February 10, 2005:

Jinki:Extend keeps getting better and better, mostly due to the fact that Aoba, its 13-year-old mecha-pilot lead character, is boundlessly charismatic. Voiced by the ever-talented Fumiko Orikasa, Aoba is a fairly standard character from the teenage-mecha-pilot-with-a-shitty-life idiom, but is done so uncommonly well that she easily (and quite obviously) carries the rest of the show.

Genta, Aoba, and Ryohei

This is good, because the male lead in Jinki:Extend is quite the jackass, and a sandals-and-parachute-pants-wearing doofus to boot, who really needs to be punched in the mouth each time he says "Ahobaka."

I'm also hoping for good things in the coming episodes. From the manga, it seems Jinki:Extend is not quite what it appears, and should take the plot in all sorts of twisted directions. There are some hints of that already; the story jumps from the 1988 Venezuela arc to the 1991 Japan arc regularly with few clues to fill in the missing years.

January 29, 2006: Jinki:Extend revisited.

Joining the list of likable characters who really need to be on better shows is the fetching Aoba from Jinki:Extend.

Aoba

I had high hopes for Jinki:Extend, but it painfully failed to live up to its potential. So many problems. Where to begin? For one, I found most of the other characters besides Aoba unlikable. Akao in particular annoyed the Hell out of me. Shiba was okay, but she barely had any decent screentime, either.

Exasperatingly, Aoba was also woefully absent for far too much of the series as the plot jumped among various stories and timelines. When you have a character as charismatic as Aoba, it's probably in your best interest to actually keep her in the show, eh.

I really didn't like the many contrivances. For example, the obligatory training episode with its Tiny Heart Syndrome crisis really could have been handled better—especially if you consider Aoba's escape in the first episode.

I also could have done without the very out-of-place pseudo-moe-lesbian service. It was really unnecessary and blatantly gratuitous.

Jinki:Extend sponsor eyecatch.

I rather wanted to like Jinki:Extend. It's not all bad. The OP's and ED's nods to classic giant robot anime series were nice touches. Aoba is great, but never had a chance at carrying this show alone. The sponsor-message eyecatch is also great if only for spawning a lot of parodies. (E.g., Galaxy Angel and Gundam SEED Destiny.)