Rolling Review – Planet With (01)

Episode Synopsis:

Soya Kuroi (or, presumably, Kuroi Soya) is an amnesiac teenage runt who woke up two weeks ago in the “care” of Ginko – a green-haired weirdo in a French maid outfit – and the large anthropomorphic cat creature whom she refers to only as Sensei. When a mysterious object appears over the nearby ocean and a group of seven people in super-powered battle armor fly out to destroy it, Ginko and Sensei summon Soya to ambush one of the apparent heroes upon their victory. Initially unsure what to make of the situation, Soya is invigorated after claiming the source of the hero’s power…

Review:

It’s been a while since we had some good, old-fashioned weird around here. Let’s get another shot of that real quick:

Excellent, excellent.

This show has a couple of hooks in me already. I’m pulling for the class rep – even if her longish name ends up being nothing more than the set-up for a couple of fleeting verbal gags in the first act. As someone who was a transplant in both elementary and high school, I appreciate her attempts to help Soya integrate, and catching her breath after meeting him in the beginning is a reasonably subtle way to imply that there might be even more to it than that.

The 3D-CG combat’s pretty solid. Interestingly, both Soya and the hero troupe transform into their “mecha” with the appearance of blue crystal formations or something, even though Soya’s mech has a modern metal-and-neon visual style to it and the others seem to take their design cues from Jomon-era sculpture.

I’m particularly interested, though, in the psychological defenses of the large, dubiously-labeled object that the heroes (and, presumably, the JSDF) throw down against. It’s not the first time a someone or something has tried to give an attacker pause by showing them an illusion of a happy life or depicting themselves as a loved one, but given that this is episode one, I’m curious to see what’s going to be behind all of this, and what twists there might be in store.

I don’t know how exactly how common the “Villain Protagonist” thing has gotten recently, but from right here there’s plenty of time to see both sides of the story. The ED is looking like there’s a whole Gaea-from-Escaflowne thing happening (another planet with Earth, perhaps?), so that and the dragon should be getting some explanation at some point. Here’s hoping everything pays off.