Anime: Suisei no Gargantia 5c5d6e

Review
It's been a while since I've watched a show and had mostly good things to say about it. Suisei no Gargantia (Gargantia) is a nice refresher to anyone, like myself, who was tired of the recent overabuse of typical shounen elements and the focus on impact rather than anything else. However, take note that Gargantia is far from being a masterpiece, as many small issues plague the show from the first episode to the last in this different scy-fy attempt by Production I.G.

Gargantia's tale is about a distant future where mankind have left Earth behind and met a terrible foe in space, the "Hideous". These squid-like creatures proved to be the greatest threat to humans, and to face them society changed into what seems creating and crafting humans from birth to fight and destroy. The protagonist, Ledo, is one of such created soldiers. A young lieutenant in a eternal fight for survival in space.

During a fight against the Hideous, Ledo is sucked by a dark void and is separated from the Human Galactic Alliance. He wakes up six months later in a world filled with water and inhabited by primitive humans. From there on, Ledo must undestand these people, the land he is in, and search for a way to return to their fellow soldiers or at least communicate with them.

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1. Interesting idea
   As it happens, Ledo is in fact on Earth and the primitive humans are survivors that lingered on our homeplanet after the rest of mankind fled to space. Throwing Ledo and his mecha, Chamber, into a world where technology is roughly equivalent to a World War I proves to be a very interesting idea. This concept of "high-tech man meets medieval world" is, in fact, one of the tales that I've wanted to see the most, but sadly never found a truly marvelous piece about it.
   
   Nice plotline
   At first, Gargantia makes a good impression. You have an episode that demonstrate the vast difference between the technology the primitive humans have and that of Chamber's. Ledo and his mecha would be like gods in such place, especially because it seems fuel is not a problem for the robot or its laser-based weapons. However, from this start we have two mandatory lame episodes with the beach and festival themes, which makes the initial impact lose a bit of its power.
   
   Fortunately, the show doesn't linger on the ecchiness and naked bodies of the girls. It gets back on trail and move swiftly to its conclusion. You have a few revelations as the plot moves. Ledo's struggle to find his place in this society promotes nice slice-of-life events. The silly romance is left to the sidelines and only used as a fuel to the cast's motivation and not as a pivotal point of the tale, which is a huge plus. In general, one could say Gargantia has the right amount of elements for the right amount of episodes, but that doesn't mean it does it marvelously.
   
   Shallow cast
   Unlike the plot, Gargantia's cast is quite weak by itself. The protagonist may develop and grow in charisma, but he is basically the only one to do that. The girls, designed by an hentai artist, are cute enough, with shiny elbows and knees (wha?), but they remain basically the same as they start, which means cute girls of a varied type. The genki one, the silent captain, the angry with tsundere all over her face, etc. But don't fret, while their concepts are basically this, they don't act to grow on such things. The shallow cast is also ed by a few male guys like the thug-like who cares only for money, some old geezers, etc.
   
   One thing to notice though, is that in Gargantia the adults don't look like the stupid and selfish people most shounens make them look. That alone is enough for me to like the cast these days, but that doesn't make it less shallow.
   
   A few incosistencies
   Making scy-fy shows with mixed elements of past and future is kinda of hard it seems. It's not unusual to see many failures when it comes to technology uses. Gargantia doesn't escape that and you'll see lots of small issues when it comes to Ledo and Chamber. For example, Chamber manage to scan only with Ledo's help at first, but later he can do it even underwater. At moments Chamber seems like a virtual interface uncapable of taking decisions, but suddenly he starts taking decisions. At first Chamber seems capable of destroying everything in the blink of an eye, and a moment later he already struggles with a few enemies. None of these issues are huge, none compromise the plot or anything else, but they are there nonetheless and can prove to be a bit annoying for those who care for such things.
   

