Choujikuu Seiki Orguss

Super Dimension Century Orguss is the second of the Super Dimension Trilogy, the first being Super Dimension Fortress Macross and the third being Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. These are all unrelated series made by the same people they just carry the same title of Super Dimension. In the US release of Robotech, they used both Macross and Southern Cross, however instead of Orguss they used Genesis Climber Mospeada instead. This lead to Orguss becoming obscure as it was never made popular. Well it's not like I would of felt any better if Harmony Gold got it's hands on this and made a censored version. ... However because of that it's terrible abomination of a sequel (Orguss 02) is the only way anyone knows of this.
​
​Being made right after Macross you can see how similar it is and how much they improved. The cels are a lot more detailed, the plot is just as complex. It wasn't until last year that I discovered this anime and I enjoyed it as much as I did the original Macross many years ago. It has everything you need, action, suspense, aliens and robots just like Macross. Even though it's been over a year, this is still the last great anime I've watched. 10/10 Perfection.

Orguss is a show I was introduced to through some youtube show or another which was ecstatic about its representation in Another Century's Episode: R (PS3, Bandai Namco/From Software, 2010). After playing through the game and the Orguss parts while stumbling through the dialouge (私の日本語がすごいない) I was impressed at the character art and mecha design. This led me to a website named gearsonline (easily searchable enough) which had enticing descriptions of the show, its cast, and some of the art. I also had found the intro song (Sky-hurricane by Casey Rankin, Life in the Sky, 1983) which had me in LOVE. It's incredibly triumphant, with ... a large range of emotion and expressions, the flanger guitar effect combined with poppy piano has me in tears. (Additionally, the best part of the song is the first half!) The accompanying animation is also splendid, colorful, and evocative. Really, if this entire anime was just this opening, it would be a 10/10! Gypsy is also a rather fun outro song, though not as imaginative.

I am actually rather split on the overall tone and nature of Orguss. During this short review, I will try not to make comparisons - if I were to do that, I unfortunately just couldn't put it up to the high pedestal of modern classics such as Space Patrol Luluco (Trigger, 2016) - and judge it on its own merits.

THE GOOD:

Orguss has a very colorful palette, as shown in the intro. It pops very often with pleasing aesthetic design and direction. The budget feels rather low, but this doesn't really bother me so much. It's kind of funny rather, seeing cells of mecha just sorta slide into frame. A few more frames of animation sometimes would have a smoother presentation, and more kinetic energy, but I'm not a huge buff in this area and I generally enjoyed it. Animations do get reused, and this often feels a little lazy, but they're usually good to begin with. (Seeing the MC's stupid smiling face as he spins a stolen mecha in the air does warm my heart, even if half of it is stills that slowly pan or zoom in.) I also generally like the sound design, especially in the outerspace sections.

The setting of the show allows for a huge melting pot of cultures, literally popping in and out of space and time around each other. This is, on its face, pretty exciting! Unfortunately, they don't really do a whole lot with the idea, but it leaves room to sort of imagine conflicts that could arise. You might get the theme at this point which the show has good ideas, BUT is lacking in execution. Orguss plays with these ideas in a sort of monster-of-the-week kind of way, which feels a bit lacking but still serves a purpose. Did I accidentally watch an 80s sitcom with a dumbass protagonist who bumbles his way into bad situations? Possibly.

Characters do develop over time, especially the main character (thank FUCKING god). There isn't a lot of attention to the background characters in this area, but I feel that makes sense in context. The central drama is about the MC's internal conflicts - does he fight for himself? his ego? for his friends? does he experience love? or is he just selfishly using everyone for his own gains while protecting his fragile masculinity in whatever way he thinks he can? He is certainly in a scary and dreadful situation, losing everything he has except (for a moment) his aircraft, and his piloting ability. The only thing really left of Kei Katsuragi is to be a soldier, but the WHY of it is taken for granted - at least until he must confront it.

THE BAD:

As alluded to, the MC is a bit of a chauvinstic prick. It goes beyond just being a sexist asshole, he holds a woman at knifepoint and forces a kiss on her! She calls his bluff, that he would not actually hurt her with the knife, and he uses the kiss as a last ditch resort to establish some amount of control. Do I feel like there is an avenue for understanding this character, his plight, and the journey that he has to undertake to reach a point where he can respect others - and himself? Yeah. I think that's the only real reason I kept watching. He is really difficult to watch in the first few episodes, where that is a constant nuisance, and I wouldn't fault you for ditching the show based on that alone. A lot of these types of media live and die by the attractiveness of their main cast, physically and personality wise, and the MC is very hard to stomach - though he is a bit cute as an 80s anime boy.

