Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet - Reviews

Used to love this series. Rewatched only to realize the blatant transphobia added on that was not at all necessary. We get it, you hate trans people, but do you have to intentionally frame all trans women as predators?

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet

 

A common concept goes a little differently here. A well-known and common concept of "people against an alien life form". They use Combat robots  as weapons to defeat the aliens. In the sense of a mecha as it is in the book.

Exceptionally, the plot takes place as you can read from the description, not on earth but in space.
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But what makes this work special here is the plot. Here, something was done more creatively. A solid background story on the actions of humanity and the aliens was provided. The concept that the protagonist lands on a planet, has to live and work with a backward civilization (compared to his) and on cargo ships is quite interesting. Also the slice of life episodes, the way the characters get used to each other and how the plot actually comes about.

But the anime has one major weakness, this is the duration.
It is much too short. As soon as you start to get used to the characters, you are confronted with the plot from halfway through and everything builds on a quick finale. Towards the end, you get a quick conclusion and that's it.

You could have stretched this work to show more of the world, the characters and their relationships. This makes the whole characters seem unimportant and irrelevant.

Story

As already noted, the actual action is quite straightforward. Most of the information can already be found in the description. The strength of this work is clearly on the plot twist towards the end and the enlightenment. Apart from these points, there is little in this place.

Animations / pictures

Very nice and beautiful animations. The fleet, the sea and the sky, all really a feast for the eyes. What bothered me here was the CGI for the combat robots. Given their animations and the fact that the robots in the anime  only fought 2-3 times, you could have done something. The robots seem completely out of place.

Characters

The characters weren't bad or annoying in that sense. The only thing they lacked was screen time and depth of character. They just looked like minor NPCs with a light personality. The protagonist was fine, but showed the same mistakes.
Maybe with a little more time you could have breathed a little more life into them.

Conclusion

A basically solid title. You can't criticize much of what you got here. The content is very satisfactory. But this work seems only half-finished and rather lifeless on the part of the characters.

This anime was a very pleaseant suprise. It was on Netflix and we decided to binge watch it as the animation looked excellent.

The story was a pleaseant suprise. The first half of the season tends to be more relaxed and the last half filled with twist/turns. I was really impressed with this anime and it made me feel like I was watching a Studi-Ghibli like film.

At only 13 episodes, it is rather short.

Right, it's confession time for me. If you have been reading my reviews than you may have noticed that I tend to rip the anime a new one. There is a reason for this though and it has to do with the fact that I can't turn my brain off when watching anime. I can't ignore the stupid shown in the anime and this is a problem as most anime are very stupid indeed.

In this case I'm not talking about a 90 pound girl catching a multi-ton cruise missile and throwing it back. Yes, it is stupid but it is a stupid that I'll allow. It's anime. Things like this are normal here and I'm pretty much fine with it. It annoys me to be sure but I will not rant about it.

So, having explained this lets rip into this anime shall we? Just a heads up: There will most probably be spoilers. The more I hate an anime the more spoilers there will be.

ART: One of the better looking anime I've seen in a while. Although the action is very fast at times it is still easy to follow and characters are very identifiable. The CGI didn't bother me as much this time so there is also that.

SOUND: ..... I got nothing. As I've said many times before this is not a bad thing. Not for me. It means that the music was at least not bad our oustandingly great.

CHARACTERS: Main character is Ledo. Bred for war he has known nothing but fighting. In the face of the enemy he will stop at nothing to achieve his goal: Total annihilation of the Hideauze.

Chamber is the AI of Ledo's mecha and is programmed to help him in any way that she can. She helps him translate the language so that he can communicate.

Amy is a messenger on the Gargantia one of the first people that Ledo meets. She becomes his guide and friend.

STORY: It is many years into the future and mankind has reached the stars. They have also run into the Hideauze, an alien race that closely resembles a whalesquid. For centuries they have been locked into a brutal war with neither side giving an inch. After the latest battle things go bad for Ledo who gets got in a bad warp and finds himself crashing into an unknown planet. After waking up he is surprised to find humans there and that the planet he is on is Earth. Earth is now completely covered with water and people live on massive ships, or rather a collection of ships lashed together. The Gargantia is one such collection of ships. Ledo initially has trouble letting go of the war but eventually starts coming around. Just as he is about to settle down he discovers the whalesquids that live on the planet as well and the striking resemblence they have to the Hideauze.

RANT: I rather liked this anime. Sure it has its problems but I'm willing to overlook them for the most part.

What I liked the most about this anime is that it is surprisingly character driven. You can argue that Ledo's reaction to the whaleaquid is excessive but I disagree. Ledo has been literally bred for war. Since birth he has been trained to fight and kill the Hideauze. It is all he knows and here he is faced with a creature that so closely resembles them that they could be cousins.