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Comments
I was skeptical at first, especially after learning that it had an hentai character designer and the hand of the overhyped Urobochi. But as I said, Gargantia was a refresher. It's a shounen, but one that has very little of lolis, panties, ecchiness, and whatsoever. It's short, direct, never tries to be convoluted. It's fun. It has awesome production values as expected of a studio such as Production I.G, with cute girls, nice mechas, and fluid animation. A friend called it "bikini-fest" but that is not entirely true. There's only two fanservice-exclusive episodes, and the character design with lots of skin showing at least makes sense in a word of sea and sun.

It's hard to find this kind of show these days. Most of them are plagued by japanese school-comedy, confusing and unprepared plotlines, lolis, ecchiness, soft-porn, or terrible fillers and wasted screentime. So, while not a masterpiece, Gargantia is certainly a good show to watch.

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet : Macross meets Waterworld, but with less Kevin Costner in it (thank goodness).

As a longtime fan of science fiction and fantasy, the prolific story of the time traveller or alien from a high society finding himself in the past or on a less advanced society and having to adapt or overcome the local inhabitants is one I am well acquainted with already. So when this trope decided to take a leap into the anime medium, the particulars of it didn't come as much of a surprise, even if this time the character it happened to was not so much Ash Williams and more Sousuke Sagara and the plot and characters have a distinct Japanese bent to them.

Yet another brainchild of the now rather prolific writer Gen Urobochi (whom I personally consider to be diet-brand Mohiroh Kitoh at best), Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet (“Verdurous” meaning “has lots of shrubberies in it”) or Shusei no Gargantia in its original moonspeak, is a 2013 spring anime animated by Production I.G. Based on an original story, Urobochi has in interviews explained that this story is him in “happy” mode and supposed to “inspire hope” when compared to his earlier Fate/Zero, Puella Magica Madoka and Psycho-, which by comparison are about as extreme as an average Fist of the North Star episode and therefore very dark and edgy by today's standards (I lived through the eighties! Your “dark and dramatic” does not frighten me!).

How well is Gargantia as a lovely little happy tale of drama and stuck in a strange land? Well, read on if you're interested. Or just look at the final score to the right and then complain at me in the comments. Either works.

Animation and Visuals: 8/10 –– Lovely scenery and battle animation, slightly generic characters.

The opening scene of Gargantiais a wonderful sci-fi battle that is as confusing as it is brightly coloured, fast-paced, and distinctively good-looking with robots and alien squid fighting each other in a visual feast.

After expecting the show to have blown all its money on that explosionfest it was therefore a positive surprise to learn the show had more than that up its sleeve in the graphics department: Gargantialooks positively lovely in its worldbuilding and backgrounds department, from the titular ship itself to the ocean shots and the underwater scenes. The colours are impressively rich and the animation rock-solid.

My main gripe with Gargantiais the somewhat generic character design: Although it serves for making practically every character you're supposed to memorable and not mistakable for anyone else, the generic 'cuteness' is strong in this show and there's not much variance in facial structure. I also consider making all the “cuter” characters automatically the most morally pure, right and innocent a blatant emotive-manipulative statement.

Audio: 6/10 –– Good voices. Meh but workable music.

Audio is perhaps one of Gargantia's less inspiring and memorable pieces, which considering it still does above-average in it means it's still solid. The soundtrack is not unlike that of any modern Hollywood feature film in its use of dramatic pomp and violins, and the voice acting is decently provided by a staple of voice actors where the only voice job I can reliably identify is Katsuyuki “Kamina” Konishi as jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold mechanic Pinion and Tomokazu Seki attempting a Takehito Koyasu impression as Ledo's AI partner Chamber. Without excelling in any particular way (I won't be hunting for this soundtrack on CD any time soon), the work is suitable and I can live with handing out a decent grade for the whole shebang.

Story: 6/10 –– “All right you primitive screwheads, listen up. See this? This... Is my BOOMSTICK! It's a twelve gauge double barrelled Remington, S-Mart's top-of-the-line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop Smart. Shop S-Mart. YA GOT THAT!?”