Leaving that aside, as difficult as it may be, the other characters just act kind of... weird. Mimsy Raas acts like a very stereotypical heroine in the beginning, with superficial dialogue and voice acting (in Japanese at least) that makes me think she is trying to be that way. Shaia Tobu is also strange, she constantly makes bad decisions, and will complain when others take control as if it were a game to play. The Emarns are described as believing in souls and not taking mortality as hard as you might expect, but this is not at all consistent when someone who is important to them dies, and is in very fact important whenever the plot demands it. I can't decide if this is bad storytelling or they just wanted to have an excuse for a lighter mood, to allow for more slapstick humor. A feature of the times. In either case, I'm not really a fan.

As a contrivance of the plot, the MC has to be a good pilot and the enemy (Chiram soldiers) have to be bad pilots, unless the episode demands that one of them is good (random dude who evades every shot) for some amount of dramatic tension. Kei is just so fricking powerful in every scene until he loses due to absolute incompetence. There is kind of a weird connotation again, that the enemy is both so incredibly powerful and numerous yet also so stupidly weak. Why all the friendly fire?? Why do they seriously crash into each other when scared??? Did you guys not learn how to fly???? My suspension of disbelief only goes so far!

As mentioned by another reviewer, it is weird emphasizing the Emarns' reproductive cycle, the 2:1 ratio of women to men, and the awkward loli-robot. All of these things are a bit creepy. I can however, apply an angle of culture shock to it, if only to allow myself to continue enjoying the show. Do these aspects of civilization seem a bit horny and nonsensical? Maybe, but that's a matter of perspective. If this type of thing WERE the case in a separate reality, I would probably just accept it at face-value, and move on. The show does not really linger on these topics as they're introduced - which also feels a bit off. The pacing of the show just kind of introduces concepts and then... continues. For the first 14 episodes, it's hard to say exactly what happens. The gang goes home. Setups will be created for the cast to feel righteous in some cold-hearted mecha murder action, and then they do it, rarely with consequence. Also, realizing that the dinosaur Jahvy was basically just Jar-Jar Binks made it hard to take any scene with him seriously.

OVERALL:

Super Dimension Century Orguss is a good show to watch in the background of something else! I don't think it lives up to the intro, but there's a lot of show to engage with nonetheless. The best thing I can really say is that it lasted 35 episodes, and all of them CAN be an enjoyable use of time. I cannot really tell anyone who isn't already interested to watch it, and it seems in describing it to my friends they have decided to never do so, but if the premise interests you - take a chance!

Super Dimension Century Orguss... I was excited to start watching another anime from the person who directed Legend of the Galactic Heroes and SDF Macross, it evens looks like SDF Macross. What could possibly go wrong with this anime? Just about everything, I'm afraid.

For reasons unknown to me, the budget for this anime is noticeably lacking. For those who have seen Macross and the infamously bad Max vs. Miriya knife duel, that's about how Orguss is ALL THE TIME. Reused frames and clunky character movements run rampant and no amount of directorial magic can draw attention away from it. Your eyes will be subject to ... bleeding if you watch this anime.

What is Orguss all about then... The setting is an Earth that consists of many different versions of Earth due to a new dimensional bomb set off by the main character, Kei. Kei is transported to the future and must make the Earth right again while protecting himself from the various versions of humanity that want to use him for their own goals. Sounds good, right? Oh no, horrible memories are flooding back! One of these new "human" species look exactly the same as regular humans, except they have weird hair tentacles. This bothers Kei for about 2 seconds before he starts fawning over the sexy hair-tentacle women. The presence of the tentacles is merely so that they don't look exactly like humans, I can make this bold statement because their purpose is never mentioned throughout the rest of the show, nor do they seem to be of any use except as a reminder for them to be very careful around scissors. To add insult to injury, this beacon of evolution, the people who have easily ripped off hair-tentacles, can't have children after the age of 18. No, you did not read that wrong, every girl belonging to this species gets knocked up when they're underage. Oh, Japan...

I also have to add, in one of the early episodes Kei notes how these people don't really mourn death the same way humans do. This is not adhered to or brought up again for the rest of show. It was too hard to write in an entire one cultural difference apparently.

"Surely then," you ask, "the characters make up for it?" HAHAHAHA, did you think this would be anything like SDF Macross where there is an underlying character drama underneath the all mechs and lasers? Unfortunately, wrong. There is a vague attempt to make some melodrama by having the main character be a man-slut homewrecker, but we're saved from that horrible plot point by the convenient killing off of his competition. It's no spoiler, the guy has maybe four lines and nobody even likes him. Life lesson: infidelity is no problemo if the dude you're screwing over is a total jerk.

I can't say much about the overall direction of Orguss, there isn't much of one to begin with. Just know, basically everything ends up having no consequence and everyone but maybe three characters could not have existed and it would have all ended the same anyway.

Thanks for nothing, Orguss.