So far, I have seen only the first ten episodes, on 2 DVD’s. The menus are good – a bit slow to get to the point, because of animation, but it’s good stuff, and very clear. Music is a plus; the opener and closer are both catchy romantic tunes, and the soundtrack during action shots obviously makes use of a “bass choir” (if there’s a technical term for it, I don’t know what it is) overlaying a good electronic score. The animation is good; underwater landscapes are detailed, and interiors have an authentic worn and rusty look to them. You can look at areas in Adena and know the place is run down and economically blighted.
Voice acting in the Japanese version is outstanding, but avoid the English dub like the plague. They made a horrible, horrible choice for Lt. Vestemona, and she’s the major female lead. Her seiyu comes across as a whiney, bitchy, little twit. I’ve heard more lethargic delivery, but never more revolting. It took all of five lines spoken by her before I cried “Uncle!!!” and switched to the Japanese voice track. It was bad enough to make me cheer her rival Enora on.
Character design is good, with the possible exception (again, unfortunately) of Lt. Vestemona; I am bad about face recognition, and her changes in hair color and styling from on duty to off gave me problems. For some reason, when she’s off duty and lets her hair down, the animators tend to color it more brown, especially in dim light, and that threw me. It wouldn’t have if I’d paid more attention to the opening credits. There’s a beautiful fade there, that highlights her inner conflict over being back on Mars, let alone the other little problem she discovers there.
Gram is fairly typical, just a good-looking hero, but the designers avoided the easy trap of making Captain Elizibeth look too sexy to be the leader or Enora vampish enough to ring false. Bon, Gram’s young friend, is missing a tooth, which helps drive home that these people are poor; neither we nor they can take their health or dental hygine for granted. Life’s hard. Talking cats and robots with an attitude? Done to death. But a talking porpoise that walks around in a robot suit? A bit different.
And that really summarizes Mars Daybreak. There’s not a lot that’s original; it’s one clichè after another. (Edit: it is based on a computer game, after all!) Take a “true prince” story. Hide it under a science-fiction sea pirate adventure. Tuck in political intrigue, revolutionary movements, and a love triangle involving the true prince and two strong-willed women who shouldn’t have anything to do with him, but instead have everything to do with him. Don’t forget to make the pirates be Robin Hood-like heroes, then add a few plucky kids, mecha combat, psychic girls, touchy robots, ancient mysteries, a treasure waiting to be found, a revolutionary leader, double agents, “sea-witches,” talking animals, mercenary bad-guys, manipulative politicians, and a few crackpots. Stir vigorously.
Edit: grrr, sorry about the lack of pictures for the first three hours. Stupid thing will show them in my preview, but not after posting, unless I put a fully qualified URL in the link. Anyway, it’s fixed now. Click on the pics for the full size.
What comes out is actually a very engaging mix with likeable characters, and a fun story. It’s never entirely original, but it’s never predictable either. Even its clichès amuse, and it’s faults are easy to forgive, because the characters, while familar, are still likeable, and you can care about them. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of any semi-regular character I don’t like at least a bit — even the bad guys are never totally despicable (Kubernes possibly excepted). They may be working at cross purposes because of who and what they are, but you get the feeling that most of them actually care about something, and sometimes it’s even the same thing — albeit they all do it in their own way.
Development of those characters is so-so through the first ten episodes, but you can tell it’s building towards a climax — sooner or later, Vess is going to have to decide on her loyalties, Enora’s going to have to grow up, and Gram is going to have to think about tomorrow, because he’s got a destiny lurking out there. You just wonder how much pain each of them is going to go through — or cause each other — before it happens.
Below the picture are spoilers; mainly the first episode synopsis, which lays out the basics of this series. For Enora, I go a bit further into the series, so run off now if you don’t like having plots given away..