Mmmmm... Bruce Campbell's pecs... Oh, right, review. Where was I? Story, that was it. As I already hinted at in my opening statement, Gargantia is a tale of Ledo, a member of an organization called Grand Galactic Alliance whose society and circumstances comes right out of Robert Henlein's Starship Troopers. After a battle against the Alliance's hated foe, the squid-like Hideauze, goes horribly wrong Ledo is caught in a Swirly Space Thingy and sent hurling through space. He wakes up six months later aboard the Gargantia, a giant city-sized ship in a primitive human society on a planet untouched by the Alliance or its war. In this new environment, Ledo only has his sidearm, his space suit and his highly advanced and intelligent combat mecha called Chamber for company, and over 13 episodes we follow him as he has to adapt to life on the strange planet (which to the surprise of absolutely nobody turns out to be humanity's “lost” birthplace, Earth), aided by local ray of sunshine and about-as-subtle-as-a-brick-to-the-face love interest Amy.

Gargantia cannot claim to get any particular brownie points for originality in its storytelling: As a classical (Joseph) Campbell's heroes journey (which does not involve The Chin in any way, sadly), Ledo starts out in a familiar environs, gets a call to adventure through Space Thingy, goes through the trials and temptations of living life in Gargantia's society, encounters a terrible revelation that reinvents his character and faces off against a foe that his character development has brought him into conflict with. Although the story hooks are decently told, they're not always particularly engaging and a lot of time near the middle is spent on trivialties that I would call “world building” if I honestly felt it had been written more proficiently: As it is, I most of it seems a bit ham-fisted (say what you want about Urobochi, but he's no Nahoko Uehashi in ability to make everyday life feel alive and engaging).

After a spot of slow pacing, coming to a head in episode 7, the story finally decides it wants to move on and go into drama territory again. At which point the obligatory dramatic revelation it unleashes upon us turns out to be a classic twist of the sort that, to put it simply, lacks some of the gravitas of similar twists such as, say, Planet of the Apes. Worse than that is that said twist feels like it has very little bearing on the plot itself and the world, and all the difference it makes is pretty much to make the protagonist question himself.

And there we come somewhat to the crux of the issue: The entire story feels somewhat like it exists entirely for the sake of Ledo and his development. I cannot help but feel a sense of lack of perspective in building this entire narrative. Sure, there are things going on outside of Ledo's perspective and I cannot deny that, but ultimately I still feel like with such a vibrant and rich world to explore the personalised nature of the final stretch is kind of disappointing: The seeming lack of context for much of the outside world, apart from on some other named characters, feels like such a wasteful, singular focus. Even during the final epic battle, the narrative feels like it's unduly focusing on Ledo's mental condition rather than the context of what this battle means for the sake of the world. And especially since you know all this epic space opera war is happening in the background, but is of no consequence any longer. It's like if someone decided to put the plot of FLCL inside an arc of Legend of Galactic Heroes... Or just the plot of FLCL, period (oh, right. Spoiler warning for the plot of FLCL), minus the mind-altering drugs and symbolic genitals.

Characters: 6/10 –– They may not be the greatest of characters or the most rational of actors, but they're at least *believable*.

Despite its focus on its main character, Gargantiadoes have a pretty fair character gallery, most of whom get sufficient time to showcase some of their personality, background and hopes and ideals. Even if, in the end, they're ing cast, most of them are well-fleshed out that you feel with them as human beings and you understand the choices they do and the actions they take as a result of their personalities and their situation, even if they're not always agreeable or rational.

That said, some of the characters are bit stereotypical, and some side characters seem more introduced for novelty's sake than for having much purpose in the story, amongst them that lady pirate I didn't see much point in apart from being needless smug fanservice. For the most part, however, there is some decent character exploration and there's even a few non-Ledo character arcs...

The mention of character arcs, however, must bring forth the greatest black mark of this show, one I cannot overlook. Go look at the poster for Gargantia. No, go ahead, I'll be right here while you do it.

