Ranked #6251

Tenkuu Danzato Skelter Heaven

From Idea Factory, the creative minds that gave us Mars of Destruction, comes Tenkuu Danzato Skelter Heaven. I use the term creative minds loosely when it comes to anything from this studio. About the best I can say about this anime is, well its better than Mars of Destruction.

The info page says this anime is based on a game. I have never heard of it but I will take their word for it. Perhaps playing the game would have made the story make more sense. From what I can gather, five cute and huge breasted girls who also happen to be artificial beings are part of a military team of mech pilots. Seriously if you’re going to go through the trouble of making artificial beings you might as well make them big breasted cute high school girls’ right!? Their job is basically to do clichéd school activities and train in bouncing chairs that shake their tits. A crisis situation hits Tokyo when a gigantic mechanical squid monster appears over the city. Apparently this is only a crisis when it starts moving and is immediately deemed an enemy. I guess if a giant floating squid appeared over Stockholm my country's military would react. But I kind of think someone would attempt communication with it first. I mean at least check and see if they have a killer recipe for miso soup first. Our heroines are so enthusiastic about being called to an emergency situation that they rush to their mechs. And by rush I mean they take the time to shower before leaving. There is a gigantic squid floating over Tokyo and they are completely oblivious to this as they horse around and practice archery. Sounds like an exciting story huh? At least its only 18 minutes long, and 4 minutes are OP/EN songs. It will be over soon, mercifully.

The characters are just as pointless as the story. The only way you might remember any of their names is that they are displayed in the OP animation. They are flat and uninteresting and completely clichéd stereotypes. There is also way too many of them. There are almost as many characters as there is minutes of animation. They exist and their boring, that’s about all you can say about them.

Looking at when this was produced I am actually surprised this came out a year before Mars of Destruction. The animation quality and overall production values is light years ahead of the before mentioned classic turd. Though let’s not get carried away, the art and animation still suck pretty bad. Skelter Heaven uses a lot of CG effects. I am not a fan of CG but for the most part these are pretty decent. They aren’t bad so much as silly looking. (in particular the giant floating squid monster) Where it really fails is the integration of the characters into the backgrounds and mech units. It’s hard to describe, but they almost look like cardboard cutouts placed on top of the CG effects. There isn’t much detail to any of the characters and besides their hair styles and colors there is basically no difference in any of them.

The sound and music is the best aspect of this show. Some of the acting performances are pretty horrible though and several characters including the male lead seem to have voices that are horrible matched to their characters. The songs at the OP and EN are ok and are probably the only thing that feels like it was done by anyone with any talent.

Perhaps if you played the game and REALLY liked it you might want to check this out. However, my guess is the game probably sucked really badly too. Its mercifully short so it has that going for it. But it’s also too short to develop any kind of story or interest in it. The ending is also open and unresolved as is the fates of several characters. Not that you will care.


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This show was so great, I forgot the character's names.

This was one of Idea factory's best works since Mars Destruction. The music was outstanding, it really helped bring out the deep emotions that the story was laden with. The art was also quite delicious. I was by no means screaming "RAEP!" and "GET SOME!" while I was watching this.

If you loved MArs of Destruction, you'll probably love this even more.