The crew of the Ship of Aurora, a.k.a. the ‘Mars Daybreaker’
The plot starts out like a straightforward Robin-Hood pirates vs. dastardly pawns of the Oppressive Earth Government, and the Nice Guy gets caught in the middle. Mars is in bad shape. Sometime in the past several hundred years, Mars suddenly developed a thick atmosphere , a world-spanning ocean, and ice-caps. How this happened isn’t explained; as the series develops, it may turn out to be a, if not the, central mystery. Most population is in vast city-ships that float on the surface (like icebergs, most lies hidden underwater), while smaller ships and submarines are used to travel around. There are apparently “skyhooks” (stations in geo-, or rather, martio-centric orbit, connected to the ground by long cables) but they are strictly military and apparently under Earth control. Mars is allowed no military of its own, and is being exploited by Earth, which has wreaked havoc on the local economy. Jobs are scarce, rust is everywhere, dessicant (to control the humidity) is expensive, and the planetary administrator, Anna Grace, is appointed by Earth. She spends her time making speeches full of platitudes, and being mocked by the citizenry.
Early on, we see some recently graduated military cadets landing on Mars. Three are destined to be the crew of a Seahorse (I’ll explain in a bit) assigned to hunt down the Ship of Aurora (not the ship Aurora, but Ship of Aurora). These are (junior) Captain Rich, Lt. Rosetta, and 2nd Lt. Vestemona Lauren (or “Vess,” as she’s called). Rich is a bit timid as a leader, Rosetta is somewhat of a “good-time girl,” but to be crude, Vestemona runs around like she’s got a cucumber up her ass. She’s hardcore, dedicated, mission-oriented, serious, demanding to the point of insubordinate, and only the appropriately named (senior) Captain Dolittle is willing to really call her down. When a female civilian passenger on the shuttle makes the mistake of gushing to her how romantic and adventurous Mars is, Lt. Vestemona cuts her off with a curt, “Mars is a dump.”
Pay attention to that gushy girl. You’re going to see her again.
Enora Taft and Vestemona. “Mars is a dump.” Little do they know they’re about to plunged into battle . . . for Gram’s heart.
Once on Mars, they meet their new commanding officer, Dolittle, who shows them around the base. Vess is ticked off that their gear isn’t ready for deployment yet, and appalled at Dolittle’s laid-back attitude. “Take it easy,” he says, “Command doesn’t really expect a bunch of rookies like you to go after the Ship of Aurora, now do they?” Lt. Rosetta, on the other hand, wastes little time in playing up to the senior captain. She always displays a lot more cleavage than is necessary, although her endowment doesn’t match Lt. Vestemona’s.
They are temporarily assigned to another Seahorse, which is a small submarine that serves as a tender for two underwater mechas, called “Round Bucklers” or “RB’s” for short. Vestemona’s job is to remain in the Seahorse, piloting them remotely at the end of long cables (or detaching them on radio remote). Captain Rich is the Seahorse commander, and Rosetta is the pilot. Let me say here that if you’re looking for any semblance of hydrodynamic common-sense among the various pieces of hardware in this show, forget it now. If that’s a problem, just skip the whole thing. Watching a mecha doing a spin-kick underwater is funny in a way, but I watched this show for the characters and storytelling, not scientifically accurate battle scenes. It’s best if you take the same approach.
So far, I’ve been ignoring the male lead, Gram. He’s a prince of a fellow who lives for today and lets tomorrow worry about itself. Because of the poor economy, he comes across as rather mercenary, but he’s as good as they come. He has as neighbors, two young orphens with whom he has a quasi-parental relationship, more like a big brother. Bon, the older of the two, is about ten or twelve. Shie, his younger sister, is somewhere around six to eight. When Bon is stupid enough to help a criminal break into the military district to steal dessicant, Gram instantly goes in to get him out of there. They have the bad fortune to be chased by the military directly into an attack by Aurora. Bon escapes, but Gram is knocked unconcious and dropped into the water. He’s about to drown when the odd necklace he wears mysteriously activates as a beacon, summoning a Round Buckler from the depths. It’s of atypical design; in fact there is only one other RB like it anywhere — and it’s piloted personally (not remotely) by Yagami the Reaper, the feared lead RB pilot from Ship of Aurora. Of course, he is currently nearby, battling Adena’s defenders.
Gram, in the ‘Vector of Hope.’ It wasn’t his idea to name it that. Note the necklace.
