Heroic Age

Heroic Age, what a boring anime! Mecha-monsters that constantly fight, a princess who constantly cries and people who keep talking about tribes and “contracts” that don't make any sense to anyone, not even to the anime characters themselves. This show fails in a major way by making the show too complex and unintelligible. They didn't use their time wisely to explain all of these new concepts to the average-minded viewer, things like, “tribes” or the importance of the “contracts”, the nature of these contracts, or go into further details of these “labors”. There was also ZERO character development! No downtime between battles to ... any real extent, no history or background of the characters, just that age likes to paint...basically. Boring! I like humans and people and human drama. Where's the tension? Where's the DRAMA?
Of course I love the art and animation, it's the same as Gundam SEED which is to say, it's pretty good. However, I think this series was really just an showcase for the art concepts and graphics and special F/X. Like why does the Captain's room have no walls? It's just a bunch of lights and LEDs against the backdrop of space and stars. Also, the music is not that great, nothing to do back-flips over.
The story makes no sense, it's all a bunch of mysticism and interplanetary mumbu-jumbo that doesn't make sense to anyone outside the anime and they do a terrible job relaying it to the viewer....so there's no connection there either!

I'm a character driven person and this show did nothing for me, the characters were trite and clichéd. And you didn't get to really see them much at all except when they're delivering all these monologues and soliloquies about legends and Golden Tribes, ugh, I was so bored of it all! this show is more about giant space mecha-monsters and spaceships and planets. The character's behaviors are severely irrational and underdeveloped. OMG the silver tribe makes me want to barf! Especially the little silver girl/monster, one minute she's a cold bossy bitch then suddenly she goes ballistic for no apparent or tangible reason and practically destroys the "universe" [ugh, why must everything be on such a grand scale.....so unnecessary!] but then in the next moment she's crying saying she so alone, like no one loves her [COULD it be because you're a bitch, honey?]. Actually the whole the silver tribe is like this. They're supposedly this cold and “logical” people but somehow these emotions are popping up left and right, WTF! The blond princess with the constant crying also gets on my nerves yet ironically she never shod one tear when her both her brothers supposedly got fried.
What a boring anime, a lot of fancy F/X and cute character's but the story is a hot-ass mess. I was severely disappointed.

Space... It was once considered by the people of Earth to be the final frontier. A boundless, infinite universe stood just beyond the reaches of our ever advancing technology. We expected there to be life out there in the universe, but we had no way of knowing that by leaving the comfort of our blue planet, we’d be setting foot into a game of celestial thrones that was already eons in the making. As we entered this conflict, forced into the struggle for galactic dominance, we were dubbed the iron tribe. But with the regal albinos of the Silver tribe and the larvae-looking Bronze tribe ... teaming up against us, we were faced with the inevitability of not just defeat... But extinction.

That is, until one fateful day when Dhianeilla, the princess of the human race, and the crew of her space ship The Argonaut stumbled across a half-destroyed planet, inhabited predominately by terrestrial squids. Living amongst the squids, they found a childlike young man; Savage in appearance yet kind of heart, his name was Age, and he alone possessed the ability to defend us against the worst that our enemies could dish out. But will this curious young savior be enough? Is he strong enough to bring about an end to this horrible war? Is he heroic enough to do so with as little bloodshed as possible? Or will he fail, dooming us to obscurity? One thing is certain: Without Age, this frontier truly will be our final one.

Studio Xebec is a name that I’ve often heard spoken in painful, frustrated tones by many different reviewers. And hey, it’s time to add my name to that list. If animation studios were being sold in the supermarket, Xebec would be the store-brand option... I’m talking Great Value levels of cheapness. They’re the same company that produced Love Hina and the first Negima series, and the 2D animation in Heroic Age is a slight improvement over those works, with much better use of coloring, but as far as basic animation goes, this is pretty much the same stiff, lifeless crap that we’ve become used to seeing from them.

Having said that, I’m still going to give credit where credit is due. The animation looks awful whenever characters are on screen, or with any shots that take place on land or inside the space ships, but when we leave those setting and venture out into open space, the switch in visual quality is like night-and-day. The 3D animation in Heroic Age is nothing short of beautiful. This series came out in 2007, so the CG looks a little dated, but it still holds up really well. The spaceships themselves look awesome at all times, but what’ll really catch your eye is the expansive outer-space backgrounds, which are full of life and color... Although when it’s sharing screen time with the 2D characters, the styles really don’t mesh well together.

