Setting
In a distant world, there exist two races: The humans, and the Eden Raiden (let's ignore incorrect translations from ignorant fansubs who doesn?t know history). While humans live their normal daily lives as we know it, Eden Raiden (only woman, nobody ever witnessed one being born) have a unique characteristic: They have a crystal, called Erementar Gerad (something like Elemental Gemstone), which gives them unimaginable power. To add to their powers, if they fuse with a human body of their choice, making a pact, they become a powerful live weapon as long as they are together.
Preview
In a world with giant flying stones (the usual leviathans), most of the action takes place at the sky. Huge flying cities, planes or spacecraft fly and interact. Among them, obviously, there are pirates. Enter Coud Van Gerard, an pirate apprentice, who while checking on the group's latest loot, he finds some sort of sarcophagus, in which lies asleep a beautiful Eden Raiden named Ren. To his great astonishment, as she awakens, she promptly proclaims: 'I hate humans'.
Eden Raidens are pursued by mankind: they want their powers, they want to fuse with them and thus use their 'military' capacity. Thus, naturally, Eden Raidens hate for humans is not unexpected. To try to prevent such vile actions from the humans, a great organization named Arc Aile (which is an archaic form of 'Arc aides' ... here comes more incorrect translations you can be sure) tries to gather and protect all Eden Raidens. As a crew of Arc Aile board the pirate ship searching for Ren, powerful unknowns attack them both and a huge battle ensues: Turns out that Ren is not just 'some' Eden Raiden, but she is also know as 'Shichikohoujo', the mythical most powerful Eden Raiden in existence, and everyone, everywhere, wants to take her ... even, perhaps, Arc Aile.
Now, Coud wants to protect Ren while helping her to get to the place of her dreams, the Eden Garden, where, legend says, all Eden Raiden can live peacefully without being used (literally).
Pacing
Erementar Gerad is a little alternative title. Although the focus is at Coud, Ren and the 3 Arc Aile who ends up getting together to help them on their quest for the Eden Garden, it also focuses a lot on human philosophy and interesting dilemmas while approaching the whole Eden Raiden vs Human issue. Some treat them as objects, mere tools, while others like Goddess. And we can see a lot of myths and misconceptions being created on that.
The main focus nevertheless is the relationship between Ren and Coud, which takes place from start to end and is beautifully portrayed and nicely developed. You will see a character that hates humans falling in love, slowly but with realism, for a human.
With some small development on the secondary characters, some continuity errors actually get in the way of a nice flow for the title. The soundtrack is nothing to be remembered by but fit in, and the visual impact will probably be more present, specially the interesting 'ethereal' effect that the Eden Raids have while merged with a human.
Conclusion
A quite pleasant title and, in depth, with some interesting romance and social dilemmas. Although it's sometimes slow paced and suddenly fast paced, facing some continuity gaps, and some times you have to just pause and think so you can understand what just happened, Erementar Gerad will most certainly please the romance enthusiasts and also those who can sympathize with the characters, who are here nicely developed at a believable and realistic pace.
This title might have it's issues, but for those who get it and worry about what is being shown and not HOW it's being presented, this is a nice call.
I would like to add a fair warning about Shinsen Subs, who fast subbed episodes 23-on ... just don't get it, they ruin the naming conventions with no mercy and are filled with spelling mistakes. That's what happens when a good fansub tries to fastsub just to get the fame of finishing a famous title they neglected earlier.
