The story centers around Daichi Manatsu, a high school student who, through some coincidences and connections, ends up in a secret organization fighting extraterrestrial beings with mecha robots. Now, the whole "high school student fights unknown creature" setup might be one of the overused cliches in anime ever, but there are still series that manage to put it off well. That's what I also hoped for Captain Earth, but it was all in vain.
From the beginning on, the viewer is bombarded with one unknown term after another, expecting us to understand what the hell they are supposed to mean. All this while the plot starts off with a tiring episodic monster-of-the-week scheme. Those types of episodes are not always bad, but it is pointless if the plot still has not made any crucial progress, making it a chore to watch the same thing over and over.
About midway through, the series is finally back to the actual plot - not that it got much better though. To sum it up, you could fast-forward to the last few episodes (bar a few selected ones) and you would not have missed out on anything. And instead of good storytelling we get pointless fanservice here and there. And some more unexplained terms, because we obviously have not had enough already! And if plot points are resolved, then it's in a cliche and predictable way. Or there is no resolution at all - I mean, what happened to Teppei's father? The creators probably forgot about his existence, who knows. What about the little girl who was supposed to be something like a manifestation of Daichi's Livlaster? We never found out what was up with her.
Well to make it short, while the setup was already lame, what the producers made of it made it even duller. And this also brings down the characterization.
This brings me to the characters of Captain Earth. The four main characters are like the only ones who get some character development, so I'll just get to them. First we have Daichi, our protagonist - a character I found pretty intriguing in the beginning. With a connection to some other characters related in the battle against the aliens and a somewhat rebellious attitude he could have been a good character. Could have, if the story were any good. Instead, he turns into the stereotypical good guy character who can face any hurdle through the power of friendship.
The second male main character Teppei, suffers a similar fate of character change - from a character related to the Kill-T-Gangs his role in the story turns quite irrelevant. He ends up as just another mecha driver without much development.
Akari, the self-proclaimed "mahou shoujo", is a super-hacker who supports the team in the background by, well, hacking. There isn't really much else to her, aside that she is a poor love interest for Teppei. Seriously, would it have been so hard to develop the romance between those two a little?
Hana is the last of the main group, and also the love interest of Daichi. Well, their romance was a little more interesting than Teppei and Akari's, but Hana as character herself was - nothing special. Just like with Teppei, her supernatural powers are not explored well enough - she is more often used as a fanservice character.
Last I want to mention the enemies in this scenario, the Kill-T-Gangs - just as the main heroes, very underexplored. Most of them have a one-episode appeareance and then disappear or are used as more fanservice devices. The main pair - Moco and Amara - only differentiate from the group in that they get more screentime, act more evil and get more fanservice scenes (Moco, at least).
One thing that had Captain Earth going for it is the visuals - nothing special, really, but compared to the other aspects of the series a pleasure. The character designs are nice, the mechs look good and the action is on point.
The sounds of the series are nothing special, the openings and endings are alright and the soundtrack was alright too. Hana's song is probably the most outstanding aspect in the sounds section.
Sadly, the strongest points of the series (Art & Sound) do not carry a show alone.
Thus, Captain Earth overall does not really convince me and thus I give it a score of 3/10.
