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.
- 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.
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.