Gram is rescued by the RB, and installed in its cockpit; understandably, once he’s spotted (by the Rich/Vestemona/Rosetta team no less) they think he’s Yagami. Engaged by Vess, he gives a decent account of himself for someone who’s never been at the controls before, but he’s nearly defeated before the real Yagami swoops in with his RB and rescues him. On board the Aurora, he meets Captain Elizibeth and Yagami, who regard the RB Gram is piloting as his; they offer to pay him for help in the looting of the military warehouse. He accepts, but doesn’t realize it when a security camera takes a picture of him during the job. Gram joins the crew full time, for the money.
Yagami. Baddest geek ever to strap on a mecha. He even talks mildly while saying things like “I don’t know how to restrain myself.”
And when Vestemona sees the security camera’s picture, she’s floored. You see, she and Gram used to be a pair, and one presumes lovers, years ago, when she lived in Adena. Yep, that clichèd. But it works, because you can see how it tears her up, even though she won’t admit it to herself. There’s obviously a backstory about how she came to leave him and Mars. As it later develops, it’s tied up with how she can be such an insubordinate pain in the ass, yet no one but Dolittle will call her on it. She has somehow become the adopted daughter of the richest — and some say the most corrupt — man in the solar system.
Vestemona in conflict, taken from the opening credits.
The other person I’ve shorted so far is Enora Taft. She’s young, impressionable, rather naive, incurably romantic, curious about everything Martian, and a fireball on two legs. She’s also the granddaughter of the Presdient of Earth, but traveling incognito so she can study at a university there without a security detail shadowing her every move. In short, she’s all kinds of trouble waiting to happen, and of course, it does. She gets kidnapped by some goofy and incompetant revolutionaries. Because they damage the Ship of Aurora in making their escape, Captain Elizibeth tracks them down to exact her revenge. Enora bullies her captors until she’s practically in charge, but in the end, Gram rescues her as an abandoned city-ship falls apart around all of them. Once the crew of the Ship of Aurora finally finds out who she is, Captain Elizibeth is hot to return her, especially with the Earth military and Administrator Grace after them — except Enora has no intention of being returned! Avoiding that fate, she joins the crew, and sets her sights on Gram. No seductress, she–instead, she attaches herself to Gram, maintaining he is now her “big brother” and protector. (Edit: yes, I know she’s too young for him, but that’s what she’s after — Gram’s her first big crush, I suspect.)
As the series develops, not everyone is who or what they seem to be, and powerful forces are coming to a head, that may determine the fate of Mars and all its inhabitants. It becomes evident that the Ship of Aurora, her crew, and one Gram are going to be pivotal in how it plays out. So far, I have seen 10 episodes, and I wouldn’t describe any of them as wasted. The plot advances in each and every one, and we discover a bit more about the characters, the world, and the backstory in every episode. I’ll definately be picking up the remaining DVD’s in the future; if they maintain the same level, I’ll be giving it a fairly high score in the end.
- Fanservice: Low, generally cleavage and tight pants.
- Animation: Good.
- Music: Average or better. Not really catchy, but decent.
- Plot: Tight and reasonably deep so far; plenty of subplot action.
- Storytelling: Quality, highly engaging. Plenty of action to keep you occupied between development scenes.
- Characterization: Good. Believable, although their backgrounds are a stretch. Some support characters kind of fade into the background, but even they seem to have a story waiting to be told.
- Rewatch: Moderate to High.
- Overall Grade: So far, B+
Update 1/11/06: Just finished watching DVD vol. 3. For the last four DVD’s, they go to 4 episodes per DVD. Afraid the string of “tight plot” episodes takes a holiday , as the 2nd and third spend time developing the secondary characters through a ghost story and a bizzare romance for Aki, the #3 RB pilot (Assuming Yagami is #1 and Gram #2.) The first and fourth are very Vess-centric, as she completely looses it over Gram — and there is more to even Captain Dolittle than the buffoon he has appeared to be so far . . . Kubernes is back, and there’s little doubt about it anymore. He is the resident evil bastard of the show. He doen’t kill anyone, but he really doesn’t care if they die, either.
Oh, and Enora discovers she’s got a rival. Delicious.
