Bye Bye, Earth

In a society of people with animal characteristics, Belle Lablac stands out as the only person with no animal features at all. Curious of her origins, Belle leaves her hometown and heads to the city of Schubertland to be awarded the status of Nomad by Schubertland's ruler, King Rawhide. Through the journey, she is trained by the legendary swordsman Sian Lablac.

Unfortunately for Belle, through a complication, she is unable to hurt others with her legendary sword Runding. The only choice to best her opponents in battle now is to break their swords, which is heavily looked down upon. Though ostracized for her appearance and hated for her disregard of societal norms, Belle stays resolute as she sets off on a perilous journey to find her rightful place in the world.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Lablac, Belle Main

Fairouz Ai Japanese

Question, Adonis Supporting

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Shandy, Gaff Supporting

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Kitty the All Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Guinness Supporting

Enoki, Junya Japanese

Cassis Supporting

Shimura, Tomoyuki Japanese

Collins, Tom Supporting

Shirokuma, Hiroshi Japanese

Perry Supporting

Egoshi, Akinori Japanese

Campari Supporting

Echigoya, Kousuke Japanese

Tiziano Supporting

Anando, Yuki Japanese

Takahashi, Kanako Producer

Katagiri, Daisuke Producer

Fushimi, Reiko Producer

Yamamoto, Kou Producer

Reviews

Sep 30, 2024

mouse_rr

Recommended

i personally enjoyed this, it was confusing and id have preferred it to be longer but overall it kept my interest and though i spent most of my time wondering what it was about, which im still not sure on, its doing something different and i appreciate that all things considered of the recent fantasy shows i have watched 1 was an isekai the other straight fantasy world and both where less than meh though for dramatically different reasons and i only finished them to see how bad they could get. this one was a head scratcher. its no tensura but its not 'parry ... reality perception' either. ordinarily id hit up the manga to see whats next but this time i think ill wait for the next season and hope the animation is as nice as it was for this one if not better.
overall id say if you like something different and dont mind being utterly lost and have already finished everything else worth watching give it a chance, if nothing else its got some gorgeous visuals

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Sep 13, 2024

KANLen09

Mixed Feelings

Informative

Bye Bye, Earth - Is going back to the early days of fantasy a good thing, or just a case of complicated feelings? I'm honestly on the edge of both sides.

If you know your AniManga knowledge well, there're a few well-notable names in the industry, and that happens to be the place where one famed novelist by the name of Tow Ubukata, resides. The man who's best known for works like Summer 2004's Soukyuu no Fafner a.k.a Fafner in the Azure: Dead Aggressor, and Summer 2006's Le Chevalier d'Eon, he was truly one of the pioneers of the fantasy genre (before mid-2010s Isekai would seep ... into it and tarnish its reputation forever). Even within the same period, Tow Ubukata is sadly not the same genre-defying person with complete misses on the sequels of Psycho-Pass (from Season 2 onwards), not to mention just recently with RWBY: Ice Queendom back in Summer 2022.

With that said, a change of pace looking back into Tow Ubukata's early years, being in yet another prominent Summer season with one of his early novels of 2000's 2-volume long Bye Bye, Earth (not counting the new edition written between 2007-2008 at 4 volumes long), you can tell that this is where he got his start into the anime industry as a prominent novelist. But the critical question is: does the series, which is now close to a silver anniversary (24 years to be exact), fit the stranglehold that traditional fantasy works like this will be remembered in time to come? I don't really think so...or so that I'd like to assume at face value.

Written as a traditional fantasy (though it has the Isekai feel), the MC lives in a world of anthropomorphic animals as the only human without a past, and that immediately sells the fact that being an outlier creates an easy target to be bullied towards. That's Belle Lablac, in a nutshell, who finds herself in that exact word where no one can understand her except her only guardian of cat/wolf man Sian, being a "Faceless", who teaches her the art of swordfighting sorcery from an early age as a way to survive in an unknown world. And that's her only language of survival, as she wants to know the origin of her roots, and also to find other humans like her who could be around in faraway lands to tell her that she's not alone being the only insane person. Armed with the sword that chose her, Runding is quite the enormous sword that no anthropomorphic animal could ever hope to wield (being like Excalibur, the Sword in the Stone that chooses its rightful owner), Belle sets off for the adventure of a lifetime, seeking the secrets that she does not know about herself and the world around her.

Right out of the gate, the show taking on the novel approach of "show, don't tell" is immediately apparent as things are moving at a rather fast pace without letting the audience know of its methodical approach to a simple plot such as this, and WILL definitely be the make-or-break approach when one experiences the show from the get-go. Bye Bye, Earth has a lot of moving parts in its lore, such as how it uses traditional musical terms (Conductors and the like, to form an orchestra they call Schwert Muzik) to deviate from the normality of generic adventurer parties and such, as well as swords that sound ridiculous, but are aptly spelled backwards from regular words that are given meaning to it (e.g. Belle's Runding sword teaching Erehwon (nowhere spelled backwards), meaning utopia).