Back? Good. Notice the poster? Which characters are more prominent? Of the three (well, four if you want to be technical) characters in Gargantia that get character arcs, Amy, that girl on the left in the prominent centre position, is not one of them. Amy is a virtual non-entity, a cute perky little ball of sunshine who's obviously interested in Ledo and... That's it. Like every classical Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Amy has absolutely no character development and practically no existence in the show outside of her interactions with Ledo. We are talking about a main character who, really, has no character.

This comes in contrast to my favourite character in the show: Chamber, the AI in Ledo's giant robot. The contrast comes because Chamber is a character who by his own ission exists only to Ledo: He is Ledo's companion AI and is there to help his survival and development, and indeed spends most of the entire show doing just that... But even so, he has more plot-relevant interactions with other characters and has more individual development as a character than Amy does. The irony in that a character who's a satellite entity with no free will in-universe has more independent action than a character who's supposed to be a fully realised human being is one that underscores this issue.

Value: 6/10 –– That the “advanced civilization survivor stranded as fish on land in primitive society” plot hasn't been done that much in anime doesn't really help this.

As I've already intimated above, what originality and spirit Gargantia shows is mostly in the world design and the thought it has made into the society on the flooded earth, which I must it was somewhat interesting to watch as a novelty. Other than that, the plot is standard, the characters are fairly well-done but nothing original, and overall this anime isn't standout in much any other way apart from being one of the better-made shows of the 2013 summer.

If you liked Gargantia, I would probably suggest the older Fullmetal Panic!, a show about a career soldier with a giant robot who falls in love and has to integrate into civilian society. The setting brings to mind other post-apocalyptic shows like Nausicaa. If you're more into the space combat stuff, I would recommend the Macross series and (if you get desperate), Strain: Armoured Infantry. And, of course, Legend of Galactic Heroes and FLCL because, hey, why not.

Enjoyment: 7/10 –– A fair showing, but not without some noticeable flaws.

Despite it somewhat standing on formula, I find I enjoyed Gargantia well enough on a weekly basis. The characters were generally sympathetic or of the “like to dislike” type, such as jerks like Pinion, and the characters who get development generally do so in an organic fashion. The plot could have benefited from a boost in certain places in my opinion, there could be less “the cute person is always right”, music could have been more noticeable and Amy could have used being a character of her own instead of a flat archetype codependent on Ledo to actualise, but they led to less irritation than I'd expected.

Total: 6.5/10 –– It exists to, hopefully, guide the director to do greater things next time. Not that this time around was that bad.

When it comes down to it Gargantia does far more things 'right' than it does 'wrong, and where things go wrong it's mostly in minor hiccups than actual large let-downs. “Inoffensive” is a good word for this show: Above-average on most parts but not truly excelling anywhere except for in the world design and backgrounds. As for the story taking a more happy bent, I don't really mind, I just sort of wish they'd taken a slightly more creative route in getting there.

Urobochi said that this show is supposed to inspire hope. And where my 'hope' that the anime industry continues to provide me with worthwhile entertainment is concerned, Gargantia certainly is that. Even with the high expectations from its director and animation studio the end result swims more than it sinks, and in many ways that's as much as we could ask for.

Gargantia is the series that began to make people realize Gen Urobuchi is just a hack who makes up cool ideas, stuffs them with pretentious dialogues that he steals from books, and then doesn’t give a damn when it comes to making sense out of them, since he knows the average anime fan considers Naruto to be an amazing show. Anything more thematically complicating or violent than Naruto is instantly being labeled as a masterpiece (Akame Ga Kill, Tokyo Ghoul, Future Diary), so why would he bother?

