Tentacle-Free Anime: "Kirameki Project" (2005)Hello again, everyone! I sincerely apologize for this review being super late. Summer has been a bit of a drag but hopefully things will start looking up. Sort of like the series I'm about to take a look at, it's been just about everything at once. So let's jet back to the early-mid aughts and check in on a little known sucker, Kirameki Project.
Kirameki Project is truly a wonder to behold, and probably a series very few people have actually heard about. This series attempts to shove in everything but the kitchen sink, and for all I know there's a sink thrown around in this show because there is just so much going on. The lead character, Kana is your silent nearly emotionless type who seems rather uninteresting compared to those around her. She has a ditzy android sidekick. She builds a giant robot that looks like a lolita cosplayer. There's giant robot fighting. A Voltron reference. A Big O reference. Magical boys with full transformation scenes. And the youngest princess is a superhero with a suit that gives her flight and super strength at the cost of being sexual eye candy for those watching at home.
The series primarily focuses on a team of four soft-hearted fully grown men who pilot a robot called the Big Mighty (which, I swear to God, is in both name and appearance a Big O reference if you've ever seen that anime) and have been hired to go around the very countries and defeat their best robots. Only in the fictional country of Genes to they meet opposition that is able to hold back their attacks indefinitely. Kana, the second born princess to Genes is a technology prodigy and has created some truly unique robots to help her with everyday life. 
Kana is determined
It's the clash of these titans that makes up the core conflict of the series and everything else happens because of it. The comedy of the series – and this is definitely a heavily comedic series – feels more slapstick than clever but that doesn't stop the jokes from feeling like a good time. I did find myself laughing quite a bit while watching this show. The ecchi in the series is another thing. Generally ecchi qualities to shows is not something that bothers me too much. Here it didn't either whereas I was more baffled by the fact that it was in the show at all. But like we discussed this show is all about cramming in as many anime genre tropes as possible, the ecchi qualities were just the ones that interestingly enough felt the most out of place. 
Magical boys are the last line of defense
For the story, it's alright overall. I find that to be the most impressive part of Kirameki Project as throwing in so many genre tropes and refusing to tie together why they all exist simultaneously and instead having them simply exist together is no easy feat to pull off. In fact, this is precisely something that has failed miserably in the past and it takes a deft hand to balance this kind of thing. Other shows have definitely done it better, and KP is not among the first to try, but what we ended up with it something that I've said earlier hold a lot of potential it's just never allowed to fully realize that. I liked this show. Kirameki Project is not a series I can easily recommend, and ultimately it's probably better let to obscurity as it's just not good enough to transcend the media its poking fun at, but there's something there that is at least worth the curiosity if you have any. 
The animation quality is, shall we say, pretty standard for mid-20s low budget anime where everything just seems oddly polished where it's still that fine balance between cell animation and 3D animation and you can really tell the stark differences. The 3D in particular is better than one might expect for this show, but it's not award winning by any means. Overall the series looks quite generic aesthetically so even if you're not enjoying the story the visuals don't really have much to offer either. If you have any curiosity for this show then by all means check it out. If not, well, you're not missing much. There are far better series out there that do Kirameki's job better than Kirameki does it. As for my personal experience, I thought it was alright. Nothing too special, but also nothing mind-numbing. If anything, I'm simply more impressed with how much I didn't hate it than how much I enjoyed it. And given how things could've played out, that truly says something interesting about this show. Final Score: 2.5 Giant Fighting Lolita-bots out of 5 That's not many Lolita-bots! Think it deserves more? Let us know in the comments! 
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