Cross Ange

About

Cross Ange is a mecha action comedy anime produced by Studio Sunrise about a princess named Angelise. In its premiere in October 2014 the show got popularity for it’s over the top take on the mecha genre and it’s heavy use of fanservice.

Premise

The story is set in the Misurugi Empire where Ange gets exposed for being a Norma, a group which is hated by the people in the city as people are loved with mana. She has to go to Arzenal and fight her way through DRAGONs and get revenge on her brother who sent her away and exposed her as well as killing her parents through her Paramail mecha and it’s special abilities for combat.

History

Cross Ange started as an anime series in October 2014 directed by Yoshiharu Ashino and produced by Mitsu Fukudora. Both had worked on Gundam and Code Geass in the past. The show obtained a spin off manga that’s a self parody of the show and a video game from the same name.

Reception

Critics generally gave it acclaim once it got released with Kotaku^[1] stated that the first episodes are bad but it gets very enjoyable and is a good show afterwards. IMDb also gave the show a 7.1 after the show ended and AnimeNewsNetwork stating that the show is good but not for everyone.

Online Presence

In North America, Cross Ange was licensed by Sentai Filmworks and was streamed by Crunchyroll and Hulu when the show came out. It has gained a large following on many sites such as Tumblr,^[2]Reddit,^[3]4chan’s /a/ board,^[4] MyAnimeList, and DeviantArt.

Fandom

Cross Ange has created a large volume of fanfictions and fanart on the internet. On Pixiv^[5] there was over 1,00 results that are tagged with “クロスアンジュ”. On Fanfiction.net there are over 30 short stories. On Cross Ange there are over 1,200 results tagged under “Cross Ange”.

Rape Scene Controversy

In the first episode of Cross Ange a controversy erupted over the last part of the episode with a rape scene shown. The DailyDot reported about the scene and the controversy where Ange is falsely imprisoned and sexually assaulted in the form of a body cavity search. Four people out of five reviewers on AnimeNewsNetwork stated that the way it was animated showed that it was suppose to be titillating and that it was wrong ^[6]. However some people argued that it severed as a narrative feature and that “body cavity searches are quite common in prison”. From the people who wrote the article it was also stated to create “echoes of GamerGate”.