Captain Earth

"When I opened the door called Captain Earth, my ride on the hype train ended. It was an anime I could forget." From Studio Bones and the same creative team that made Star Driver, comes a mecha anime that promises amazing action backed up by Shakespearean lore but instead, delivers a train wreck that is only worthy for the scrap yard. The story starts off well enough, having a 17 year old high schooler named Daichi, through a set of extraordinary circumstances, coming to be the sole pilot of the Earth Engine, which was built to defend humanity from the invading Planetary Gears. However, itquickly becomes very apparent that Captain Earth has no intention of delivering a coherent plot and soon meanders off into slice of life territory with visits to the dessert cafe, idol concerts and chilling off by the poolside topped off with copious amounts of fanservice. There is even an episode where an idol gets to be a commander for a day onboard a space station, right before a major military operation is about to go underway. When it does get back to moving the story forward, it does so in the most convoluted manner possible and is nothing short of glacial in terms of progress. Among the worst offenders of this crime is the Planetary Gear's recruitment arc in which the bad guys are awakened and gathered for several episodes like some demented version of Pokémon. Events happen or things are done in a certain way that has no bearing to proper protocol in a similar situation in reality. For example, when it comes to identifying and apprehending potential Earth-ending individuals, Captain Earth has teenagers taking the place of what should have been the jurisdiction of entire government agencies or armed special forces. I could understand having a bunch of high schoolers be the pilots of giant robots and saviors of humanity but not when it comes to scouring an entire urban center with only four people that get sidetracked by dessert cafe. Plot points are even worst, often appearing from a random direction and resolved in an equally hazard manner. In one instance, there was a scientist lady who was in charge of observing special children connected to the planetary gears. Said scientist kisses one of them and transfers her desire to obtain immorality using the child which results in a falling out between the two. Very quickly, the assistant to said scientist shoots her in the head with a pistol and the last time we see of her, she is riding in a back of a truck, wrapped up in a body bag. I swear to God, I'm not making this shit up. Explanations frequently comes down because the writers say so and that is nothing short of an insult to the audience struggle to understand the bigger picture because of inept writing. When it comes to the four main characters of Daichi, Hana, Akari, and Teppei, their attributes make them seem anti-Evangelion to a fault. Daichi Manats is the overly confident and energetic teenage boy to distant Shinji Ikari, who only pilots only for the sake of his father. Hana Mutou is the curious and very voluptuous alien girl to the emotionless doll of Rei Ayanami. Akari Yomatsuri is the hacking/self-proclaimed magical girl to the emotionally broken tsundere of Asuka Langley Soryu. Finally, Teppei Arashi is the uncertain and withdrawn extraterrestrial to the transcendent angelic being of Kaworu Nagisa. The trouble doesn't lie in how the characters start off as but it's that they remain stagnant for the majority of their development. Yes, they have their own trials and personal issues to overcome but it's so ham-fisted and forcefully written that it almost becomes a parody unto itself. The obvious pairings happen but everything about their relationships are so bland and uninspired that it just bored me seeing Captain Earth clumsily go through the motions. There is simply nowhere else to go when all the characters become happy-go-lucky teammates that believe in the power of friendship and love to win the day. Unless Captain Earth had the balls to go a darker route from there, which it doesn't, it makes for a boring watch as our young heroes simply brute force their way onto victory, complete with sparkles and rainbows. Outside other main four leads, which get plenty of screen time to dally about, there are just too many characters and factions in Captain Earth. Ranging from those who work at GLOBE, Tenkaido Space Station, Intercept and Ark faction, Salty Dog, Kill-T-Gang, Puck, and the Macbeth Enterprises, none of them are explored in any meaningful depth. Sure, members of the Planetary Gears get their own episode to shine but as quickly as they are introduced, they are soon forgotten in favor of the next shiny plot point. One aspect that initially drew my attention to Captain Earth was the high production values in its animation. Having a wide assortment of bright vivid colors and highly detailed backgrounds, it is clear that a substantial amount of money was invested in the visual department. While other series like Knights of Sidonia and Aldnoah.Zero have embraced CGI robots into their animation, Captain Earth steadfastly sticks to the dying art of drawing 2D mecha. The 3D elements are subtly incorporated into the background of display screens and popup HUDs which demonstrates how CGI should be used to enhance the viewing experience. In particular, the Earth Engine's transformation scene was quite a novelty when it was first shown by featuring no less than three space station lined up together while the Daichi's machine speeds through the center as it becomes fully formed. Also matching the high standards set by the visual department, is the music composition by Satoru Kosaki. His previous works is nothing to sneeze which include the entire Monogatari franchise, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and OreImo. In Captain Earth's case, he choose to go with a more traditional