As far as the character designs go, there’s very little inspiration or originality here. The silver tribe... The primary antagonists of the series... Are emotionless, so of course they all have long white hair. Yeah, if you haven’t seen an anime where the villain had long white hair, then you don’t watch much anime. There are several characters who appear to have had their aesthetic lifted directly out of Leiji Matsumoto’s sketchbook, and thinking back, the only designs that really stand out are that of Age and a few less humanoid aliens, such as the bronze tribe and his squid friends.

Oddly enough, the one aspect of the character design that stands out in my memory is the sheer number of baffling choices that the creators made in regard to the female characters’ uniforms. On the low end of the scale, you have several members of Dhianeila’s crew... Including the princess herself... Who are wearing uniforms so skin-tight that you’d swear they were painted on. I actually kind of wish that were the case, because otherwise, those poor girls are experiencing the most uncomfortable wedgies in human history. That, and somehow the suits indent enough to show off their belly buttons. On the high end of the scale, there are a few high-ranking female characters whose outfits were designed to have gaping, cleavage-baring holes in the front, and I would LOVE to hear the practical applications of this dress-code choice. I highly doubt they did that for the sake of sexiness or fan-service, because with Xebec’s art quality, one poor character’s cleavage looks more like ass-cheeks than anything else in most shots.

The music is your standard sci-fi fantasy fare... If you’ve seen any anime like this, you’ve heard soundtracks exactly like this... But the English dub, on the other hand, is much more unique. I’ve heard quite a few bad dubs from Funimation before. I’ve heard them release dubs that were written poorly, directed poorly, or cast poorly. But through it all, I’ve always felt that they were at least trying. No, phoned-in dubs were always more of an ADV thing than a Funimation thing. Heroic Age is the first dub I’ve heard from them where it sounds like most of the people involved just didn’t care.

In a cast full of late-2000s Funimation regulars, there are several actors who didn’t have to reach very far into their bags of stock voices to find the right one for their respective characters. Monica Rial plays her usual squeaky-cheerful voice, aged up slightly for the dual roles of the twins Mail and Tail. Luci Christian raises her voice ever so slightly for the role of Dhianeila’s personal attendant Aneasha, and Greg Ayres does his usual Greg Ayres thing for the meek Mehitak. Think Negi Springfield, but without the accent. Colleen Clinikenbeard plays another deep-voiced tough woman, Christopher Sabat plays what he likes to call a ‘coffee break role,’ and so on and so forth.

Vic Mignona plays a scheming antagonist, which is fun to listen to, but he barely gets any lines. The only actors who seem to have brought any genuine effort to the table are Cherami Leigh, who plays the tortured Lekty, a member of the Silver Tribe who slowly learns affection and emotion with the help of a fellow Nodos who’s been tasked with protecting her... Cherami put out a compelling amount of pain through this character’s development... And Brina Palencia, who gracefully dances the line between adorable mascot and helpful navigator in her role as the ship’s AI system, Bee No Bee.

And then you have the two main voice actors. I don’t even know where to begin with this one. J Michael Tatum plays the titular character, and it’s probably the only time I’ve ever heard him attempt to do a high-pitched, wistful voice. Thank God for that. Every single line he utters sounds like he’s making fun of Johnny Yong Bosch. Tatum generally has a very pleasant, soothing voice, and his performance as Age is proof that he should stick to that voice as often as possible.

And yet, his female co-star is still worse. Caitlin Glass plays the role of Princess Dhianeila, and I am sorry to say this about any character voiced by her, but she will put you right the hell to sleep. She gives monotone a new meaning with her soft-voiced, droning delivery. She sounds like a lazy LOTR-style opening narration, which makes it even more grating to the attention span when she doles out exposition about long-winded prophecies or soliloquies about Age's feelings.

Together, these two voice actors turn the series into a boring, dull slog that’s often a chore to watch. They have absolutely no chemistry, which is insane because... And I can’t stress this enough... They’re the voice actors for Isaac and Miria in Baccano. Yeah, these two one-note windbags are directly linked to the most electrifying and entertaining couple in anime history. This is the only thing that ever surprised me about this series. The Japanese actors for both characters are far superior, able to hit the same basic tones while showing so much more personality in the process.

