If Gekiha is supposed to be our main character, he is dreadfully boring. He has no grand ambitions. He accepts the first confession that comes his way. His girlfriend cooks up homemade meals for him, but his reactions are mild at best. When she asks him what movies he wants to watch for their upcoming date, he has no answer. Gekiha would rather leave it up to her, because he’s fine with anything. It’s one thing to like vanilla. There’s a reason why it’s such a common ingredient: it’s damn delicious. But Gekiha doesn’t just have vanilla preferences; it seems like he has no preferences period. His sister thinks he’s about to be dumped if he doesn’t change his ways, and I bet she’s right. The only somewhat eyebrow-raising thing about Gekiha is that he’s really good at adding? Unfortunately, his boringness seems to be by design. The anime wants him to be boring, and I wonder why. We know this is a mecha anime, so he’ll eventually get to pilot one himself. Is the mecha going to make him cool? Is the mecha going to save his relationship?

The thing is, the Dandivine mecha isn’t exactly super duper interesting either. I don’t know much about mecha or mecha anime. I like some of the themes that mecha anime explores, but I don’t personally think giant, fighting robots are cool. I think they look silly, and I’d rather see two characters fight directly rather than by proxy through their hulkin’ machines. I say all of this as a caveat. When I say that the Dandivine mecha looks boring, you should take that opinion with a healthy dose of salt, because I don’t adore any mecha design! Nope, not even the Evas. They don’t offend me, but I’m not sitting here, thinking, “Oh my god, that is so cool! I can’t wait to buy a model kit and build one, blah blah blah!” Nope, not me. Never me. I’m not qualified to judge mecha… and yet I still think Dandivine looks rather plain. No wonder the toys aren’t selling.

But it’s not just the mecha itself that’s dull. The kaiju it battles is dull. Even worse, the battlefield is dull. This is not the first time this world has battled kaijus before. In fact, they already won the war. Gekiha’s uncle sealed away the big bad decades ago, so this is nothing new. When a trio of girls trick some toy designer into unsealing the evil, alerts start blaring as soon as the dinky-looking lizard shows up. Immediately, the entire city starts transforming. Buildings disappear underground where they’ll be safe. Instead, we have a manmade battleground for the mecha and the kaiju to do battle. This way, there won’t be any property damage nor will anyone lose their lives! That’s good! And it’s also painfully boring.

But as I think this, I can’t help but feel like I’m echoing the morally bankrupt boss man of a toy company. We see a business meeting in which he whines about how sales are down, because the country has seen too many gosh darn days of peace and quiet! No one’s buying his stupid toy mechas, because Dandivine hasn’t had to fight anything! Grr, wouldn’t it be nice if the big bad evil came back just so we could sell a few more toys? Could he have possibly worked with the big bad evil to help bring them back? The thought did honestly cross my mind…

More importantly, I started to think to myself, “Does me finding the battlefield boring put me on the same level as this guy?” After reflecting on this for a short moment, I have to conclude… not really? I mean, look, I’m watching an anime. It’s fiction. Fiction should allow us to explore scenarios we would never want to see in real life. And therein lies the guy’s problem: why isn’t he doing what every other toy manufacturer does? If you want your stupid, tacky toys to sell, just make a hype-ass anime to market it! But is this what Dandivine — the anime, not the robot in the story — is trying to do? ‘Cause if it is, where’s the hype-ass anime? Does it really think this boring season premiere will somehow convince us to buy any of the related merchandise?

Taken at face value, nothing is remarkable about the first episode. It’s full of boring characters, a boring robot, a boring kaiju, and a boring scenario. Nothing leaps out at me. But I can’t help but wonder what this is all for, because the writer can’t possibly be this plain and boring. Toshiki Inoue has had a long, storied career. Maybe he’s phoning it in, but I’d like to think he could put out something a little more interesting than we just got. As a result, I’m waiting for some twist to come along and juice this story up. You won’t get it in the first episode, though.