Bye Bye, Earth

Bye Bye, Earth - Is going back to the early days of fantasy a good thing, or just a case of complicated feelings? I'm honestly on the edge of both sides. If you know your AniManga knowledge well, there're a few well-notable names in the industry, and that happens to be the place where one famed novelist by the name of Tow Ubukata, resides. The man who's best known for works like Summer 2004's Soukyuu no Fafner a.k.a Fafner in the Azure: Dead Aggressor, and Summer 2006's Le Chevalier d'Eon, he was truly one of the pioneers of the fantasy genre (before mid-2010s Isekai would seepinto it and tarnish its reputation forever). Even within the same period, Tow Ubukata is sadly not the same genre-defying person with complete misses on the sequels of Psycho-Pass (from Season 2 onwards), not to mention just recently with RWBY: Ice Queendom back in Summer 2022. With that said, a change of pace looking back into Tow Ubukata's early years, being in yet another prominent Summer season with one of his early novels of 2000's 2-volume long Bye Bye, Earth (not counting the new edition written between 2007-2008 at 4 volumes long), you can tell that this is where he got his start into the anime industry as a prominent novelist. But the critical question is: does the series, which is now close to a silver anniversary (24 years to be exact), fit the stranglehold that traditional fantasy works like this will be remembered in time to come? I don't really think so...or so that I'd like to assume at face value. Written as a traditional fantasy (though it has the Isekai feel), the MC lives in a world of anthropomorphic animals as the only human without a past, and that immediately sells the fact that being an outlier creates an easy target to be bullied towards. That's Belle Lablac, in a nutshell, who finds herself in that exact word where no one can understand her except her only guardian of cat/wolf man Sian, being a "Faceless", who teaches her the art of swordfighting sorcery from an early age as a way to survive in an unknown world. And that's her only language of survival, as she wants to know the origin of her roots, and also to find other humans like her who could be around in faraway lands to tell her that she's not alone being the only insane person. Armed with the sword that chose her, Runding is quite the enormous sword that no anthropomorphic animal could ever hope to wield (being like Excalibur, the Sword in the Stone that chooses its rightful owner), Belle sets off for the adventure of a lifetime, seeking the secrets that she does not know about herself and the world around her. Right out of the gate, the show taking on the novel approach of "show, don't tell" is immediately apparent as things are moving at a rather fast pace without letting the audience know of its methodical approach to a simple plot such as this, and WILL definitely be the make-or-break approach when one experiences the show from the get-go. Bye Bye, Earth has a lot of moving parts in its lore, such as how it uses traditional musical terms (Conductors and the like, to form an orchestra they call Schwert Muzik) to deviate from the normality of generic adventurer parties and such, as well as swords that sound ridiculous, but are aptly spelled backwards from regular words that are given meaning to it (e.g. Belle's Runding sword teaching Erehwon (nowhere spelled backwards), meaning utopia). This is cusped by even more "will of the gods"-type plot/premise that basically everyone is tied to the fate of the gods, scenarios that have been depicted towards life or death, and this forms the shape of the main characters and their endeavours. Belle isn't without negativity in her mind that besets her from her growing-up years, it's that she chose to overcome adversity on any challenge that comes her way, and the gods see her as a chess piece on their playfield. Adonis the Question, on the other hand, is a cursed being from the very beginning; any sword he touches rots and disintegrates in his hands, and there's no way to fight this curse, even by wearing gloves. These two mainly live and breathe their experiences together, even as a cursed couple who begins to understand their origins and the factors mitigating their circumstances, like so in a fully dictatorship (almost monocracy) society, and survive the hell they have to in an unjust world. However, as you, the audience, will, you'll just have to pick up the nuances...because one blink, and you'll be utterly lost in this rather convoluted story. The other characters are more like plot movers, intentional or not. Take Kitty the All, for example, Belle saving him (as a tuxedo-suited bunny) from danger from the start, he is one of the discriminated Rabbitia races that repays their saviour in their time of need, and Kitty's an able animal who has decent magic power enough to act as Belle's shield. But on a whole, you won't be remembering much of the side cast who gives the plot-heavy story an already progressive problem to begin with. For what Crunchyroll's marketing buzzwords meant that Bye Bye, Earth "is considered to be his (Tow Ubukata) origin, and many have deemed it impossible to animate," in actuality, it's just not hard to animate fantasy shows like this being lost in translation from the novel to the small screen (thankfully this ISN'T Crunchyroll Originals that the label is simply D.O.A-ed from the start). I think that Liden Films did a decent job, it's just that this low-bar quality is reminiscent of another fantasy work from the studio: Winter 2021's Urasekai Picnic (and even that was a studio collab with Felix Flim). Moreover, the critical direction of in-house director Yasuto Nishikata is very glaring, and it's obvious that the Killing Bites and Hortensia Saga director didn't really understand what makes a good narrative (especially for a lore-heavy work like this) work, much less get the audience invested into the show, and thereby just piecing chunks of the novel together for a "cohesive" straight-line path, essentially just getting the story directing from start to finish. Even with the impeccable talent of scriptwriter-cum-series composer Hiroyuki Yoshino, the director will flourish or kill the series based on his/her direction, and I feel that Yasuto Nishikata is to blame for the series failing as it is. Alas, the musical talent of Made in Abyss composer Kevin Penkin also feels wasted due to Yasuto Nishikata's direction, though I will not say that this is his finest work thus far. Considering the immaculate work on high-profile shows in the past under his name, Bye Bye, Earth's OST feels a lot pedestrian towards the fantasy side of things, but a really low bar set for the series as it shows. ASCA's OP works, but it's just there, and as much as I want to like LMYK's ED which sounds good, it too also suffered from the show's eponymous title as a post-apocalyptic setting more than anything. I...really want to like Bye Bye, Earth, being the fantasy show that stands out from the seasonal copy-paste Isekai/fantasy shtick with its interesting concepts and developments that are reminscent of some notables (like Summer 1998's Serial Experiments Lain) around the turn of the millennium. But with its lackluster presentation that sucks the life out of both the staff behind the show, as well as the audience into trying to process what just happened with each progressive episode, it's not just subpar storytelling, but a recipe for failure, and it really shows. With Season 1 being just the adaptation of the 1st half a.k.a Volume 1 of the novel, will Season 2 change the tide with Volume 2 and tie everything together cohesively? I hope I can live the day to see its salvation and redemption of the near-impossible. For now, you've just got to grit through an imperfect product of a rather ambitious work.