The show had a whole slew of people working on the adaptive writing, and yes, it feels it. There were several different writers and ADR directors taking turns like a revolving door, and out of the three script writers attached to the project, two of them were actually good. I’ve always known Monica Rial to be a talented writer, and she’s always been able to adapt material in such a way that it’s accessible without losing it’s intent or meaning. I’m new to Brandon Potter, but he did a decent job as well.

It’s when we talk about the third writer... J Michael Tatum... That we run into some serious problems. He’s a generally well-liked actor, and rightfully so... But when it comes to scripting a dub, he’s become notorious for over-writing. My least favorite kind of writers are the ones who think they’re better than the material, and take every possible opportunity to make themselves look like the cleverest person in the room, which Tatum does by replacing subtle and in-character dialogue with over-used cliches, purple prose, and bizarrely out-of-place idioms that make a mockery of the text while, in some cases, changing the intent of it all together.

Here, I’ll give you an example from episode sixteen. At one point, one of Age’s enemies is defeated, and brought onto the Argonaut. When confronting Age, he expresses reluctance to the idea of fighting him again, and is relieved when he hears that they don’t have to. This makes sense in character, because this guy’s always been pacifistic throughout the story, and the idea of engaging in an all out brawl with Age in the middle of a populated spaceship will cause countless casualties. But in the dub, Tatun changes his line to “So, you’re not going to hurt me?” Down-grading it from a sentiment of compassion to a sentiment of selfish cowardice. And yes, there are worse examples in here. Definitely stick to the subtitles on this one.

I’ve been putting off reviewing this series for a few years now... No exaggeration there, I’m dead serious... And in that time, it’s always been floating over my head as something I would have to tackle eventually. But there were two problems. The first one was that I didn’t know if I’d be able to watch it all the way through a second time. And the second was that, as many problems as I have with it, I had no idea how I was going to present my biggest problems with this series. So now that the time has finally come, I think I’m going to start with the problem that I like to bring up whenever someone asks me why I didn’t like this series... Let’s talk about the title character.

Age is a kind-hearted, childish savage who’s not human by birth. He’s one of the last surviving remnants of a tyrannical race of warriors that were almost completely wiped out by a more powerful force. He’s picked up by a crew consisting of mostly humans, and a lot of quirky hijinks ensue as a result of their many differences. It’s eventually revealed that he has the ability to transform into a giant, ferocious monster with it’s own name that’s unique to his, and he has to fight the other few remnants of his species if he wants to protect the human race from extinction. In other words, he’s Goku. Yup. Just Goku. He doesn’t have the personality, depth, or charm of Goku, but when you get right down to it, he was ripped wholesale out of the DBZ universe.

Now, is unoriginality a bad thing? Not necessarily. Bleach ripped it’s initial premise straight out of Yuyu Hakusho, and I actually like the first three seasons of Bleach MORE than it’s predecessor. But then you have my next problem... Heroic Age is really stupid. This show knows about as much about outer space physics as I did in elementary school. There are plenty of rules you’re allowed to break in science fiction... Sound and color don’t exist in space, but very few Sci-fis care about that. Heroic Age breaks the rules you’re allowed to break, as well as the ones you aren’t. Not only do many of the characters move through open space as though they were swimming under-water, but in episode two, we see the main character digging a hole through the hull of the Argonaut in order to attack the villains waiting outside.

Hey, do you remember Jason X, the Friday the 13th movie where Jason Voorhies kills a bunch of people in outer space? Pretty cool, huh? One of the characters was killed when Jason broke a hole in the hull from outside, and she was sucked through that hole. That was the dumbest movie in an entire franchise of dumb movies, but even THAT story knew that when you compromise the hull of a space ship, shit goes terribly wrong. Also, I get that Age and the other Nodos can breathe in space, but an inhuman biology doesn’t explain outer space wind blowing through their hair. Someone had to animate that.

But much like unoriginality, stupidity is not a deal breaker. There are plenty of shows that were awesome, despite having the IQ of mayonnaise, but they usually offer up some redeeming qualities to make up for it. Gurren Lagann is stupid, but it has so much energy and confidence that you just can’t help but believe in it. Knights of Sidonia is incredibly stupid... Probably even more so than Age, now that I think about it... But it’s so creative and sincere that it honestly just comes off as fun and adorable. Heroic Age doesn’t have anything like that. In fact, rather than making up for it’s stupidity, it compounds that problem with it’s insistence on looking smarter and deeper than it actually is.

