Toward The Terra Episode 1 - Waking Day
OP - endscape (UVERworld) - the song is a bit stop-start, but when it’s going it’s great; the OP’s pretty decently animated as well, looks very promising.
ED - Love is… (Miliyah Kato) - I lost interest here I’m afraid, I couldn’t tell you if the song was entirely performed by a drunk giraffe with a pair of coconuts. The animation was one of those boring “windowed clips from the episode” things that blight so many anime.
On the planet Ataraxia, Jomy Shin is about to go through his “Waking Day” on his 14th birthday where he will become an adult in the eyes of the government. However, Jomy has been having strange dreams; not THOSE sorts of dreams, but dreams of weird women and Takehito Koyasu talking about the future and seeing planet Earth once more. Jomy’s behaviour flags up suspicion with the authorities who test him to see if he is a “Mu” - whilst their tests prove negative, when the Universal Computer that runs Ataraxia attempts to wipe his childhood memories as part of Waking Day he is rescued by Takehito Koyasu, whose ACTUAL name is Soldier Blue, an immensely powerful becloaked psychic warrior. Jomy now has a dodgy shoulder, a squeaky telepathic pet AND a firing squad to contend with; what’s the burden of an entire race’s future compared to that?
I think the best word to describe Toward the Terra is “solid”, although that does the show a bit of a disservice. I think it’s safe to say that the first episode doesn’t really overexcite - the animation is serviceable, the artwork decent, and the story mostly just setting up the groundwork. However, what IS there is quite interesting in my opinion; although I’ve not read the manga, there are quite clearly the seeds for a nice big epic story about growing up and hitting people with psychic blasts, two of my favourite stock anime storylines.
Above all, it’s really the tone of Toward the Terra that appeals most based on this first episode; again, like Darker Than Black it’s quite low key, but it comes across as being intriguing, at least to me. So whilst this first episode isn’t as immediately attention-grabbing as a lot of the other shows we’ve seen this season, I still think that Toward the Terra will be worth following. As long as there are plenty of psychic blasts, that is.
April 11th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Er, Blue’s voice is Sugita Tomokazu. Koyasu’s character is the black-haired guy from the opening. (Why did it have to be Keith? Why?!)
Anyway, I love the character designs (I’m a sucker for retro shoujo style) but the animation could be better. Probably I’m spoiled by Bones and the breathtaking animation work they did for Juuousei (they might have ruined the story but at least the visuals were great), but I’m a bit disappointed that the animation in Terra he is merely decent. I hope it won’t be worse.
April 11th, 2007 at 12:55 am
I love Takehito Koyasu as much as the next person, but you got your voices mixed up BluWacky. It’s Tomokazu Sugita who is Soldier Blue, though Takehito Koyasu does seem to have a role in the series.
Personally didn’t enjoy the first episode much due to all the laywork for (I assume) the actual story. Probably will stick it out for another episode or two but as you said, if there aren’t any psychic blasts I’m outtie ;)
April 11th, 2007 at 2:11 am
Well frankly speaking, after sitting through Juuousei I’d much rather they go through with mediocre animation and a great story than something like that. As long as the animation doesn’t get THAT bad, I guess. Surely they’ll put in effort… it’s a doroku show, I hope they make use the (assumedly) better budget.
Doubt i t’ll get better though (unless they have that rare case where they outsource an ep to a studio better than them, ala Bones’ half of ep 24 in Xebec’s Fafner)
April 11th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Animation and story don’t really go hand-in-hand… The problem with Juuousei was that they tried to squeeze five volumes of very background-heavy (and dialogue-heavy) story into a ridiculous 11 episodes. If Terra he is longer than that (preferrably two seasons) then it’s going to be fine.
The animation bothers me because one thing I love about Takemiya Keiko’s works is the elegant, graceful style. During the first episode I kept expecting its anime equivalent and I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t deliver.
April 11th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Bah, all these seiyuu start to blend into one after a while… you know, I was SO sure it was Bad Teeth Man, but at least he’s in here somewhere (he’s playing the main rival, right?)
I think 26 episodes should be fine to cover the manga, personally - Jyu-Oh-Sei was too short, obviously, but 26 episodes is more than enough for most series I think.