orchestral sound with booming trumpets and soaring string instruments doing much of the heavy lifting. It really is a shame that the stellar soundtrack is just another sad reminder how great this show could have been if it even had a half-competent writing team backing it up. The mechs themselves are quite creative in their design and functionality. Earth's own engines look like a updated white version of the Gainax's Gunbuster with its massive shoulder pylons and fairly conventional weaponry. On the opposing side, Planetary Gears in their true mecha forms have more of an aesthetic that resembles doll figurines with umbrella dresses for the ladies and tailcoats for the men. As such, their respective fighting styles are more akin to dancing around their opponents before slicing or blasting them to pieces. Being a huge fan of the mecha genre, much of Captain Earth's tremendous shortcomings could be forgiven if the giant robots fights were exciting, loud and filled with awesomeness, but sadly, this is not the case. Mech battles in Captain Earth often dissolve in shounon-like brawls that involve little to no tactics and obscene amount of deus ex machina bullshit in favor of the protagonists. The plot armor that every major character, both alien and human, is as thick as the front of a main battle tank and saps much of the tension from said battles. Indeed, the show even incorporates immorality into the invading Planetary Gears with their Ego Blocks, and has them blasting off like Team Rocket every time they get their asses kicked. With names like Midsummer Knights, Puck, and Oberon, I would have expected a mixture of Shakespearean elements from his various plays like humor from A Comedy of Errors with a dash of the tragedy from Macbeth and the mystical atmosphere of The Tempest. Instead, Captain Earth simply reaches for the lowest common denominator of dumping a metric ton of fanservicey ingredients into its concepts and calls it a day. I suppose it could have be related to the sexuality that is prominent in Shakespeare's work in some sort twisted way, but I can't really be bothered to dig that deep when cleavage takes up half the screen and everyone is trying to kiss each other. The first opening, titled "Runner's High" by flumpool, is a lot like my anticipation and first impression of Captain Earth. It was epic, energetic and pointed to something far more ambitious than your typical anime show. By the time, the second opening " TOKYO Dreamer ", by Nico Touches the Walls, rolls around, I had long stop caring about Captain Earth and abandoned any hope of the show redeeming itself. The show had wasted too much time on pointless exposition, fetch quests and scandalous shots of female anatomy. Studio Bones held a promising concept in its hands before weighing down with mediocrity and Otaku philandering that plagues the anime industry today.

When you have an interesting setting and characters, great designs and good action, the obvious option would be using them to their fullest potential and crafting a great story involving these factors. But you could also do it like Studio Bones did with Captain Earth and do absolutely NOTHING with them. Seriously, I've rarely seen a series devolve from one with lots of potential into something that was a chore to watch episode by episode. The story centers around Daichi Manatsu, a high school student who, through some coincidences and connections, ends up in a secret organization fighting extraterrestrial beings with mecha robots. Now, the whole"high school student fights unknown creature" setup might be one of the overused cliches in anime ever, but there are still series that manage to put it off well. That's what I also hoped for Captain Earth, but it was all in vain. From the beginning on, the viewer is bombarded with one unknown term after another, expecting us to understand what the hell they are supposed to mean. All this while the plot starts off with a tiring episodic monster-of-the-week scheme. Those types of episodes are not always bad, but it is pointless if the plot still has not made any crucial progress, making it a chore to watch the same thing over and over. About midway through, the series is finally back to the actual plot - not that it got much better though. To sum it up, you could fast-forward to the last few episodes (bar a few selected ones) and you would not have missed out on anything. And instead of good storytelling we get pointless fanservice here and there. And some more unexplained terms, because we obviously have not had enough already! And if plot points are resolved, then it's in a cliche and predictable way. Or there is no resolution at all - I mean, what happened to Teppei's father? The creators probably forgot about his existence, who knows. What about the little girl who was supposed to be something like a manifestation of Daichi's Livlaster? We never found out what was up with her. Well to make it short, while the setup was already lame, what the producers made of it made it even duller. And this also brings down the characterization. This brings me to the characters of Captain Earth. The four main characters are like the only ones who get some character development, so I'll just get to them. First we have Daichi, our protagonist - a character I found pretty intriguing in the beginning. With a connection to some other characters related in the battle against the aliens and a somewhat rebellious attitude he could have been a good character. Could have, if the story were any good. Instead, he turns into the stereotypical good guy character who can face any hurdle through the power of friendship. The second male main character Teppei, suffers a similar fate of character change - from a character related to the Kill-T-Gangs his role in the story turns quite irrelevant. He ends up as just another mecha driver without much development. Akari, the