Despite fond memories of the original Votoms as military hard sci-fi that spanned from gritty realism on a futuristic battlefield to galactic conspiracies about super-soldiers, this shiny new prequel falls flat. The bad-ass hero Chirico is less stoic than effectively brain-dead and completely passive and the plot meanders around long-overused territory: the military brass keep sending Chirico and his misfit squad into ill-conceived suicide missions to test just how much of a super-soldier he really is.
While the retro-styled characters are inconsistently animated, the all-CG mecha are very well-done - making it all the more of a shame that very little is done with them. Most fight scenes come across as amateurish staging of WWII movies with giant robots.
A well-worn and aimless plot combined with suspense-less combat adds up to a terrible spin-off that arrived too late to ride on the success of a classic franchise. Recommended only to the most die-hard Votoms fans who will be happy just seeing the mecha animated with modern CG.
based on episodes 1-4 : ANN : Wikipedia
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