Anime Review: Suisei no Gargantia
In the future, Earth became uninhabitable due to extreme cold, so much of the human race took off to space. Somehow the remainder survived through the freezing, and now Earth is a water world, where the word “land” is a legend. The remnants of humanity live on interconnected fleets, the one we focus on being named Gargantia. They sail the “galactic” currents, fishing and diving for salvage from the drowned cities.
The Gargantians have some minor problems with pirates, and have to avoid angering the territorial whalesquid, but mostly life is peaceful.
Until, that is, Ledo arrives. He’s a soldier of the Galactic Alliance, the humans who went into space, only to find themselves locked in a war with implacable aliens known as the Hideauze. A malfunctioning wormhole brought him and his intelligent combat robot Chamber to humanity’s home. Ledo has never known anything but war, and he has difficulty dealing with the relatively peaceful culture of Gargantia.
Ledo starts bonding with Amy, a local delivery girl, and her sickly brother Bevel. Perhaps this won’t be such an awful place to live? But then new information surfaces, and it looks like Ledo’s not done with war at all….
This thirteen-episode anime series included in its writers Gen Urobuchi, most recently famous for Puella Magi Madoka Magica, a series about magical girls that took some very dark turns. Gargantia isn’t nearly as shocking, though it does have some interesting plot twists. Some of the character designs are kind of fanservicey–the designer used to do porn.
The main character arc is Ledo learning how to interact with other people outside of a hierarchical military mindset, and finding his place in his new world. One of the themes of the story is that the skills and knowledge you acquired growing up don’t always apply to the real outside world, and you have to be able to adapt. A good amount of time is also spent on Ledo’s relationship with Chamber, who has its own, more subtle character arc. Chamber is one of the best artificial intelligence characters in years.
Less subtle is Pinion’s (a mechanic with a dark secret or two) character arc, which feels a little forced.
There’s a certain amount of violence, of course, with Episode 9 being the most disturbing about it (and for this reason I do not recommend the series for preteens or sensitive tweens.)
Perhaps the weakest episode is #5, which is a bathing suit episode and is annoyingly hetero-normative (no thank you for the drag queen stereotypes) and can be skipped if fanservice irks you. #6 features belly dancing and is also pretty fanservicey, but you’ll want to watch at least the last few minutes as the plot kicks back in.
All in all, a pretty good show that should appeal to mecha and SF fans.