Themes and splatter are not enough to mesmerize the masses though; they also need lots of pretty colors for making their minds to go blank, and to be unable to understand the bullshit they are watching. If the animation is bad, they would surely bitch about every little detail, but if it’s good they will magically not find anything bad to say about it (Kimi no Na Wa). Which stands true for this series as well, since it’s very well animated and has lots of cute girls (a contribution of a hentai character designer). That is enough for making your average anime fan to begin waifu wars instead of booing the endless nonsense in the story.

It’s not like there isn’t a story and you are just watching a plotless harem. If you analyze it at face value, lots of things are happening and are rich enough in content for writing a thousand essays about. Because if you don’t, you won’t have much to go on, besides saying how untapped the potential is or how nothing really makes any sense. Many will rush to defend Urobutchi by claiming he only wrote a few episodes and that the rest are another writer’s fault. Such excuses don’t make the final product any better and even prove how much of a lazy hack he is for not bothering to write full scripts anymore, since he sells by his name alone. After all, that is what most were saying about the show. It is a masterpiece because his name is mentioned briefly in the production team.

As always, the setting is very interesting (a combo of Xenogears meets Waterworld, populated by hentai people), and just like in all the stories Urobutcher writes, it is never developed in any way, since he spends all his time in making up plot twists full of shock effect, and in having the characters being mouthpieces who spit superficial philosophy every 3 minutes. Thus the whole concept of mankind in the far future being in war with space squids is just hanging there as background decoration, while the audience spends the whole show in watching cute girls doing cute things, and amoral monstrosities butchering people over ideologies which have no ground in reality.

And guess what; it was more than enough for the majority of anime fans to like this travesty of a show, since it was making them go OMG THAT IS MAKING ME THINK SOOOO MUCH ABOUT WHAT MAKES US HUMAN. Too bad you get no real insight to any of that, since nothing is elaborated or explored, and in many cases is even contradicted in order to confuse you and make you think it’s all 2deep4u. Examples of the above include:
- The society of mankind in space. You get this infodump in the first 5 minutes regarding how they breed, fight, and aim to populate the galaxy, but don’t really see anything beyond that.
- The morals of the Earth people. They claim to show respect for life, when all you see them doing is constantly killing each other during pirate attacks.
- The logic of the Earth people. They blame the protagonist for killing their enemies, even though they ordered him to do exactly that.
- The intelligence of the Earth people. They blame him again for not appreciating life the way they do, although he has no knowledge about this, since he is from space, and thus can’t be accused of being wrong about something he was never taught.
- The perception of the Earth people. Despite the numerous times the spaceman effortlessly wiped out their enemies, they still think they can overpower him anytime they feel like it with mere sticks and stones.
- The abilities of the spaceman’s mecha. They are completely different in each episode; especially when it comes to radars.
• On episode 1 it requires from the pilot to walk around so the robot can map the area.
• On episode 2 it can map a huge area around it with perfect precision and no help from the pilot.
• On episode 3 it has a problem in scanning a few meters away from it.
• On episode 4 it can easily see what lies behind thick steel walls but not what swims a few meters in the sea.
• On episode 7 it can magically scan underwater just fine.
• It accepts to reveal top secret information to the spaceman just because there is nobody present with a higher rank than him. Meaning, all the security systems in the universe can be accessed if you simply fly away from your fleet.
• The robot follows commands only when it suits the plot, it keeps attacking even when the pilot tells it to stop, and shovels philosophical revelations down his throat without being ordered to do so.

There is this excuse going around, about not having enough episodes for properly exploring the themes. It does not stick when half of the episodes are filler, stuffed with fan service. We get stuff like a masochistic lesbian pirate harem, a beach episode, and a belly dance episode full of underage girls for no bloody reason other than masturbation aid. They are supposed to be there so the spaceman can integrate into the world by experiencing sexuality, but they are so goofy you just can’t take them seriously, much less treat them as thematic exploration.

