ZETMAN - Episode 2

A new rivalry literally emerges from the fire!

Random timeskip is random. Aside from that, I'd say this episode was better than the first. Although information about ZET and APLHAS (e.g. Jin and Kōga, respectively) still hasn't been revealed, it's easy to see that they're more or less going to become rivals in the future. The premise of "former friends become enemies/rivals" is not uncommon so it'll be interesting to see how ZETMAN manages to execute this type of story. This episode also provided quite a bit of character development for both the two aforementioned characters.

While both Jin and Kōga are working towards a common goal, their different backgrounds are essentially what cause them to have conflicting ideas and thoughts. While Kōga was brought up by extremely wealthy parents (with his arrogant father ordering him to shun the poor), Jin literally had no family since his grandfather died during a unexpected raid of their hometown and he never even got to know his parents. Thus, it's not surprising that the two have different ideals when it comes to "doing good" or "justice". Trapped between the conflicts of the two men is poor Konoha - Jin's admirer and Kōga's little sister. Throughout the rest of the series, I'm predicting that she'll have a tough time deciding which side she wants to support, given that the two men actually end up fighting each other.

The cliffhanger at the end was actually placed exceptionally well. While it's not certain that Akemi was killed, I'm going to be optimistic and say that the sound that came out of the gun when it was fired made it seem like it was more like a tranquilizer. Because of this turn of events, Jin will probably be furious with the Amagi family since Akemi was the only motherly figure he had throughout the majority of his life. Further guessing leads me to believe that this is the start of the rivalry between him and Kōga. While I haven't read the manga, I heard that the anime is more or less different from it thus far. Nonetheless, I find comparing the two will just make it harder to enjoy the series, especially if the anime is supposedly inferior to the manga. With that being said, I'll be looking forward to next week's episode.

Last week, I forgot the song analysis so this week's review will have both the OP and ED.
OP: An interesting attempt at what I would consider J-Trance/J-Synth. I personally don't really like it but it does kind of fit into the theme of the show.
ED: First thing I noticed was how surprisingly non-Engrishy the English was. Other than that, this is your average J-Pop song. The lyrics (it's a love song, as far as I can tell), however, don't match with the atmosphere of the show. Possibly if it were being sung from Konoha's point of view but, still, it doesn't mesh with the series, in my opinion.