Blue Gender

Blue Gender is an old school anime with a familiar post apocalypse story where you have insect monsters exterminating mankind. The main character is awaken from cold sleep after several decades and is needed to help save Earth from the creatures once and for all. Mechs included.

There's many positives to point out. The story is always changing things up and keeping the characters moving. One location to the next. Sometimes its man vs. Insect, and sometimes its human vs. Human conflicts. The show has a great musical score and sound effects for the guns, insects, and machinery which goes a long way in building atmosphere and weight to scenes. The violence is brutal and you feel the intensity of the action. The show was able to keep my interest for the entire run time and rarely hit pacing issues. If you love post apocalyptic anime, then you will probably enjoy this show despite its flaws.

The main issues that really drag down the show from potential greatness is the animation and the main character. The animation is very rough and was distracting countless times. Shots are reused, badly inserted animation on top of backgrounds, and other eye sores that needed polishing. Even for shows AIC was producing around the same time such as "Now and Then, Here and There", its below average quality. I'm usually forgiving when it comes to hand drawn animation, but even for me I couldn't ignore its issues.

The main character is hard to root for the majority of the show. At the first half he complains and screws things up way too much, and then he becomes unlikable for another section in the second half. To be fair, the show sets up the character to be this way in the story, and had the show handled it better i would have had no problem with it. However, the show takes way too long for this flawed character to change to the point to where you start to hate the main character and that is never good. They either needed to tone down the character, or have his arc flow more naturally. I want more flawed characters in anime, but he just did not work for me at all.

Overall, its a slightly above average anime. Even for those who do like this anime, I can't see that many of them claiming its an overlooked masterpiece or anything.

The good:

* Hardcore SciFi.

* The excellent plot.

* Script takes no prisoners, literally.

* Cinematography, especially for the many non-action parts, is sometimes average, but often brilliant.

* Drama and romance.

* Whether it concerns sex or violence, this is adult content, and not ashamed about it. The sexual aspects though, are in good taste, for the sake of the plot.

* No silly humour or fan-service.

* No fillers - a smooth ride from start to finish.

* Many of the non-moving visuals are incredible.

* Great and appropriate use of colours.

* The soundtrack is absolutely amazing, and matches the plot and visuals quite well.

The bad: * The action sequence are alright, but many parts fall short of the standards of today. Even in the 1990s, there was better (see: Neon Genesis Evangelion).

* Some typical cliches of the Sci-Fi post-apocalyptic genre.

* The animated is dated, sadly.

* Too many Japanese cultural mannerisms for an anime of this type.

* Becomes a bit environmentalist-preachy towards the end.

* A tad overuse of the soundtrack sometimes.

* Main character (Yuji) who could have been less annoying.

Overall, an enjoyable show. Should absolutely receive a remake, a live-action version (series and not a film!), and a video game. Truly excellent material that can be worked with further.

With superior animation, slightly better-orchestrated action-scenes, and less cliche, this could have easily been a 9/10. But as it is, a 7/10. I would still recommend it to SciFi lovers who also like anime.

I'm not really a big anime guy; in fact, the genre as a whole sort of repulses me. Blue Gender really only piqued my interest because it was on Adult Swim's lineup around two, three years ago (back when AS was worth watching) and I caught a couple episodes. I'm a total sucker for post-apocalyptic scenarios, and giant, mutilating bugs never hurt anything, so I recently got hold of the series in complete. 36 hours later, I'd watched the series from beginning to end; not so much because it was gripping (that's only partially true), but more because I'm a maniac.

Blue Gender is driven not by the prototypical giant robot action Japan is (in)famous for, nor the horrendous monsters, nor even, for that matter, the dialog. The viewer is compelled through Blue Gender by the characters and their subsequent emotional arrangements, more specifically the leads, Yugi and Marlene. It's basically an epic, sci-fi soap opera with heavy metal and big bugs.

Marlene is the ideal woman. (Yeah yeah, she's a cartoon, "ew gross", get over it: that's not the point. The point is the idea being conveyed by whatever layered ink it travels through:) Marlene portrays the aesthetic of an ideal woman: strong, self-sufficient, but irrevocably feminine. I'd argue that she's more of a focal point for the viewer than Yugi, but Yugi is also a necessary component.

Yugi is a bumbling, sometimes whiny character that often accomplishes incredible things. This the viewer can appreciate and identify with; his relationship with Marlene, because of the viewer's identification with him, is the key in the ignition for this work. The audience is propelled through the series hoping intensely he'll get himself together and snag this pristine idol of a woman.

The interactions that follow the setup between these two are worth the 500-whatever minutes of moderate quality animation and dialog.

The other characters, for the most part, are semi-interesting. Some, however, are notable (eg, Dice). The atmosphere and setting are kind of cool; the creators do a pretty good job of portraying an insect infested planet Earth, but again, this is mostly beside the point.

In this ultimately lonely life, people often underwhelm us. I'm constantly disappointed by the trite selection of people placed before me. Fiction provides a remedy to this, allowing us to construct a composite ideal of characters we'd like to know within the stage of our minds. After all, the only difference between memory and reality is the level of detail.

Anyways, philosophic drooling out of the way, I'm glad to say that this series instilled in me memories of a character I appreciate, and I'd endure double the length of these episodes, spotty details and all, just to glean what I have.

On an end, this series has softened my harsh glare towards cartoons. While I doubt I'll be browsing the Anime section anytime soon, I'm a bit more open to taking animation for the ideas it's portraying as opposed to the raw, intrinsic value of the animation itself.

Oh, also, keep a keen eye out for the hilarious Engrish used in the animated computer interfaces... "Meesuement Impossibility!".

Yuji Kaido is an average guy with a problem: he's sick, and there's no cure. Doctors simply don't know enough to fix the problem, but they can offer Yuji an amazing opportunity. After reluctantly agreeing, Yuji is cryogenically frozen until a cure for his condition is discovered. But things are very different when he wakes. Tokyo (the entire Earth, for that matter) is in ruins, consumed by merciless, insect-like predators known as the Blue. Pursued by the massive arthropods, Yuji is rescued by icy professional soldier Marlene Angel, a member of a military team assigned to recover "sleepers" like Yuji and transport them back to the orbital space station where humanity has taken refuge. As the Blue hunt them at every turn and team members start to die, Yuji and Marlene will have to rely on each other to survive and to escape from the planet.

This is an exceedingly well-made show. The Blue are interestingly designed and frighteningly portrayed, the characters are likable (well, the good guys are), and the storyline never bores the viewer. The general film "rules" about who can and cannot die (children are safe, noncombatants are safe, etc.) are not rigidly followed here, and the series is all the more suspenseful for it.

There are a few issues, like a small amount of nudity that can jar you if you're not expecting it, and an environmental plot element that can feel somewhat preachy at times. However, these aren't enough to justify taking away any more than one star.

Blue Gender has a dark tone and its fair share of violence, and is not for everyone. However, if you enjoy the genre, this is a visually and, I kid you not, emotionally appealing series that can be horrifying, exciting, and even touching.

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.