was Dominura/Lemone (I don’t like the other romanization) and I get the impresion that the staff felt the same
Yes, if you watch the specials, the director was a really big fan of that duo. Really, every character was a labor of love from the team. Especially Dominura. In the commentary we learn that Dominura is actually an alien as in, yes, from anothre planet, but the director thought that if he introduced this fact, it would overload the viewer.
Really? sounds pretty interesting. I watched it fansubed so I didn’t know about the comments and since I live in the wrong side of the Río Bravo I guess I’ll never know
I still think of this as my favorite anime of all time, and you describe it well. Personally, I relate to all the main characters — even Mamiina, in the end. Maybe Kaimu and Alti least. Aeru, Neviril and Yun may be my favorites, with their strong individual motivations. But Dominura (Yukana) may be the most powerful creation.
I’m clearly missing some meta-information, however, since I didn’t know Dominura was an alien. I wish it had been popular enough to allow for a sequel, and now I want a sequel on planet Dominura. Maybe the new currency of yuri shows will enable a come-back. Add some space battles with the culture from Blue Drop and it might go, lol.
Ya, it’s in the DVD commentary with the director and character designer who get into all kinds of nitty gritty greatness on the DVDs. Maybe I’ll be nice to everyone outside the US and transcribe the commentary some day.
Basically, he says that in the part where Dominura explains her past to Rimone, she says she is an ‘immigrant’. What she means is an immigrant from another planet, and there is actually cross-planetary communication in the series. He said though that with only 26 episodes he just didn’t even want to get into it.
There’s lots of great stuff like this.
It’s interesting that your two most recent examples (GaoGaiGar and now this) are quite well-respected online, at least in comparison to Soul Taker. And yet I’m willing to bet all three titles performed just as poorly, which probably says a lot about the hardcore community.
I’m also crossing my fingers and hoping you mention Haruhi at some point.
As a matter of fact, SoulTaker performed much better than the other two in it’s early days as far as I know.
Why would I mention Haruhi? It sold extremely well, didn’t it? The series cost me 200 fucking dollars, so I KNOW it made money!
I can only rely on hearsay, but supposedly Haruhi wasn’t nearly the success Kadokawa thought it would be, at least compared to its online popularity. But I know what you mean about the cost– I faithfully bought all the special editions, so it’s probably the most I’ve ever spent on any anime aside from Kaleido Star.
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