I read the reviews on this site and based off of those reviews I bought the series. The series itself has mahor flaws in ir. these include a boring and extremely cold main character, for which you never really warm up to, a lack luster and out right boring plot and less than steller combat scenes as well patheric enemies. The one good part was that the voiceacting was spot on and the other characters were thankfully far more interesting.

Despite the the fact that STR.A.IN is only 2 discs long, it’s really quite good. After the first 3 or so episodes I felt a certain level of comfort watching it because some of the story elements and chararacter personalities resemble that of 2 of my all time favorite anime, Xenosaga and Gundam Wing.

A previous reviewer said this series is boring, that the main character is unlikeable, and the battle scenes are terrible. Not So! The character interaction is really great and believable. The story is familiar yet (fairly) original, and the animation is really just gorgeous. I personally thought the battle scenes were quite good and exciting. I found it almost impossible to stop watching. There’s a good mix of humor to offset the extreme drama also.

STR.A.IN.’s rating (TV-MA at Netflix) is justified. There’s definitely unapologetic fanservice, especially in the last episode on disc 1, and there’s a fair amount of language and blood. However, it is not excessive. Long story short, STR.A.IN is not for kids. If you are a dub fan, the voice overs are fantastic . I would say with confidence this is a must see, even if you aren’t really a fan of space dramas.

If you’re a fan of series like Kiddy Grade or Simoun here’s another decent but somewhat bland series to go with those, the series follows personal story-arcs like what most anime fans would expect. You have a young female pilot who idolizes her older brother another experienced mech pilot who she hopes to join up and fight with one day, but through a personal calamity her brother turns his back on the people and government he pledged his loyalty to and now intends to destroy that which he once protected going so far as killing his own friends and family. Now the younger sister ventures out into space to find out the reason for her brother’s betrayal as well as having to keep her true identity a secret since her brother is of course known throughout the galaxy as being a traitor to his people. The series will have the usual main female character being stoic to her fellow crew members for fear of them finding out her true identity as well as the fear of gaining friends only to loose them again, The series luckily while having some fan-service but not to much and a touch of romance(Both with a male and a stalker female crew member) but again nothing to r-rated for anyone to truly worry about. The series is a little short and the story somewhat confusing as you’ll seem more interested in what happens to the brother/sister story-line of the series than anything else, though the series gives a somewhat decent ending it still leaves a lot unanswered as well so it’s a little mixed bag of acceptance and annoyance at the end of the series. The animation is very well done and the voice cast as expected from Funimation is great as both the Japanese/English cast did their roles extremely well, the extras are a little so so as you’ll get the standard textless intro/ending songs, some commentaries, and of course trailers. So if you like sci-fi mecha anime series here’s one to check out but don’t expect it to be anything like Gundam Wing or Gundam Seed…