Soul Link

Information of Anime

Aizawa Ryota is a student of the Central Military Academy & assigned to go to a space station called Aries with some of his classmates which include Nagase Saka & Nittak Kazuhiko.  However, a terrorist group named Hallarax invades the space station.

Soul Link is based on the ero-game of the same name by Navel.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I have seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

When Aries was under attack, the military sent the citizens & some of the students out of the station.  However, some of the students refuse to leave & some of the citizens missed the escape pods.  At the start, the terrorist never made any demands.  It was only until a spy within the military named Cellaria Markelight revealed herself & stated what her plans were.  It was to create a new race using Skylla cells which she can control people with.  In order to create it, she is determined to crash Aries into the Earth using nukes.  Because of her views, some of the Hallarax members chose not to take part in this plan & Cellaria decides to kill them.  A young girl named Nanami Inatsuki seems to have the key to destroying these cells.

In the story, there are a handful of flashbacks on most of the characters.  It goes from their childhood years to the point where they made a turn in their life.  It appears a lot actually.  Also, there are a few moments where people are reunited with one another.

As the crew prepare to escape out of Aries, Nao Morisaki leaves the crew since she can't leave her lover Shuhei Aizawa.  In the meantime, Nanami saves Shuhei by killing Cellaria with her special cells.  As the 3 are reunited, the other crew members manage to escape & watches Aries burn into the Earth's atomsphere.

The story fast forwards into a year later & shows what the characters are now doing.  We see the reason why the Earth didn't suffer from any nuke attacks as we learn that Nao, Nanami, & Shuhei managed to escape & disable the nukes.  At the end, Ryota & Sayaka Nagase receive a letter from the trio whom they thought were dead. 

My Personal Review

Soul Link doesn't seem to have a lot of impact in my view.  The show seems to be there for the fan popularity & money.  Although there are a lot of characters in here, it doesn't help much.  The show does have some minor nudity in it, but it's pretty much targeted to the young teens.

Animation

The character designs are very inconsistent.  It looks good at times & then it can look very bad.  Aside from having long thin limbs, the faces get distorted a lot.  It's really terrible.  Also, the faces for all males & females seems to be exactly a like.  Big eyes & long faces.

The backgrounds aren't too bad.  But it's on the plain side.  However, you can't expect much on space station walls.  Colourwise, it's not too bad even though it's dull.  There's hardly any clashing between the character & backgrounds from the toning.

The animation movements isn't too bad.  It's pretty much the same as lot of anime shows out there.  The movement isn't too choppy & the distance covered from running doesn't seem to be a lot.

Sound

The sound effects aren't bad.  Sometimes, it's a bit on the fuzzy side.  A lot of the sounds are on the realistic side.

The seiyuus here aren't great.  The female voices are high pitched & can be annoying.  It's like the stereotype you hear about anime Japanese voices from anti-anime fans.  Even Ryota's voice is pretty high voiced  & seems to makes his character look weak.  It almost want to make me stop watching this show.

The music isn't great.  It doesn't create a mood well & seem to be on the orchestra style.  It tries to create some impact, but the sounds are on the mono side.

Story

Although there is one main plot line which is to stop the terrorist from sending Aries to the Earth, there are a lot of different sub-storylines.  And those sub-storylines are a mess.  The anime doesn't go in depth with them & seem to have a lot of holes.  You would feel unsatisfied with the outcomes, even though it appears in bits later in the show.  I think the reason for this is because the show is trying to get the most out of the original game's storyline paths with each girl. 

Because of the storyline, the characters seem to be incomplete.  The way the storyline is written, you don't get a full understanding of them.  Not only that, the story suffers with a lot of holes as the show is rushed.  For example, Shinji changing sides very quickly without knowing much about his past background seems to been rushed.  It would have been nicer to see him stay on the terrorist's side & learn more about him.  And Shuhei having Skylla cells isn't explained much as well as Nanami having cells that kills the Skylla cells.

The ending where we see the crew a year later takes up half of episode 13 & tries to fill a lot of the holes in the story.  Most of it is filling the incident where they escape & what happened to Nanami, Nao, & Shuhei.  I really don't think this show is done too well with that many holes.  Although the ending was ok, the writer should have taken more time to fix the story.  I won't mind if they would have sacrificed the ending to do it.  I would prefer having a better understanding of the characters.

Also, the characters either develop too fast or not at all.  It really seems like we are missing something to see how that development occurred.  Also, having a recap episode that is two episodes away from the ending was really a mystery on why the writers did that.  Personally, having a recap episode for a 12 - 13 episode show is really a waste.

Overall Conclusion

Soul Link is pretty disappointing for me.  I felt the story had a lot of potential, but the way the writers did it seems to made this anime very messy.  Although the ending was ok, it still left too many mysteries in the end.

Soul Link receives a six out of ten.  The show is pretty messed up with a sub-plots that covers the character's backgrounds.  Luckily, the show focuses on the main plot, but the sub-plots are really bothering me since they feel incomplete.  They either had too many holes or left unsolved in the end.  Plus, the characters don't seem to be likeable.  I felt very empty at the end even though the ending was ok.

Last updated on January 16, 2008