This is cusped by even more "will of the gods"-type plot/premise that basically everyone is tied to the fate of the gods, scenarios that have been depicted towards life or death, and this forms the shape of the main characters and their endeavours. Belle isn't without negativity in her mind that besets her from her growing-up years, it's that she chose to overcome adversity on any challenge that comes her way, and the gods see her as a chess piece on their playfield. Adonis the Question, on the other hand, is a cursed being from the very beginning; any sword he touches rots and disintegrates in his hands, and there's no way to fight this curse, even by wearing gloves. These two mainly live and breathe their experiences together, even as a cursed couple who begins to understand their origins and the factors mitigating their circumstances, like so in a fully dictatorship (almost monocracy) society, and survive the hell they have to in an unjust world. However, as you, the audience, will, you'll just have to pick up the nuances...because one blink, and you'll be utterly lost in this rather convoluted story.

The other characters are more like plot movers, intentional or not. Take Kitty the All, for example, Belle saving him (as a tuxedo-suited bunny) from danger from the start, he is one of the discriminated Rabbitia races that repays their saviour in their time of need, and Kitty's an able animal who has decent magic power enough to act as Belle's shield. But on a whole, you won't be remembering much of the side cast who gives the plot-heavy story an already progressive problem to begin with.

For what Crunchyroll's marketing buzzwords meant that Bye Bye, Earth "is considered to be his (Tow Ubukata) origin, and many have deemed it impossible to animate," in actuality, it's just not hard to animate fantasy shows like this being lost in translation from the novel to the small screen (thankfully this ISN'T Crunchyroll Originals that the label is simply D.O.A-ed from the start). I think that Liden Films did a decent job, it's just that this low-bar quality is reminiscent of another fantasy work from the studio: Winter 2021's Urasekai Picnic (and even that was a studio collab with Felix Flim). Moreover, the critical direction of in-house director Yasuto Nishikata is very glaring, and it's obvious that the Killing Bites and Hortensia Saga director didn't really understand what makes a good narrative (especially for a lore-heavy work like this) work, much less get the audience invested into the show, and thereby just piecing chunks of the novel together for a "cohesive" straight-line path, essentially just getting the story directing from start to finish. Even with the impeccable talent of scriptwriter-cum-series composer Hiroyuki Yoshino, the director will flourish or kill the series based on his/her direction, and I feel that Yasuto Nishikata is to blame for the series failing as it is.

Alas, the musical talent of Made in Abyss composer Kevin Penkin also feels wasted due to Yasuto Nishikata's direction, though I will not say that this is his finest work thus far. Considering the immaculate work on high-profile shows in the past under his name, Bye Bye, Earth's OST feels a lot pedestrian towards the fantasy side of things, but a really low bar set for the series as it shows. ASCA's OP works, but it's just there, and as much as I want to like LMYK's ED which sounds good, it too also suffered from the show's eponymous title as a post-apocalyptic setting more than anything.

I...really want to like Bye Bye, Earth, being the fantasy show that stands out from the seasonal copy-paste Isekai/fantasy shtick with its interesting concepts and developments that are reminscent of some notables (like Summer 1998's Serial Experiments Lain) around the turn of the millennium. But with its lackluster presentation that sucks the life out of both the staff behind the show, as well as the audience into trying to process what just happened with each progressive episode, it's not just subpar storytelling, but a recipe for failure, and it really shows.

With Season 1 being just the adaptation of the 1st half a.k.a Volume 1 of the novel, will Season 2 change the tide with Volume 2 and tie everything together cohesively? I hope I can live the day to see its salvation and redemption of the near-impossible. For now, you've just got to grit through an imperfect product of a rather ambitious work.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 29, 2024

Avieshek

Not Recommended

'Bye Bye, Earth' has been recently regarded as the worst anime of the year. I am pretty sure the makers didn't meant it to be bad unlike those isekais that seek to make quick cash by intention but from the start to the end this animé never explained itself like the time-travelling aspect in 'Tokyo Revengers' (where did it come from to how did come even… like is this magic, technology, imagination etc or why even, like MC some son of special characters with greater duty to have these abilities?) which is the similar case for 'Bye Bye, Earth' like is this an analogy of ... being a straight person in a non-binary future or an individual to conformist or an independent to sheep that bow before salary based life in typical Japan where the abnormal consider themselves the normal? The limited number of episodes (10) certainly doesn't do justice when it's trying to flow outside of the norm where those like Frieren or Fable has 25 that pick things up eventually - Even though I can understand the character was born out of crystal instead of a normal birth while being a human, it doesn't address or answer anything to why while the entire season itself ended up finished nor lays any hope future seasons are supposed to clear this up. No one can see themselves in the story or in the protagonist to make a connection or relevance whether to be angry, excited, pleased, hopeful or even horny - like nothing. Throughout the entire season, the only emotion viewers were carrying with every episode is a state of confusion even in the most intense of scenes which is pretty bad as an animé where viewers don't expect 'how' whether from plot-armour/magic/gifted-abilities etc which in this case was constant 'why?' even in the sexual-assault scene.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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