Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet - Reviews

It's been a decade. Please make a sequel for this masterpiece! Someone!

I'm not one for writing reviews and I'm a 'to the point' type of guy so this isn't going to 20 pages of thoughts and opinions based on character eye color or something else as pointless.

It starts out all Sci-Fi with things happening and stuff being named that's complete fiction with no background, explanation or even any context given. Sure you get that type of thing with Sci-Fi stories all the time, but this was just too much too fast making it kind of nonsense... but you get what's going on, the big picture if you will.

A lot of things don't make any sense and you're left thinking "well what the hell" but you move on with the story and have to say "whatever." One thing was like... how can I put it, they're going into a knife fight and don't want to use the tank they just got. (No there's not a knife fight and it's not a tank.)

The story that connects the humans in space and the humans on earth and the war being fought in space seems completely lost at first, but stick with it, it gets very good. There are some large gaps that they try to brush over with a quick mention of a theory.

There a language barrier between characters and I usually find this very annoying and fixed by some really lame explanation, I very much enjoyed and appreciated the way they way it was addressed here.

The story that connects everything (Earth and space) is excellent. The story of a man being thrown into a strange world and being forced to adapt it's the best, but it was done in such a way that I was hooked and couldn't wait to see how it turns out.

The ending was poorly done, main character confronts his past in the lamest way possible. For a moment I thought they might pull off something great, but they tried to go the 'twist' route and ruined it. Piloted mech, so of course there was the obligatory long, drawn out fight that ends in a way that could have happened at any point in the fight, but I guess they finished it in a way that explained why they didn't just end it sooner.

The full on ending was a proper ending which you have to appreciate after seeing so many anime that just stop with no real ending.  

This anime was a little bit hard to understand at first. I am not too really into the Sci Fi and Mecha genre. If anyone else is and is thinking about watching one. I think this one is a good start. The story is really good. There is a lot of plot to be summed up into 13 episodes. But I wasn't sure at first if Ledo had fell in love with Amy. But I could definetely see them dating. The animation was pretty nice. It was just the same as most anime and just the same way as Production I.G always animates. I put a low rating for the Sound because there wasn't that much background music. But besides that, I thought that the picked somewhat perfect voice actors for all the characters. If the opening has to do with the sound, then I loved it. I think Ledo fit perfectly for his role. Amy seems like the typical girl you would see on any island. So I think the characters and their roles fit them all perfectly. This is a very interesting Mecha anime and I definetely recommend it.

(SPOILERS!) duh

I'm a personal fan of "Person in a strange world" based Anime's and I've always wanted to see one that included a person from a semi "Futuristic world" with great technology that somehow gets thrown into a situation were such technology doesn't exist. This anime fills this nearly perfectly. I remember watching the first episode and thinking wow the colors of the Animation are specacular! and I couldn't help but become interested in the main character.

Now what REALLY GOT ME was in the first episode when he made contact with the other different humans it wasn't a "Somehow we speak the exact same language even though our races live in completely different eras" It was made in a way so he had absolutely no way of knowing what they were saying. As such he was completely dependant on his robotic translator for figuring out what they were saying but even he needs lots of time to determine how to speak their language as well. Love that realism. 

Overall the Animation and storyline almost imediately set this one in stone for me as a great anime and I was always waiting excitingly for the next episode to come out. Of course all the other aspects in the Anime such as: Sound, Characters, and whatnot were still all great to me. Just nothing significant that stands out enough for me to write about here.

Overall I recommend this Anime to pretty much anyone out there, go check it out!

Spring 2013 Anime Review - Gargantia
- Production I.G. used all their budget this season and were left with subpar OP/ED songs
- The belly dancing was not shameless fanservice contrary to public opinion
- Convenient heart attack was terrible…
- So much potential if this was a longer series. Conflicts were resolved above average, but the series ending left much to be desired.
- Solid anime and I would recommend it (I actually have and received great feedback!), but not going down in history amongst my top anime

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UPDATE: Anime-Planet has removed the Blog feature where this post was originally published on March 23, 2014. I pulled the scores from my ratings, although this is NOT a formal review. Think of it more as “thoughts on…<anime title>”. I wrote my thoughts out as I progressed through the series, so contradictions may occur as my opinion shifts. To shorten the post I took excerpts from the original. Sorry for any inconvenience and please leave your thoughts below! :)

2013 Spring Anime Reviews:

• Attack on Titan - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14071
• Gargantia - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14072
• The Flowers of Evil - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14073
• Arata the Legend - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14074
• Devil Survivor 2 - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14075
• HENNEKO - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14076/
• Karneval - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14077/
• Photo Kano - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14078
• RDG - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14079
• Crime Edge - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14080
• Valvrave S1 - http://www.anime-planet.com/users/triviper/reviews/14081