Of course if all you want is fancy visuals, good ideas, and softporn, then the show definitely works. There is a lot of shallow entertainment in it, sprinkled with shallow philosophy and fancy action scenes for maintaining the interest of the casuals. The budget is very high, the animation is very lively, and as far as comedy goes, the interaction between dumb barbarians and super advanced spacemen creates lots of humorous moments. It’s in fact the best part of the show; it’s a shame they didn’t build on that, and instead opted for poorly inserted philosophies by a robot.

Characterization is paper thin as well, just like it is in all Urobucher shows, since it’s always concept based instead of character based. People are always treated as plot devices, unable to behave as normal human beings because they exist to serve a role instead of being part of the setting.
- Nothing in the protagonist’s shift from emotionless to caring feels natural because he is never allowed to change gradually on his own. Instead of giving the hero some time to ponder if his space culture is worth to go back to, he is instead given horrifying revelations that have him reacting by screaming, and the robot lecturing him as if it’s a wise sage. What you are actually getting is a blank self-insert protagonist with no personality, so he can be anything we imagine him to be, being bombarded with theories about morality by Urobutcher who speaks through the robot, and then having lots of dim-witted hentai chicks trying to befriend (and obviously bang) him, as if you are playing a porn game.
- The first time the female pirate leader appears, she is a typical bad guy. How did she manage to be a leader? We are never told. She disappears from the story and reappears close to the ending as a completely different character, again with no explanation. Her out of screen change was the result of having completed her first role, and then being given a new one, with no regards to how or if it makes sense. Why is she even wearing the same slutty outfit, if she is supposed to be in a cult full of joyless people? Why do they believe her or what is she even doing there? There is no answer because the scriptwriter doesn’t care.
- The robot ends up acting more realistically than any of the hentai bimbos or the stone faced protagonist. It’s as if there is no bloody way for a human to realize all that; we need an emotionless machine to force-feed us answers that all people should know, regarding what it means to be human. And even the robot is not an actual character to begin with, since it’s just Urobuchi in disguise, stealing quotes from other books and using them as his own, in a lazy attempt to show how smart he is at stealing ideas, without knowing what to do with them.

There are several plot twists in the show, and they are all a complete mess.
- One is about the alien enemies once upon a time being humans. It makes the protagonist to lose his mind when he finds out he was killing people all this time. But the thing is, those people had altered their DNA to such a ridiculous degree that they were no longer the same species. He wasn’t killing people because they are no longer people. In the meantime, when he was killing hundreds of pirates in the early episodes, he didn’t feel a thing DESPITE THEM BEING PEOPLE.
- Another one is Earth going through an ice age, which forces mankind to go to space so it can avoid extinction. If that’s true, how come the people who stayed behind survived this extinction-level ice age and are now having a normal life? It’s almost like the space people could have stayed on Earth.
- Another twist is the out of nowhere introduction of an evil robot from the spaceman’s civilization, doing obviously evil things in an evil place with evil people, so we won’t have to wonder if the space people were right to leave the planet. The show itself tells us what to root for, which makes it lazy and contrived since it takes away the dilemma.

Also, the final enemy is an evil counterpart of the protagonist and his robot. This is stuff you expect to see in silly fighting shonen and not in philosophical shows that are supposed to be analyzing the meaning of life, like Gargantia does so painfully. There is no sense of seriousness or depth compared to titles such as Haibane Renmei or Ghost in the Shell, it’s a parody of science fiction, with minors twerking their asses all over your face for further making it clear. And yet many viewers were still blinded and wrote essays about how mature it is.

Anecdote epilogue:
"OMG I killed people!"
So what, you killed dozens of pirates in the first episodes.
"That doesn't count, I wasn't feeling like a human back then."
And now that you do, do you care?
"To hell with real humans, I only feel comion for these evolved monsters which have no emotions or individuality."
They are technically not people, you know. They are now a different species, like we are to apes.
"We are still cousins!"
I am not sure if it means anything at this point, but did you notice know Hideause look like fish?
"Yes I did."
What have you been eating all this time on Earth?
"OMG!"
*TROLLFACE* UROBUCHI *TROLLFACE*