At the start of this review, I gave a heavily simplified(and not 100% accurate) plot summary of this series. What I left out was all the over-complicated pulp. Heroic Age goes up it’s own ass to establish a long-winded and often self-contradictory lore about the many tribes vying for control of the universe, which never serves as anything other than an explanation for the setting. There are scattered references to Greek mythology, namely to the five ages of man, but these references are in name alone, and the tribes named after them have little to nothing to do with the ages they correspond to. The only reason Age is a descendant of the Heroic Age is because the creators wanted to emphasize how heroic HE was, never mind the fact that they’re also comparing a brutal race of murderers to one of the most noble ages of the five. The tribes could just have easily been named after different ice cream brands, with the show being called Haagen-Daas Age, and it would have had just as much depth to it.

But is pretending to have depth or meaning a deal breaker? Not on it’s own, but I’m sorry, ‘stupid’ and ‘pretentious’ are not good bed-fellows. This show would have been a lot easier to watch if it had dropped all attempts at undeserved profundity, and had just told the simple story that I mentioned earlier... Only it wouldn’t, because of this series’ final, and biggest, problem. Heroic Age, at it’s core, is just very badly written.

There are a ton of characters floating around in it, but Age is the only one who even gets the slightest hint of a backstory, and not one of them have any complex motivations. The two main characters... Age and Dhianeilla... have no personality outside of the fact that they’re good people who are always right about everything, and everyone else just exists to support or oppose them. I’ve seen this show twice, and I cannot describe a single one of it’s characters with anything more than a two-sentence explanation of what they are and who they’re connected to.

And it apparently isn’t enough that I don’t feel invested in any of the characters... I can’t even enjoy the action of these epic space battles because of how muddled and poorly edited these multi-episode set pieces are. You’ll notice quickly that during these long battles, there is a LOT going on, at many different locations, involving many different characters, often at different times. You’ll get a few seconds of Age fighting his brethren, followed by a cut to Princess Expositia explaining to us what he’s going through, followed by a cut to the political squabble involving her scheming brothers, to a cut to the other Nodos’ loitering around and discussing their lot in life, to a conversation someone had with Age earlier, and by the time they finally cut back to Age’s fight in current time, I’ve all but forgotten what he was doing there in the first place, which is the final nail in the coffin for a series I had to struggle to care about.

Herioic Age is available from Funimation. The old releases are still available in relatively affordable halves, but you can get a much better deal by going with the SAVE release, which you can find pretty much anywhere for between fifteen and twenty dollars. The manga, which released it’s first volume during the initial run of the series, is pretty much the same story told from another character’s perspective, and it’s not available in the states.

I don’t like Heroic Age. I also don’t hate Heroic Age. Hell, I don’t anything Heroic Age. I gained nothing from this series, and in exchange, I lost way too much time on a series that I’m going to forget in less than a week. It’s biggest crime isn’t the fact that it’s stupid, pretentious, badly animated, or generic. It’s biggest crime is that it’s boring. I can stare at the screen for several episodes in a row, with no distractions, and I still have to constantly rewind to pick up on what the hell I missed in regard to what’s happening. I’m glad to finally put this turkey behind me, and I look forward to forgetting it exists. I give Heroic Age a 3/10.

There are some many things wrong with this show.

It's a futuristic anime, done with the same animation tpe as the Gundam Seed and Destiny. The Gold Race set at a call to all intelligent races to enter space. There's the human race, known as the Iron Race, the Silver Race, the Heroic Race, and the Bronze Race anwser the call. Time passes and the Gold Race as left for another universe. The Heroic Race has disappeared. The Silver Race has taken power, with the help of the Bronze Race. In order to save the human race princess Deianeira travels to the far distant galaxy for ... their savior of the prophecies. They find a boy named Age who could help bring the human race to power.

