Geneshaft

A series i don't even remember running back when 'Anime Unleashed' still existed.
If you looked at this series and thought "Yay Harem" you will be disappointed to find that is not the case.

I find this to be a space drama with characters that seem to me as space elves with muted personalities with the exception Mario whom is the most down to earth person i can think of.

Art has aged well. Combining familiar drawn animations with 3D spaceships and a whole 2 battle Mecha. Everything is clean and character designs are modest and believable.

Sound was very distinctive with its music. Slow electric ... guitar chugging sometimes felt necessary.

Although not what i would call a must see series it did leave me on a positive note, which was unexpected with the series direction.

Giving it a 7 [Good]
Not recommended for people with low attention spans [You know the ones].
Wish there were a few more episodes but maybe the Manga fleshes it out.

Set some time in the distant future, "Geneshaft" takes place in a world where genetic engineering is widespread. One of the things it is used for is to ensure the women:men ratio in the world is at an "optimum" 9:1... for no good reasons that I can fathom. Of course, not only are the women genetically modified to be clever, but also good looking. Now, from this setting, you can probably guess the kind of anime this is gonna be. Yep, premises wise, this puts Geneshaft squarely in the middle of "Vandread" territory. But whilst "Vandread" is mildly enjoyable in a generic way, "Geneshaft" falls ... flat on its face.

So why is "Geneshaft" worse than "Vandread"? The difference is that Geneshaft tried too hard to be some thing that it's not. Given its ludicrous settings, let's not pretend it can be much more than a shallow show aimed at satisfying the fantasies of male otakus. But this didn't stop Geneshaft from trying. From the pretentious heavy guitar music to the pitiful attempt at constructing an intelligent sci-fi storyline and convey across some deep and meaningful message about love, it fails on pretty much all counts. On the music front, it tries to do something similar to what was done in "Trigun"... and it failed. "Trigun" just about got away with it because it oozed style. "Geneshaft" is severely lacking in the style department. The attempt at a laid back and cool sounding ending theme is even worse - the awful song sounds like it's sung by someone half asleep. Trying to be cool and up failing is worse than not trying at all.

Then there's the sci-fi story they tried to build up. They set up the whole thing well enough, giving the viewer enough questions to chew on (though I wasn't too interested in chewing on it since the anime failed to pique my interest in the first place). Problem is that they seem to have forgotten all about it half way through, because by the time "Geneshaft" ended you suddenly realise that the story is shockingly incomplete, answering hardly any of the questions posed in the first half. This is probably because towards the end it's too busy trying to force some generic "love conquers all" message down the viewer's throat, and... you guessed it - it failed. From my personal viewing experience, emotional messages generally works out only after the anime has already won over the viewer with its characters or story. Geneshaft's emotional messages were founded on hot air - it might have worked had I cared for any of the characters... but I didn't. The main protagonist is forgettable; the girl who is supposed to be genetically engineered to be perfect is such an idiot that it's laughable she managed to convince anyone in the cast to believe that she's perfect at all. The male captain is one of those emotionless people. It was obviously intended to make him "cool" and "mysteriously interesting". It failed. On both counts. He is so boringly cliched that I couldn't give a rats ass about his story. Ok I'll stop ranting on about the characters now... but only because I can't even remember any of the rest of the cast :P

The animation is just about the only thing about "Geneshaft" that I liked. I can't really say it looked amazingly polished, so I guess it's more to do with the style of the animation that I liked it. The computer graphics used for the giant robots are quite impressive, though the circular jets of fire that shot out from them when they get propelled forward is a little odd.

"Geneshaft" is quite a distance from being good. But then again, I can't honest say that it's incredibly bad either. It simply falls into that worst area of mediocrity that makes an anime not good enough to be taken seriously, but not bad enough to be funny. It's the kind of forgettable anime that makes you wish it was worse, cos then it would have been more entertaining than the yawn-inducing series it ended up as. "Vandread" flaunted its appeal to its targeted audience, and doesn't really try to be much other than the shallow fanservicey harem that it is, and as a result it succeeded in getting some things. In contrast, it's difficult to imagine "Geneshaft" appealing to any audience, as it flounders hopelessly against the limitations that it shackled itself to with its hilariously bad background. It ends up failing to the extent that I am reminded of a motto on one of those demotivational posters:"Incompetence - when you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do".

Geneshaft is a bland, mediocre anime with a decent premise that fails to deliver on almost every category.

First, let's talk about audio. The soundtrack is a sloppy amateurish hodgepodge of cheesy guitar riffs. Unlike other attempts at this like Trigun, the guitar work is simply obnoxious and clashes with the overall aesthetics of the show. There's not much "rock & roll" or action in the series, so I think chunky guitar riffs were a weird choice, and the poor execution makes that more apparent. The English Dub is mostly good but there are a few intolerable performances (like the programmer who talks with a ... puppet) and some slight less grating performances front and center (the main character).

The art and animation is fine, and the characters are varied enough in design that you won't be mixing them up. There is quite a bit of CGI that surprisingly holds up for its time, though I wouldn't call it appealing. Environment details are a bit lacking in detail. Where Genshaft's art is mostly lacking is having any unique style or sense of identity. The only unique piece of art in the show is the mecha that the main character pilots, and frankly it's hideous. Normally in a mecha anime, you can hope for some cool mecha and ship designs and mecha fights, but those are notably absent in Geneshaft. The ship and its interior are unimaginative for the genre. The main enemy for the series is... a giant ring. So the only action you'll see in this show is a poorly-designed ugly CGI mecha shooting a laser at a giant ring. Very disappointing.

The plot is contrived, and the writing is bad. Most of the setting is explained in text in the first few moments of the show, and then repeatedly hammered into you for the next 13 episodes. It seems like you can't go a few minutes without some character talking about DNA. You would think in a world where human DNA has been intentionally altered through Genetic Engineering that either people would be less obsessed with the topic, or at least humans would be profoundly different from each other in a way that creates conflict worth discussing. Instead, the show mostly boils down Genetic Engineering to a linear hierarchy where some people have superior genes to others. There is one notable exception where there are a class of human who suppress their emotions to enhance their reasoning abilities, though it's implied that this is done with drugs rather than genetics so even that detail manages to be disappointing. The topic of Genetic Engineering and the political and cultural world of the show set up so many interesting and easy areas to explore, and Geneshaft manages to neatly avoid doing anything interesting in this department. There is also some light politics in Geneshaft, though this is also very surface level and unoriginal.

Character development is also weakly done. The characters aren't original, memorable, or even endearing. After wrapping up the 13th episode, I felt no attachment or emotion towards anyone in this show. One thing I was pleasantly surprised about is the lack of fan service. You would think in an anime whose premise is humanity maintains a 9:1 female to male ratio that the viewer would be bombarded with fan service, but Geneshaft steers clear of romance and sex almost entirely. The topics are lightly touched upon but ultimately the world of Geneshaft appears to be asexual. I know some viewers will find this disappointing but personally I find fan service and harem anime to be distasteful. All the characters are in spandex so you will see a lot of butt and breast outlines, but as far as anime goes, Geneshaft is very tame.

Geneshaft isn't terrible, but it's not good. It is a tolerable anime that lacks originality and fails to deliver anything interesting to viewers. Watch something else.