I have to agree that the elegance of the manga artwork is lost a little; as much as I love Yuuki’s work I think they come across a lot chunkier than the somewhat wispy look that Takemiya produces. I think the real test will be how the background artists cope with Keith’s scenes with the mother computer etc. from what little I’ve seen of the manga.
Nevertheless, though, for me the story is the real draw here. I’m not expecting miracles in artwork or animation as one of the studios working on this is virtually untried and the other is Tokyo Kids. Does Takeda pump any extra money into the doroku slot at all, or is it merely he dictates the ideology of what goes in there? I suppose Terra’s themes of racism etc. fit with the similar stuff in the Gundams and Blood+, although since I never watched enough of AA I couldn’t really say if they carried through there.
April 11th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Have to admit, although i liked Sugita in Haruhi and Hachikuro, by now he bores me as soldier blue, I think it’s cause he just doesn’t sound that different from me from role to role. But then again Keiji Fujiwara didn’t and after his role as Hughes he seemed to be EVERYWHERE so i guess it’s all relative huh?
I believe it got around a 4% tv rating to start of with, weither it’ll be any longer then 26 eps is up in the air though. I think if this fails (unless there is yet ANOTHER gundam, which i dont believe) then MBS will pull the anime timeslot (after all it IS cutting into Ultraman’s ‘hood, hhehehe).
April 11th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
sorry i meant “to me”
April 11th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
I doubt that Terra he was designed to be a doroku show. After all, it must have started earlier than planned - had Ayakashi had its full run (meh :/), the slot would’ve been occupied until fall, and Terra he must have been produced with this in mind. I remember being very surprised to hear that Terra he would air in this spot, simply because as far as I remember the manga it’s not exactly doroku material. IMO Terra he would be much more at home in the Noitamina slot (that already aired Juuousei, another sci-fi shoujo show), and my completely uninformed theory is that it may have been originally slated to run after Nodame Cantabile. Also, if it was meant to be a doroku show it would probably have a bigger budget, bigger names and would be animated by a bigger studio. Eh, anyway, I just hope it won’t be cancelled when it fails to bring in stellar ratings…
April 15th, 2007 at 3:11 am
Actually, Terra e… only got a 3% rating to start off with; 3.1% to be exact, which is just a little worse than what Ayakashi pulled in its first episode, which was 3.6%. Of course, this is only the first episode, but I don’t think this show is going to do well in the doroku slot either. It’s a show that would appeal more to adults than the typical audience of that slot, mainly due to the retro style look and being based off of a 30 year old manga.
I have mixed feelings about this show at the moment. I’ve read a general summary of both Episodes 1 and 2, but I don’t know if this kind of show will be interesting to me or not. Personally, I liked Ayakashi Ayashi more than what I have read/saw of the first two episodes. I may give this one more shot, but if Episode 3 doesn’t sound interesting, I may drop the show and just stick to the ones I want to watch this Spring.
As far as the doroku slot goes, I wouldn’t be too surprised if the Fall 2007 show for the doroku slot is Gundam. They need a show that will appeal to the fangirls (that made GS and FMA so popular) to bring the ratings back up, and so far, Sunrise has not failed MBS/TBS in doing so.
If this show fails, or if the show to replace Terra e… fails as well, then MBS probably will stop doroku anime once and for all.
April 16th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Frankly, if the only hope for the doroku anime slot is yet another Gundam Seed or Code Geass spinoff/ripoff, I’d rather see it cancelled. At least FMA was a damn good show whose main purpose wasn’t pandering to its fans. GS and Geass on the other hand, are little more than glorified doujinshi-fodders, and any attempt to outdo them to grab more audience is destined to
bring the Apocalypsebecome a parody of itself, and I don’t know if that would be entertaining or just plain pathetic.PS.: I’ll never stop hating Gundam Wing for starting the whole “pretty boys in mecha” thing and making it popular. Never ever.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
[…] that scene totally outclassed every surprise I’ve seen so far this season. Cinnamon Ass has a summary available (with spoilers) if you can’t be bothered, […]
April 29th, 2007 at 9:18 am
The anime doesn’t compare with the original manga. It’s leaving out vital parts like Blue’s monologue “Question the way of the society. The more questions, the better.”, the racism on the side of humans AND the Mus (in the TV series, Mus don’t exhibit much racism, but in the manga, they do; in the manga, both races have their own racism, which is a vital part of the plot).