Captain Earth – First Impression Review

Episode 1 and 2 Review

So…. this is another mecha series that’s airing this season. I know that 4 episodes are currently out and I am a bit late with this review, but… better late than never right? I tried, I really did try to watch episode 3 but oh my god, I just couldn’t put myself through more of it.

And honestly, I didn’t really want to write a review of this show, but I felt like I just had to vent my frustration somehow. So forgive me if I come across as more of an idiot than usual in this review.

Perhaps it’s just me (and if it is please tell me), but the show came across as being corny, painful and oh so cheesy at times.

Sypnosis

“One night right before summer vacation, Daichi Manatsu, a second-year in high school, sees a weird round rainbow floating in the sky above Seed Island (Shuushi/Tane Island) and ventures there alone. He has seen this rainbow before. With the memories of his father’s mysterious death and an encounter of a mysterious boy and girl, Daiji arrives on the island while the alarm of a building labeled “Earth Engine” is going off. Someone asks him “Are you a captain?” just as robotic intruders from Uranus called “Kiltgang” arrive. The battle around the shining stars is about to begin.”

-source: mal

Episode 2 continues on from the introduction fight that started at the end of episode one, it takes nearly half an episode for the fight to be over (and honestly, it wasn’t a great battle scene as there was only one main point to that scene – Daichi is special). Daichi is then brought back to the island for a check up and a short interrogation as to how he had come to obtain the Livlaster and managed to fire a shot from it.

Review

There were moments during the first two episodes where I had started to see hope in the show, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.

Why? Well, here’s why…

Daichi starts off as this unmotivated, a bit of a foolish sort of fellow who had lost his father at a young age. By the end of episode 2, he is suddenly highly motivated to live and although he still remains foolish, he has magically morphed into this “special” being.

Perhaps all this unexplained logic behind why Daichi is so special might be explained in a later episode, but the fact remains that the execution as to how his “uniqueness” was portrayed came across as being lamed. The show felt like something I would have enjoyed back in primary school, where kids loved watching “robots” fight it out on screen with the main characters being strong and special, as after all, all of us want to feel like we are harboring some unique super power that we have yet to discover.

But this show is aimed at young teens and older. So I can’t understand why some of the story’s logic played out the way it did.

Take the above scene for instance, Daichi is suddenly confronted with a whole bunch of nonsensical information (that normal everyday people would find hard to accept) and like a normal person, he is left confused about what is going on. Yet when he is shown something scary (a “monster” flying towards earth which scares him), he automatically accepts what’s happening as the truth and that because he is afraid of it (or his gut is telling him that it’s bad news), it must be a terrible thing that is approaching earth. Bias much?

Alright, so lets say I looked past that issue since it’s not a big deal, but then what happens next?

Daichi decides that the fate of earth is somehow left up to him to do something about it.

Right. Someone please get that boy’s brain checked, thank you very much.

It annoys me when the characters created in a show don’t come across as being realistic even when they are placed in the context of their series. Rather than telling a story through the characters natural behaviour, it feels like the character is forced to act a certain way just so the story is able to move forward in that direction. I just hope for everyone’s sake that his character development gets better in episode 3 and 4 (see what I did there by saying “I hoped” that it was for everyone’s sake? 😉 ).

But back onto the above scene, so Daichi is then asked as to whether he is a captain or not, and he comes to an urgent conclusion that he has to save earth despite not knowing how he is going to do it or what the heck is going on. Thus reiterating the character flaw that he is a hopeless fool.

Or course, instead of showing us how Daichi suddenly knows how to pilot a big machine and Livlaster, the writers decides that it’s not important. I mean, who needs details right?

All they have to do is show the first frame of a man holding an apple, and the last frame of an apple no longer in the guys hand. Who cares if he ate it or tossed it away or a dinosaur came to steal it from that poor soul. Those in between moments isn’t important because we trust you to be smart enough to figure things out the same way the main character Daichi figured stuff out for himself. =_=” Like I said above, perhaps I’m just too stupid for this show.

“Let me take a selfie” Say cheese!

So back onto the series, we now know that Daichi is rushing to save the world, but I guess someone forgot to put in a memo for the animators, because Daichi spent a good minute (or two) floating in the air not moving nor doing anything whilst we see others staring at him in awe. I guess the writers decided to give Daichi a moment to collect what’s left of his mind, and it’s good to know that even during stressful times, people are able to take a moment to appreciate the beauty in machine floating infront of them.

All of the above happens towards the end of the first episode and the second episode picks off where the first one ended and we see Daichi being taught to pilot the machinery. So perhaps the writers didn’t leave everything up to the imagination. Yet how do they explained how he managed to get up into space in the first place if he didn’t know how to operate the machine?

The show then continues from that, and I could pick on more scenes but I think that you get the drift of where I am headed. 😉

In all honesty, it wasn’t the leaps in logic that got on my nerves, but how the execution of some of the scenes came across as being corny and laughable.

The show has a few good moments of suspense in the second half of the second episode, but when the scene that follows is about the boy wanted to show his friends a boomerang in such a desperate manner, I just can’t bring myself to take the show seriously and thus my lack of interest in the series.

On the bright side, a segment of the first episode that I had enjoyed was the character development scenes between the three kids and their bond with one another. That was the highlight of the first two episodes for me.

The animation in this series is pretty decent and I don’t have too much to say there since it is produced by Bones Studio and I love their stuff more often than not.

Perhaps when the whole series is over I might marathon it and see how it turns out, but for now, I don’t think I’ll be watching it every week.

First Impression Ratings: 4/10 – I can’t look past how unjustifiably special they make Daichi out to be without so much of a hint at an explanation coming soon.

A question for you guys:

Did you like the show and why?

Let me know because it’s always fun to hear different points of views and perhaps I am just looking at this series from the wrong angle.

Till the next review~ (^^)/”

-ra