I really started out liking this anime, in one of my earlier blogs I even thought I would give it a 8, 9, or 10. Boy was I wrong, and disappointed in Heroic Age. Lets go over the things that are wrong with this anime. First the overall story started out with a good premise, but quickly became convoluted and incoherent. Than there's the one dimensional characters that have no depth to them. Finally there's the animation and battles. Both reminded me of Gundam Seed/Destiny, the more I watched. I swear the animation looks exactly like Gundam Seed/Destiny even though it's animated by different companies. I thought I was watching Gundam Seed/Destiny as I watched the battles. They were overblown big time, and ridiculous. Heroic Age had potential to be great, but let things go down hill fast.

the fact this anime has as high of a rating as it does proves that MAL's reviews are total garbage, and that its community is clueless. this anime had promise in the first few episodes introducing an interesting conflict but it starts developing plot holes quickly and lends you feel like the gold tribe are kinda idiots, despite that the anime rants and raves about how wise they were. ultimately it keeps this theme up talking up everything and showing the opposite. it talks about th danger of the combat but then you just watch the hero's destroy the enemy like they are swatting flies. ... then its combat scenes are nothing but jargon from the ships captian; he goes on and on about useless dialogue including "send all forces to line three" what ever that means because the never show anyone moving to any lines and its in space so where would lines even be? ultimately half of the combat scenes are just useless wastes of time and it loses all tension. followed by the hero covered in plot armor jumping in front of giant lasers because i can do anything im in a magic mech suit, then the hero destroys the bug enemies without regard for them but then he has a mission to kill other people in similar mechs attack him and he just sits there hugging them not attacking them at all. like why isn't he using the same attacks on the mech enemies that he is on the bug enemies. there are so many logic holes that the story better resembles swiss cheese. and this garbage has higher ratings that actually good anime. im utterly dumbfounded. maybe it has some kind of crazy come back like tri gun had after episode three but im not patient enough to wait past episode 7 to find it.

There was a time when I was on an anime binge, similar to how I am now. I was on justdubs looking for something new. I stumbled upon this show and decided to give it a watch. I never wanted to rewind time so much as I watched this. The Story is so freaking boring and bland. There is nothing new, or special, or unique about this show. The characters are not memorable in the slightest. The male lead is uninteresting. The female lead is so ONE FREAKING NOTE it hurts. The music was okay. Not a very memorable sound, but that perfectly fits the ... rest of the show. NOTHING about this show is good. Heroic Age is the worst anime I have ever seen ever. I don't recommend this to anyone.

A really awful space opera more designed for mindless simpletons and children to watch and not for someone who wants a thoughtful plot, interesting characters, or any sort of substance. I haven't seen a space mecha in years, but I've seen plenty of other anime, including shallow and stupid ones and those over-indulgent in bad anime tropes they become a joke within a joke. I was so fed up that now I'm looking at obscure space opera fare because I want something serious for a change. Even if it's boring and missing big bouncing boobs and moe little girls, it will finally at least be ... "adult". There is nothing remotely adult about this show, unless you count the constant moaning about the death of humanity under a false sense of gravitas.

Ei-ji! Ei-jii! Ei-jiiiiiiii! This is most of the useless dialogue from the princess who took it upon herself to seek out the prophecy handed down by the Golden Tribe that would save humanity. What is Ei-ji? It's (yet another) teenage boy with the power to destroy entire planets and therefore give humanity a fighting chance against the evil Silver Tribe. The anime is called Heroic Age. His name is Ei-ji. Get it? He holds the power of one of the strongest members of the long dead Heroic Tribe, therefore...Heroic Ei-ji! We are off to a great start! Now the princess has found Ei-ji, but the Bronze Tribe is attacking! How will they foil the struggling humans and what are their devious plans? Oh wait, they are just a bunch of mindless space bugs with a grandiose name. Ei-ji goes Supersaiyan, using a Sailormoon transformation sequence to turn into an Evangelion mecha monster, then ONE PUNCHES through the bug hive ships and KAMEHAMEHAs the other flying bugs. Problem solved.

Now that the humans have found their savior, how do they treat him? With disdain, jealousy, and fear of course! They can't be bothered to clothe him, or understand that he has the mental state of a five year old from living alone on a deserted planet. Teach him how to count to four or not run in the hallways? IMPOSSIBLE! I'd rather let humanity go extinct than bother with something so trivial.

And who needs a savior anyway when we have such a dependable crew on this valiant ship, the Argonaut. The Princess might as well be a goddess, Athena from Saint Seiya in fact, as she floats around a million different places as a celestial projection, fully aware and omniscient of all happenings, including reading minds and sensing the clashing of cosmic forces, not to mention full certification as a GPS tracker for Ei-ji. Oh Ei-ji! Why do you keep doing all this for us Ei-ji! Why do you go so far Ei-ji! Maybe because I'm god damn immortal and all-powerful so it takes as much effort as yawning in the morning? Is what he would be thinking if he wasn't a caveman child. Then we have the rest of the crew, all teenagers, all with random psychic powers like teleportation or telekinesis, all playing spaceship. There's even one royal knight who thinks he can stand on equal terms with a planet-destroying Evangelion in his standard issue mecha with peashooter, because the difference can be made up with pure chivalry. The cherry on top is the small, talking kawaii creature, contractually obligated to exist in every anime, that sounds like a toddler and has the important task of relaying communications and ship logistics. It's a wonderful crew to shoulder the weight of humanity's final struggle.

