Mugen no Ryvius

Without wasting time the show is worth watching all the way through if you're in the mood for sci-fi from the point of view of emotional teenagers trying to survive. You will however have to put up with some spotty animation quality, and over the top teen angst and melodrama. Watch it subbed if possible as the dub is annoying to listen to.

The show feels like an amalgamation of Evangelion's psychological character flaws, Gundam's general environmental design, and the over the top but somehow still endearing character interactions of InuYasha.

Others have said that the story is very similar to the novel Lord of The Flies ... which is true. The characters are older than those in that book so naturally there are romantic relationships between characters, however there is a general lack of anything overtly sexual.

You will be wondering how the kids will get out of their battle, how the conspiracies in the background will progress, how the crew's moral will be effected, and be getting a bit frustrated at how ineffectual the characters are at communicating, organizing, and dealing with their emotions. There is a real human point of view the show comes from. You get to see how the kids organize and live their lives.

I appreciate how people getting beaten or killed might be glossed over in a lot of shows but this one has it's characters react in very serious and realistic ways. If your friend gets attacked she's might want to isolate herself and she might not be able to stop herself from screaming the honest opinions she has of people at them no matter how painful they might be.

For everything the show does right it does have some very annoying flaws.

The voice acting is mostly acceptable, however during certain scenes the cadence or tone of what you hear doesn't match what you see. For example at one point a character gets injured and the animation on screen is very minimal but the voice actor is portraying the character as though they where heaving with every breath.

There is one character that always says "Never give me orders!" and it's so painfully over the top and basic as to feel embarrassing every time. I also hate the voice they chose for the woman in pink. It's as though they told her to sound like a robot, so she did, but not at all convincingly. Watch it subbed.

The show generally looks interesting, and sometimes quite pretty, but the animation between characters is too frequently awful. If you pay attention whenever a character gets pushed down you'll see the frames per second drop, the angle of momentum to be off, and for the angle of impact to often be physically impossible.

If the premise is interesting to you, and you get get over the rough spots, it can be a rather enjoyable show.

This show is essentially "Lord of the Flies" on a spaceship combined with mecha fights. Children are trapped on a spaceship, attempt to form their own civilization, and fend off unknown enemies for as long as they can. As time goes on, their morale breaks down, and their civilization begins to crumble.

This show has the pieces to make something special: characters, setting, animation, and story, but average execution affected the overall result.

There are themes of forgiveness, standing up for what you believe in, and redemption, but some characters often go way beyond delinquent into straight up evil. By the end, I thought some characters ... were irredeemable and could not stand them anymore, even when they learned their wrongs. Having to watch a few of these insufferable characters was rough.

The overall plot felt underdeveloped, with me constantly questioning the motives of the outisde-ship villains, the Sphinx, and the Geduld phenomenon. While aspects can be left up to mystery just fine, other parts I felt were critical to become invested in the story. Therefore, with those parts being barely addressed, it made the situation feel less urgent and meaningful.

I did appreciate many scenes and character arcs that happened throughout the story, which is probably why i continued to watch all the way to the end. The shows does make you care about the main characters as they are constantly pushed to their mental limits.

The story takes a while to get going. The real meat of the emotional drama starts around episode 19. Had they kept that level of drama earlier, it would've made me more invested.

Animation, while hand drawn well, had a severe lack of variety of the ships and combat. All the colors were the same, and made it very difficult to follow along with the action.

Overall, a decent watch for space and sci-fi fans, but I don't see it as an underrated gem. If it were available on blu-ray, it would have to be at a big discount sale for me to pick it up.

I wish I could've liked this, really, I tried so hard to like this. The premise was kinda interesting and characters seeming had a story to them... But after 25 episodes of spiraling further and further into a pile of horse sh*t, the last episode did absolutely nothing in terms of conclusion. I've not much to say except don't bother with this. Not a single resolution you want to be made, is made. There is no fulfillment. Seriously. (As for specifics, spoilers below)


...Spoiler Warning...


The main character wasn't particularly bad. In all honesty there's a lot worse out there - take Future Diary's protagonist for example. ... So why in the ever-loving frICK does every single character have a problem with him? And noone really seems too bothered by the fact that his little brother keeps beating him up?? He even got shot by what was supposed to be his 'best friend' and I don't recall him ever apologizing after the fact either. This was just frustrating as hell to watch. MC never gets a chance to fight back because all the people around him are deluded and yet MC is criticized for always going along with everyone. What was he supposed to do? Take charge? Revolt? Then he'd probably get blamed regardless. Most likely by the same little brother who gets offended whenever MC breathes. Oh, and great conflict resolution on that relationship, because I definitely was glad that the tension I was most curious about got resolved OFF SCREEN. What's the point of all that set-up if nothing is ever actually addressed?

Final thing to complain about. So... final episode. If you watch 25 episodes of bad things getting worse, then you would expect some kind of resolution, right? Maybe we see how people dealt with the trauma of the event, how the public reacted, trials maybe, the children's families, ANY progress in that crappy romance? Nope. Instead, it's a timeskip and the brothers are apparently fine now for whatever reason and MC gets back on that ship. The very same one they were held hostage on, assaulted, attacked, harassed and manipulated on. I'm seriously baffled as to how they can act like everything is fine after all that was done. But I guess I shouldn't have had such high expectations going into this.

As a last takeaway: DO NOT watch this series if you don't like injustice, easily affected by negative situations or, if you don't want to suffer. It's not worth it.

TLDR; MC gets treated terribly for no reason and no conflict resolution. No satisfying conclusion whatsoever.