Moldiver

I expected this to be a dated dumpster fire. In fact its a wild, worthy, short and sweet watch. If the chipmunk-cheeks art style has you hesitating, its peanuts compared to the superb sci-fi artwork and animation. Considering the interfaces and technologies depicted were completely on point for a realistic near-future setting by today's standards, Moldiver stands the test of time incredibly well. Great group of characters, great music/sound, creative banger of a story that gets stronger as the episodes progress, and manages to build up to some tense action scenes and a satisfying ending despite Moldiver's One Punch Man-ish power level at the start. Story8 Starts as a goofy romp comedy staring the Japanese game show version of Superman - literally called "Captain Tokyo" - but also ends with mecha babes diving into a caldera, a lightsaber duel in the center of the sun, and Ant-Man style roundtrips to the quantum realm. It is not a typical high stakes conflict that threatens to evelop the future earth that Moldiver takes place in. Instead it feels more like an 80s/90s comedy with a hapless, pedestrian "big bad" destined to be outsmarted at every turn or eventually turned. Speaking of, the main villain (wow those eyebrows bro) and his android harem are hilarious. Around the half-way mark some obstacles of note do begin to impede our OP protagonists. Also, a guy takes a piss on the space shuttle on launch day, and a Britney Spears clone is launched into space on that same shuttle mainly because the retirement-age main villain finds her music "intrinsically horrible" and sees it as a win/win way to draw out Moldiver. Bravo! Art 10 Killed it. The world is just gorgeous, and the flex is real. Instead of panning around the place explaining it or having fairly static shots of it worked in around key sequences, Moldiver flips the script and uses fight scenes, chase scenes, races to get to people on time, meetups between characters and every other important moment to show you beautiful backgrounds and elements of the world that are compelling on their own while moving the camera around and working with scale so very well. Creative vision bursts out of the open world shots into your brain, and the technology drawn in Moldiver is mesmerizing. VCRs and Formula 1 cars are hobbyist antiques, when asked why he likes Formula 1 racing the main character replies "you're just too young to uderstand the manly roar of an exhaust and the delicious squeal of rubber on concrete." The android harem is always being remodeled in interesting ways when Moldiver trashes them, and the hand drawn collateral damage easily outdoes the standard fare of today. A line uttered by the Formula 1 announcer from that episode sums it up - "Massive devastation! It's a huge collapse! It's amazing ladies and gentlemen!" A huge number of random hand drawn background characters help to add even more depth to the world. Sound 10 It has its own original opening with hilarious lyrics. Some of the tracks that are put in here are noticeably apt for that point in the story. There is an impressive range of musical genres woven into the score. Sound effects and voice acting in the dub are great - there's one scene where a press conference is held and you can hear individual reporters shouting out their questions over each other and they get that just right. Similarly, there's a scene at the beach (thankfully before the era of fanservice beach episodes) where you hear beachgoers in the background and this just-barely-audible "Hey where's my towel who took my towel!". We witness a concert put on by someone who opens with a song that was playing on the radio in the background in the first episode. Little bits of background dub work like this are done super well in Moldiver, and I could see them being bungled and/or absent for fear of being bungled in a less competent production. Character 9 No character is bad, a welcome change of pace. All high achievers with noteable strengths and weaknesses, they walk the walk instead of talking nonsense. We're not insulted with some side character praising the annectdotal achievements of some turd we're supposed to believe is the world's foremost "technologist" despite being an adolescent. Instead we're treated to wall-to-wall servers and notes/papers all over the floor in the room of the inventor of Moldiver technology, work ethic to rival that of the average person in real life on the part of all charcters, realistic goal setting, responsibilities, side hustles and hobbies - yet also delightful insanity that makes absolutely no sense. The main character turns out to kind of not be a main character... really has no clear ambitions at all. The world doesn't force it upon his shoulders either. No demon fox of destiny living inside him, no montages where the supposed strongest good guys teach him to be stronger than they are or blah blah blah bullshit about how only he can fix this world... NO. This guy just wants to play with his toys, and hardly gives a fleeting fuck about them beyond the eureka phase - but also is not a nihilistic edge lord (because that's totally the personality that rises to the top of competitive technical fields, right? Yeah, no). So that guy's sister, and that guy's little brother end up in the mix - and they're great too. His high school buddy? Great. The main villain, as discussed, great. His android harem, great. The somewhat narcissistic rival of our female lead, great. It feels like watching one of those sports teams that has no outright superstars, but no weak link go ahead and win the championship. The only slightly odd development is when the little brother decides to enter the fray as some kind of baby genius - other than that felt pretty good to just kick back and enjoy an Anime free of chalkboard cheese graters whining and eeeking and bruh-ing all over the place. Enjoyment 9 Outdated though it is, if more Anime were made to this standard I would be able to recommend a lot more Anime to everyday folk. I'm not sure how things started out like Moldiver, and ended up like... well, you know. Moldiver is a superhero cartoon comedy with all the same high-quality action we wade through hours of trash Anime tropes to experience in today's shows, but closer together and drawn into a world that feels far more alive than Japanese Hogwarts or wherever Anime are suposedly taking place today. Also, can sum up the tropes and fanservice in Moldiver on one hand - don't need a supercomputer. The dub is above average, definitely shows its age at times but is also better than most dubs despite that. Lots of little details in the animation got a ton of love, and the sophistication of the artists beams at you in almost every scene. Moldiver reminds me of South Park or The Boys, it makes you want to hang out with the people who created it because they're probably legit. A welcome surprise to stumble on, and will be the catalyst for me to check out far older, less mentioned Anime than I would have previously bothered with.

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