self-proclaimed "mahou shoujo", is a super-hacker who supports the team in the background by, well, hacking. There isn't really much else to her, aside that she is a poor love interest for Teppei. Seriously, would it have been so hard to develop the romance between those two a little? Hana is the last of the main group, and also the love interest of Daichi. Well, their romance was a little more interesting than Teppei and Akari's, but Hana as character herself was - nothing special. Just like with Teppei, her supernatural powers are not explored well enough - she is more often used as a fanservice character. Last I want to mention the enemies in this scenario, the Kill-T-Gangs - just as the main heroes, very underexplored. Most of them have a one-episode appeareance and then disappear or are used as more fanservice devices. The main pair - Moco and Amara - only differentiate from the group in that they get more screentime, act more evil and get more fanservice scenes (Moco, at least). One thing that had Captain Earth going for it is the visuals - nothing special, really, but compared to the other aspects of the series a pleasure. The character designs are nice, the mechs look good and the action is on point. The sounds of the series are nothing special, the openings and endings are alright and the soundtrack was alright too. Hana's song is probably the most outstanding aspect in the sounds section. Sadly, the strongest points of the series (Art & Sound) do not carry a show alone. Thus, Captain Earth overall does not really convince me and thus I give it a score of 3/10.

Okay. First of all, I had just finished Captain Earth a minute ago when I started writing this review. Plus to that, I pulled an all-nighter to finished 25 episodes in one go and I must say, I was about 33/67 satisfied. And well, I am going to give my best in order for this review to be spoiler-free. The feeling of watching Captain Earth is like watching a show that at one scene will make your heart flutter and the next two scenes, will completely crush the enthusiasm. It's quite fair to give a 6 for the story. Why? First of all, Captain Earth didn't promisethe watchers a plot that will attract the majority. It's like BONES tried to please at least 2 people out of a 10. The idea of the story was simple however, the execution was lost after the first 5 episodes. The direction started to get messy and it even felt like the director doesn't even want to direct in the first place. In one case, why waste at least 2 minutes on the same docking sequence? I mean, yeah, it's cool but should he at least make a good use of that 2 minutes? Art and sound, is feasible. The art was within the 2014 standard. BONES never fail to give a title the appropriate art however, in this case, it's obvious that the art was really a minor factor. The sound is nowhere great but at the very least, I like both of the opening themes. If Captain Earth had one point they should rue, it is their characters. For a battle-robot series running at 25 episodes, it is understandable that the scale should be vast. However, Captain Earth limited theirs by focusing on little number of characters and mainly giving the limelight to the main protagonists and antagonists. Their was never a good background involving the characters. It spells like they were never given a chance to appeal or make the audience empathize with them. They were hero just because they were meant to be heroes. They were villains, that's because they were meant to be villains. The feeling of this kind of simple character development is something unforgivable given the budget for 25 episodes. Some characters had to the potential to spark a good run though, the expectations or should I say, my expectations were never been granted given a soft and weak building of characters. BONES particularly relied on short flashbacks in order to explain the fundamentals surrounding the characters. While it is never enough, they at least gave out a vague idea to intrigue the watcher to watch the next episode in order to enlighten the piling query. In any case, for the character factor, there was something like a roulette in which BONES struggled to decide who's going to be the final boss and when the end was nigh, they just decided, "Oh, okay. This one will be the final boss..." and then it's all over leaving myself wondering "That's it?". That is the case for myself and in the end, I am not really happy yet it was understandable and slightly palatable in my opinion. The enjoyment was certainly small. I sure had moments when I felt Captain Earth was good. The romance addition was something not up to my flavor however, it is still something cute at the border of innocently cute. Finalizing, for a normal space-robot genre, Captain Earth magnificently fulfill it's position. However, as one of the blandest title. The potential was scrambled and was forever lost due to the fact that Captain Earth never knew the direction it should take. This should explain as to why there's never a solid consistency on who's really going to be the main adversary. Another unfitting factor was also the addition of supernatural and magical events. It felt too much misplaced for a title such as Captain Earth. The pacing was also horrible however I felt like the story has never been cut at every episode. While the plot-threading seemed terrible, it still ended with a pretty decent closure however, even with the decent tag, Captain Earth left a wholesome of hanging queries unanswered and that what makes it justified mediocre. Should they at least have another episode to explain some questions, I think Captain Earth would've placed itself a meter higher than the bottom they're in right now. For my last comment, Captain Earth certainly started like a title capable of reaching a 9/10 grade. But instead, it slipped and never managed to catch up the lost potential.

