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.

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.

Everything you loved from cheesy 80's movies, all the fighting and action of the JoJo series set in a world inhabited by mutant bug men from Mars, like in the old black and white horror movies people used to watch. If you don't like violence then this just isn't your show, not worth watching the censored version. But it isn't 'vile just to be vile' and it doesn't seek out fan service like other shows people watch that ruin the pacing with bad comedy or skin. SJW's will pull out certain scenes from the show to make it seem like there is an agenda, but it doesn't have one. It's a show meant for older teens who grew up watching Saturday mourning action shows in the early 90's, where the good guys go up against the bad guys. I like watching this more then DBZ super, naruto and bleach because those shows have gone on so long they're really just anime crap at this point, unlike shows like this or yu yu hakusho or Attack on Titan. The second season isn't bad either, again people just were pulling out scenes with no context and reading too deep into caricatures.

An incredibly interesting concept that is completely flushed down the toilet by awful execution. The art is pretty good and I liked the technical end of this anime but the writing and characterization were in most cases sub-par and in some cases genuinely bad. Near the end of season 1, I found myself desperately hoping that it would just end, as I just plain didn't care about any of the still-living characters or what they're doing, mainly because frankly they weren't doing anything except for punching monsters in character-unique ways.

In complete fairness, maybe season 2 fixes everything, but I never bothered watching it because season 1 was botched on so many levels. It's not a complete waste of time but I wish I had watched something else.

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.