Blue Gender

This anime was rather good, it really pulled you in the first few episodes, however at a point it loses some of its steam and is just not the series I was expecting it to be. Basically, the story starts off great as this dude with some mysterious illness is put into cold storage so that one day he can perhaps be revived when a cure is found. He is awakened, but not to a bunch of doctors saying "We did it!". No, instead he is awakened in a nightmare as the earth has been overrun with giant insect creatures, his only chance of survival a mysterious girl using some type of robot vehicle to fight off the many different creatures now seemingly intent on killing people. This part of the story is great, seems they have some plans on using the dude to stop the creatures, his illness being the key. A lot of people are now living in space and this is where the girl must get the boy so they can begin setting a plan of attack against the bugs in motion. It is a really good series up to the point you sort of find out what the people with this illness are needed for and you ask yourself "what"? I just never got what was so special about them, seems like they really had no special ability to me. The series once it reaches the go back to earth phase kind of loses its luster that it built up in the very exciting escorting kid back to the spaceship part of the show. I also never saw the last episode of this series so while I saw all the others I still feel incomplete when discussing this start with a bang series. Just needed work on the second half of the show.

Yuji Kaido is a normal 20 something with the rest of his life ahead of him but after coming down with a serious and strange sickness he decides to go into suspended animation until a cure is found. Finaly in the year 2031 22 years after going to sleep he awakins to a nightmarish world no one could of expected. Upon his awaking he is saved by a group of futuristic military squad know as the Sleeper Recvoery Team, equiped with the heavest of weapons and lead by the cold yet beatuful Marlene Angel. Realizing the team is his only hope of survival and discovering now that the world is overrun by large bug-like creatures only known as the Blue. Yuji must now find his own destiny and ends up on a path that may not only save or destroy himself but the hope of mandkind. Without knowing who to trust on the real Earth or Second Earth(A Space station filled with survivors) Yuji turns to the only person who may be able to save him Marlene. A very good show if you've seen Starship Troopers and liked it then check this out. The best episode in the season is Episode 15 Calm. In the episode you really get the feeling of sparks between Yuji and Marlene. Check it out.

This series despite being less than perfect has it's share of moments. The premise of the series is much like Robotech perhaps in the Invid storyline where a bunch of mysterious bug monsters have seized control of earth. The monsters are truly disturbing and there are some heart wrenching moments in the series. The truly spectacular part of this series is the emotional journey of the main character as he awakens in the future to find the world he knew destroyed and his desperate fight for survival. Where this series is very different from Robotech is that it treats it's subject matter in as gruesome and horrifying a way as it rightfully deserves to be.

I'm not a big anime fan, and I only put this on my watchlist because YouTube randomly recommended me a video list of gritty/gory anime featuring mechs, and this was on it. So it seemed like it was worth checking out.

The first two or three episodes were really good, and set the tone of how dreadful the world is within this anime series, but the entire middle section of the series has way too many filler episodes. Even then, I could have tolerated that had the continuity of the series been much better.

In some episodes vehicles and mechs were heavily damaged, but in the next episode (or even later in the same episode) the vehicles and mechs were restored. Later in the series they were better about the continuity, but early on there were a ton of issues like this, which made it hard to get immersed in the series, since moments that should have and could have had more impact were lessened due to immersion-breaking incongruities.

A good example is that characters seem to have infinite amounts of ammo just until the story doesn't need them to have infinite amounts of ammo. Mechs are highly capable just until they're not, and they become cannon fodder for the bugs.

I didn't have any problems with the over-arching story and what the series was trying to get across (even though it was wrong in its assessment of what's happening on the planet). But the continuity didn't improve until the second half of the series.

I think from episode 14 or 15 onward things really ramped up and improved greatly. Also there's a much stronger focus on the consistency of the characters, battle damage, and the war effort. So it made it feel much more grounded in its depiction of the world and battles.

Characters regularly repairing their mechs, and the damage they encounter makes more sense later in the series, which, again, makes the story flow and action scenes mean a lot more.

For this reason it's a difficult series to judge. A lot of the filler episodes are insufferable and mostly pointless, and some episodes seem to be filled with the two leads constantly just yelling out each other's names (especially on the space station).

But the back-half of the series really picks it up and is quite impressive. You can tell a large portion of the budget was put into the first half of the final episode with the big battle scene, which was really well done. And again, there was consistency with the way the battle played out. It's just a shame that there were so many wasteful episodes getting to that point, as well as a lot of ridiculous plot contrivances for certain characters as well. I think if the first half flowed better and they weren't so quick to kill off certain characters within the first handful of episodes, it could have been a much better series.

Still, the premise is awesome. The first two episodes are intense, and the back-half of the series really improves the flow and storytelling pacing. It's just a shame that there is a lot of filler getting to that point.

I remembered watching the first episode of this show way back in the early 2000's on adult swim. I didn't care for it at the time, but due to the current pandemic I have been watching numerous anime series that feature a bleak, hopeless earth on the verge of collapse. Blue Gender fits this profile nicely and the story is dark, brooding, and besides the two main characters, there is little to no plot armor for anyone. There are numerous tired tropes that you will likely groan at during the show, however it has a strong enough plot and main characters to drive the story along.

Very good. Nothing amazing, but very good.