There is also the added information that none of the locals dare harm a squid. Every time they did so, even by accident, they retaliated. This means that these squid are intelligent enough to recognise a threat and respond to it.

So the reaction of the people living on board the Gargantia is also very well done. While most are horrified by what Ledo is doing and planning there are others who cheer him on because they have suffered loss by the squids. They, like most people, left the squids alone because they lacked the power to fight the squids. Now, with Ledo, they have the chance to turn the tables and they grab it woth hands.

It is these little details that I greatly appreciate. The world isn't black and white, it is mostly a shade of grey.

I really liked Ledo as a character. The first scenes you see is him fighting the Hideauze in a horrible battle where people die by the hundreds if not thousands. You learn that he has been fighting for many years and he has survived so many battles that he is eligable for civilian duty where he is allowed to have kids.

When he finds himself on the Gargantia he is lost. There are no Hideauze to fight and he is surrounded by peace.... with occasional pirat attack but whose counting. For the first time in his live he has nothing to do and he struggles.

Then, when he finally starts letting his guard down the squid appear and he flips his shit. The fight is back on and he has a purpose again. Nothing will stop him from completing his mission. Just as he was created to do.

Everything he does has a reason and you understand why he does the things he does. There are so few anime who do this nowadays. Characters just start doing shit because of plot and I'm sick and tired of it.

Weakest part of the series was Kugel. This is near the end and you learn that Ledo's CO, Kugel, also crashed on Earth. Where Ledo works with the locals, he started to command them. Using the power of his mecha he gathered many people under him and created a military regime with himself as their absolute leader. Any who oppose will be destroyed.

By this point Ledo is starting to question the military way and Kugel pushes him over the edge. Yes there are Hideauze-like creatures living on Earth but they live in relative peace with the remaining humans. Fighting is no longer the only option. What Kugel is doing is wrong and he must be stopped.

While it closes Ledo's arc I didn't like the Kugel angle it used to do it. There were other ways to do it but it would have meant less action. The Kugel arc could only finish in a big action piece and it did.

The end is very open and I'm very much ok with this. By this time you have leanred a lot about the world, the humans and even the Hideauze. When it ends the story can go in a lot of directions and, for once, I liked it. It means that you can use your imagination on what will happen next.

Or you can find the manga and continue but for once I'm fine with how an anime ends.

The story of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet takes place primarily on the planet Avalon.  Solider Ledo from the Galactic Alliance of Humankind has crash landed onto Avalon during a battle with the Whalesquid species known as the Hideauze.  Ledo is stuck on the planet for the time being and decides to wait it out with the people of Avalon for the time being until rescue arrives.

Story - 4/10

The story of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet takes place primarily on the planet Avalon.  Inhabitants of Avalon live on fleets of ships.  Land has been overtaken by the seas due to previous extreme weather conditions which has led to a waterworld esk environment. The story picks up quickly and well for the first 2 or 3 episodes indulging us with information about the story.  Fluff generally takes up the meat and later parts of the story with the climax happening around the last 3 episodes. 

Animation - 6/10

Animation was fluid throughout.  The quality of the animation held throughout the whole show.  The mecha's in this anime are rendered in 3d and blend in nicely with the style of the animation.  Although Chamber does look much more detailed than the yonburus (normal mechs) in the anime.  Characters are drawn nicely, especially them girls.  They be looking real good with them rosy cheeks (plenty of fan service) and curvy milkshakers. 

Sound - 5/10

The soundtrack for the anime was forgettable.  Not in a bad sense by any means.  The score of the anime doesn't really draw the viewer into the scene.  It doesn't add any, 'umph' to the dramatic/action scenes.  As a result, the majority of the soundtrack was lost in the background.  The opening and ending credits also did not capture my attention.

Characters - 4/10

The stars of this anime are Ledo and Chamber.  Ledo is your typical on command hardcore soldier.  Chamber is your typical good guy advice giving Artificial Intelligence support system.  The relationship between the two develop progressively throughout the anime.  Bond between Ledo and Chamber resembles that of a student and a tutor.  The student has questions and challenges the tutor as to why they're proceeding with the tasks at hand.  Whilst the tutor teaches the student but also is learning as the student progresses.  Unfortunately the other characters of the show do not develop as well as these two.  Amy, the cheerful loving girl of the anime is the support system for helping Ledo develop and to question what he does.  Pinion, the stubborn technician is the ambitious mechanic whom is always clowning around.  He's that one guy who no one takes seriously, but speaks highly of himself.  The rest of the cast is pretty forgettable.  It's regrettable as many glimpses are made into many of the cast members which could potentially have their own spin offs.  This however, is not the case.

Overall - 4.75 / 10

Another anime with loads of potential to geek out about falls short.  Maybe because it was only 13 episodes long or maybe it's because of wasted scenes involving cross dressing strippers?  Whatever it was, it's for you to decide.  I would not recommend this anime as it falls short of what it could have and should have been.