Terra Formars

This series gained notoriety when it came out in Japan due to the unbelievable amount of censorship that was applied to episodes. Massive black circles would cover huge parts of the screen to block almost anything what was violent. The feedback was that the show was literally unwatchable this way and the series was a complete disaster with this incarnation. The series would soon find its way to CrunchyRoll in a completely uncensored form and, while it does have some novel ways it uses the high level of ultra violence in the show, the writing is just awful and this really is one of the worst sci-fi shows I have ever seen.

The plot makes no sense. Bug people have taken over Mars and are now going to come to Earth to kill humans. No weapons can harm them so Earth merges high-level human fighters with various bugs that has a 50% chance of death when done. These bug fighters are now on the way to Mars to kill the Bug people before they come destroy earth.

The story makes no sense. If guns and other weapons do not work, why not create Terminator like robots to destroy these bug people? It makes no sense that the earth bug people would somehow be stronger than killer robots would be, it is physically impossible for any type of hybrid bug fighter to be more powerful than a fleet of killing machine robots.

Either way, lets remove that plot hole, the series writing is awful. No characters are likable, the weird announcer makes the series seem like some 1980's Ultraman drek, and it just fails to be anything than a gore-porn crapshow.

Strong recommendation to avoid, 3/10.

Both seasons are disappointing for different reasons.

Season 01: (4/10 Stars) Gore porn. I've seen reviews talking about how the brutality was key to the story and I'd buy that if they were consistent with it, the story was stronger and the brutality was logical.. Ripping someone spine out and then using it as a sword is just plain dumb. The one thing it did have going for it was killing off or crippling characters right as you "slightly" invested in them or they got interesting.

Season 02: (0/10 Stars) They took everything remotely good and flushed it down the drain. They strangely trying adding some Ecchi to the whole thing, cutesy word bubbles, blushing females flirting with the male characters, bad jokes and a complete lack of deaths (Other than random redshirts that have no names until after they die) Oh, and all the characters got insanely stupid, making criminally bad choices for what are supposed to be the elite of the elite..

Season 1 is the best(uncensored) its amazing and the character building is fantastic. In season 2 they ruin everything great they built up. They change from a thriller-ish dark style which makes you actually fear the terraformars to a light and colourful world were characters who were hard suddenly went girly. They changed a lot like this and took away most of the good story they built up.

Simply explained watch season 1 and keep it as an open ending because season 2 is just bad...

I don't know who censors these shows, but it gets so bad it's almost unwatchable. Pity too, because this is a good show.

Interestingly, there's no real central character, as in most animes. There's an ensemble of characters from different parts of the world, who have banded together to fly to Mars and colonise the planet. They have to battle giant, mutated, humanoid, super intelligent cockroaches (yes, really), who kill humans with the same indifference we have to killing cockroaches. The humans need to bring back some cockroaches to aid in developing a vaccine for some disease that's killing people on earth. That's the general premise of the show, and I thought it was interesting.

The problem is the execution. While the storyline is interesting, there isn't enough depth into it. A few more episodes and a better resolution and it could have been a great show. Without revealing spoilers, the ending only makes sense if a second season is planned. There's plenty of violence, but the censoring takes care of that. Worth a watch.

I love the first season. Very good animation, battle and pace, it's a good shonen. However, the second season is very bad, the animation studio is not the same and you can clearly see it.