Suisei no Gargantia
Alternate Titles: Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet
Plot:
(Source for some plot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gargantia_on_the_Verdurous_Planet)
Humans have left Earth and have made a paradise in space, Avalon, as humanity’s new home and created the Galactic Alliance of Humanity to expand their journey through it. A threat known as Hideauze appeared before the Alliance and a war rages between them. Ensign Ledo and his AI robot partner, Chamber join the latest attack against the Hideauze. The attack ultimately ends in failure and a retreat order is issued, but Ledo is unable to return and is cast out into space. 6 months later, the salvage ship Gargantia retrieves Chamber from bottom of the ocean, but are unable to take it apart. After everyone leaves, Ledo decides to take a look around and gather Intel on where he is, but is soon chased and kidnaps one of the crew, Amy. He is chased outside and finds out he is on a habitable planet, which shocks him enough to release Amy. The crew pins him on a pylon, and he calls Chamber, which the entire crew is surprised to see moving and floating.
Deciding to try and open a dialogue with these people, Ledo stays pinned to the pylon. He asked the crew to talk to the Alliance in charge, but the crew have no idea what he is talking about and they believe that Chamber, who is translating, has another person inside. As Ridget, the commander, and the crew try to decide what to do, Amy gives Ledo food and begins talking. She explains that this is Earth, and when it was frozen over, some humans escaped to the stars while others stayed. Eventually, the ice melted and became a vast ocean, in which many people form fleets to salvage old technology from below. Looking for other items of advanced technology, Ridget sends Bellows to the point where Chamber and Ledo were found, and Bellows’ ship is attacked by pirates. Amy asks Ledo to help them, and he agrees with the intention of earning their trust. Ledo boards Chamber and efficiently eliminated all enemies with no harm to Bellows’ ship and crew, as Amy and the others watch in shock at its destructive power.
Review:
This anime basically had a great start. It did everything right. The pacing was good. We had a nice space battle. The planet, situation and characters on Earth were interesting. Then, we got into episodes 4-6.
It was interesting that Ledo really couldn’t communicate with the people on the planet at first and so the ship had to translate. I was wondering how they would handle his lack of language skills throughout the show but this point turned out to be unimportant because technology conquered this problem and it wasn’t a focus at all in the storyline.
Episode 4 was a really boring uneventful episode, I’ve heard some people digging for the deeper meaning of “finding you place in society” and whatnot but there had to be a better way to execute this. Regardless, this was a forgotten episode that didn’t contribute anything lasting to the storyline moving forward.
Episode 5 was basically a beach episode that even had Ledo being pursued by transvestite men
Episode 6 was a fan service filled festival episode, titled “Festival”.
In episode 9 we got the half an episode info dump that essentially explains the entire shows story and serves to quickly make up the ground that the show had lost whilst fiddling around with the daily happenings of the Gargantia.
Basically, I don’t want to spoil too much but this is a show about the Earth becoming uninhabitable and humankind splitting into two factions over the best way to survive the coming Ice Age.
Biggest problem with the story, besides the bad execution was the ending. It went so fast in the last 3 episodes that I had to rewatch one of them and then read a summary to make sure I didn’t miss something important. But no, it just went fast. The shows first 9 episodes felt like 10 manga chapters and then the last 4 episodes felt like 15 manga chapters. That’s how unbalanced I felt the pacing was.
Didn’t appreciate the loose ends regarding the space war. They really just let that go unresolved. Despite it not being a primary focus of the series, I wanted to see more.
The Mecha battling really was only about 20 total minutes in the entire 13 episodes. Don’t expect much.
Characters:
This show had some good characters.
Ledo is an interesting thoughtful character that is driven by his military duty but is still willing to think for himself. It’s also nice to see him sort of evolve and adapt to his new living environment, including his slowly learning the Earther’s spoken language.
Amy was a little annoying but she was cute and helped to add some LIGHT romance elements to the show. By the end she was starting to get annoying though.
The other characters were all pretty likeable.
high ranking Gargantia officer Ridget
Bellows the excavation team leader
Pinion the head of the repair team
Didn’t think LEDO or AMY got enough backstory.
Animation and Art Style and music:
I loved the way the anime looked. It had a normal level of animation but the character designs agreed with me and I liked the bright vibrant coloration that the show generally had.
The opening and closing to the series were nice and the music in the show, while not especially memorable served to supplement the scenes without being obtuse.
Pros and Cons:
+ The show got off to a start and effective start making it IMHO one of the best shows after the first month of the Spring 2013 season.
+ The art style and visual appeal of the show is quite nice.
+ Most of the characters
+ I liked the atmosphere of the Gargantia
– The shows pacing problems, wasted episodes and info dump plotline really hurt the shows delivery down the stretch.
– The lack of background on Ledo and AMY left me wanting more.
– Would have liked more information about the war in space
[starrater]