SPOILER FREE REVIEW: Personally I quite enjoyed it, though it was very up and down. Some episodes were completely boring, while others would be spectacular. It threw around far too much technobabble in my opinion, as it had to devote sooo much time to just talking and explaining it multiple times, which took away from the experience. When they let the characters just interact as themselves, it could be quite fun, and some arcs and episodes were really really good. I felt that the show was dropped by a lot of people, because despite having a strong first episode, after that it goes downhill, and Ifeel the only good episode that comes after that was episode 9. The Bug Bear arc was spectacular, but kind of wasted. They try to set up this deep background for the villains, and then instantly turn them into copy-paste villain A when they get turned due to lack of focus on them. Particularly during the first maybe 15 episodes this really irked me because I found the villains to be a lot more interesting than the main characters, who really didn't get any development until later on. Hana stays the damsel in distress for far too long, Teppei stays the "oh I'm so conflicted and I can't be happy" guy for far too long, and Daichi was lacking in much-needed motivation besides "it's the right thing" for quite a while. Akari, in my opinion, was the one character I enjoyed throughout consistently, though her running gag got a little annoying. That said, these problems were fixed to some extent later on, but by then it was a little to late. On the animation spectrum, it's beautiful. One of the best-looking show's I've seen in a while. In a area mostly dominated by terrible looking CG mechs, Captain Earth brings these brilliant 2D (or at least 2D-looking) mechs. The animation occasionally suffered from consistency issues, but for the most part was really amazing. I did have a minor complaint with the character designs, and that is that pretty much *every girl but Akari* has breasts the size of a dump truck. It was kind of ridiculous. On the sound spectrum, it's okay. The first OP is amazing and one of my favorites, and was incredibly fitting to the tone and mood of the show, but the second OP wasn't near as good though it was still nice. Both of the EDs are pleasantly calming as well. The OST is pretty up/down. Sometimes it fits well, but other times it gets far too over-the-top and stands out too much, pulling your attention away from the show (which an OST should NEVER do). Other times it sounds great. Even when it's off, the songs themselves generally aren't bad, just a little too predominant or unfitting. That said, an OST's one job is to simply contribute to the experience, but not to take away from it, which this didn't fully succeed in accomplishing. But the number one thing I'd say I liked the most in this show was the clear-cut romance. I've gotten sick of these ridiculously-sized love triangles and pentagons, the idiotic harems and will-she-will-she-not. This show doesn't have any of that stupidity. The characters have good chemistry, and are not afraid to admit they like each other. They get together in a good way (though I feel one pairing was on the late side, and didn't get enough time together to properly develop their romance), and it was just satisfying. That's what I liked about this show. For all it's many errors, it was satisfying. It left a good taste in my mouth, and for all it's mediocre moments, those sprinkled moments of brilliance made up for it. While it may not be the show for everyone, the wonderful art let me hold onto it in it's duller moments, and those moments of brilliance made it worth it in my opinion. I don't regret picking it up.

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