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Suisei
no
Gargantia
- By Tiberius S. Patterson
S
uisei no Gargantia (Gargantia on the Verdurous
Planet), at least according to me, was one of the
most underrated anime of its season. The story
initially appears to be your typical mecha anime
with the introduction of a pilot and what seems to be an
overpowered battle robot. Well, it’s pretty easy to be
overpowered when you’re the only highly advanced war
machine on the planet.
Gargantia was produced by Production I.G.
Production I.G is one of the older studios, who have been
around since about 1988. Perhaps their best-known,
most recent anime is Shingeki no Kyoujin. Other recent,
notable works are the Mass Effect movie, Psycho-pass
and Robotics;Notes. Perhaps their
all-time, best-known series are
the Blood franchise and the
Ghost in the Shell franchise.
In reality, they’ve done so
much that have been such
big hits that it would take a
lot of space to list them out
here. Anyway, moving on.
The series starts out
with a brief exposition
on the current state of
humanity. Everyone
lives in space and
are currently
involved in an
all-out war
with an alien
species call the
Hideazue. The
story centers
around
Ensign
Anime Reign | Issue 2 | 2013
Ledo, who is the pilot of Chamber, the
mecha called a Machine Caliber used
to fight the war against the Hideazue,
which is also an A.I. that supports
Ledo throughout the series. During
a massive engagement, the
human fleet is forced to retreat.
During the wormhole jump, Ledo
gets knocked out and wakes up 6
months later to find that he is now
on a water-covered Earth. The story
continues from here.
So, what makes this so
underrated and worth writing
about? While it may not be this
action-packed, mecha-battling,
war-of-attrition-styled anime,
it does contain a plotline that develops steadily
over the course of the series. In addition to the nice story
progression, we also see a lot of character development
from the main characters involved. At the onset, we are
introduced to Amy, who is essentially Ledo’s first contact.
At the same time, we are also introduced to Pinion, Ridget
and Bellows, who are all important characters in the story.
At the risk of spoiling whoever winds up reading
this, I won’t delve too much into the plot developments.
Due to the nature of the plot, I’m not even going to hint at
what’s to come. Usually, I don’t mind doing stuff like that,
since I can just add a spoiler tag, but it’s worth it to just
watch and find out for yourself. All the developments are
well worth it. Now, that being said, let’s move on.
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