I don't know what to make of this series.
I honestly really liked the first part. The series begins with the main character Yuji waking up into a post apocalyptic world after being retrieved by a recovery squad. They try to get to a spaceship, while facing some difficulties along the way, and finally make their way to Second Earth. That part of the series was utterly satisfying. It had a relatively diverse cast, some good action and the episodes always contained something new and interesting.
After the characters get to second earth though, the show slows down a bit. There is a lot of political intrigue, which is a nice change from the previous episodes, but while there are actually things happening it always feels like you know what is going to come next. After a while, you get used to it though and you just watch what is going to happen. The culmination of the second half is quite nicely done as well. The series could have stopped where it was, would have left quite a lot of questions and it would have been fine.
However, the last 4 episodes, the quality of the show just goes downhill like a landslide. The storyline falters a bit, the leader of the good guys apparently decides their enemy was right and becomes the bad guy and worst, there suddenly has to be a whole lot more meaning behind the story. That frustrates me.
There were quite a lot of very satisfying options to end the show, but the writers apparently decided to go with a really bad one in which the earth is intelligent and want to eradicate a lot of humans so that the remaining humans might live in harmony with nature aga... blablabla. If the rest of the show had conveyed a message like that, I wouldn't mind, but it didn't. Besides, it wasn't subtle.
I would recommend this show to anyone who likes scifi or a post apocalyptic setting, doesn't mind a bit of gore and blood (which due to the quality of the animation, is never really unsettling) or just likes mecha's.
I just didn't like the way it all ends.
A 7.