And boy is it a struggle. Every episode they are bombarded by mindless bugs and have created a perfect plan. First, use the same battle transformation sequence by shifting the floors of the Argonaut, with the same toddler relayed commands. Then release a bunch of roly-poly beam shooting balls and mechs that can't penetrate the enemy's shields anyway. Finally, watch as Ei-ji somehow wanders outside from an opening in the hull, because space vacuums don't exist in this universe, and uses his patent-pending Sailormoon transform to become deus ex machina-vangelion, one punching the enemy into oblivion and saving the day with zero casualties.

Did I say there were no bouncing boobs or moe little girls? I lied. They are both here. If you somehow get led by the carrot and stick that is the mysterious kei-yaku, the contracts and agreements each tribe has that is supposed to form some semblance of a plot, I am 99% sure it won't manifest into anything inteligent or coherent based on how the rest of the show has performed.

Story (3/10): very dragged. Extremely dragged. I think, every plot has crucial events required for creating its vision in your mind and some less important periods in between, where average life happens. The story here mixes what's important and what's not, doesn't highlight events worth noting and has them all too rare.
Let's look at an example. The synopsis says "...Princess Deianeira sets out to search for the powerful being who might be able to save humankind. She meets a wild haired boy on an abandoned planet..." From the first episode you see Deianeira has only one ship and it's obviously a search party, not something ... able to counter-strike as soon as they find Age. So, they need some kind of a rendezvous with their main forces. And it happens in the freaking 10th episode. 35% of this anime, more than one third, is stupid traveling with some skirmishes on the way and achieving the very very first step in what humanity needs to do. To make matters worse, it's plain obvious to you as a viewer that they will succeed, but the first 9 episodes are still there. Nothing meaningful seems to actually happen at that time and you're just watching events... having no real value behind them and that's how the story keeps on going till it ends. During all the screentime, fights tend to get stretched and go on episode in episode out without any climatic release or again, at least some turning point. It's just like Naruto but without flashbacks...
It's worth noting all planets are actually very important and somewhat connected with life in this universe. The show doesn't bother to tell you about the reasons or at least the simple fact of it even when one planet is destroyed, so you have no clue why characters cry or are shocked by it. Their reaction and real repercussions only become clear later, in the second half of the anime.
There is also a plot point that humanity has some special features which are very rare in the universe and were previously only discovered in guess what? The Golden Tribe, the most powerful, beautiful and benevolent tribe and all other tribes of course don't have such qualities. It's such a cliche it's almost appalling.

Art and sound (both 8/10): quite good. Beautiful effects, futuristic designs (for everything from helmet interface to control rooms), realistic art style, majestic and somewhat classical soundtracks (which I liked a lot despite the overall impression), calm and not over-the-top voices of real human beings (not something you'd find often in anime). All in all it's impressive and immersive. I don't often enjoy the art and can easily ignore it but some scenes here really caught my eye and even had me rewind just to enjoy them again.

Characters (4/10): there isn't really much to say. Characters are refreshingly calm and not overexcited with everything. It's pleasant to see cast resembling real people. However, only protagonists have this luxury but even then they are just there and just do something. Nobody really changes because the whole story tends to be static.
On a little bright side, Age is not motivated by revenge and doesn't even perceive this war as his own goal, he just participates in it because doing so is set in his agreement and his future. It's interesting that fighting is kind of his duty and no more so he doesn't have much emotions about this war despite being part of species that's on the brink of annihilation.

Enjoyment (2/10): watching this was a tedious task.

Overall (3/10). The show has captivating premise (I like stories about societies on the brink of extinction) and the first episodes are both promising and beautiful. But as the time goes, story doesn't progress much, nothing really happens, you just see amazing art and can enjoy the soundtrack. In the end, it's just a pretty shell without the core - story and chatacters. This result is quite disappointing given the beginning and originality of some concepts - it all got wasted by terrible execution.