Blue Gender starts out simple enough. The Earth has been overrun by creatures known simply as Blue, and the remaining human race is struggling to take their planet back from them. For the first couple of episodes it�s the atmosphere and how the characters interact within it that really makes the show stand out. Everything feels as dead as it looks, and the characters all have this very emotionless way of going about themselves that is actually quite frightening. The main heroine (Marlene) especially. She�s this tough ass soldier chick who doesn�t care about anything except for the mission. She doesn�t care if her comrades die, and civilians are nothing but obstacles to her. In a way she�s more machine than she is human, mentally programmed to carry out her duties and nothing more. Yuji is one of the few cast members in the entire series that shows emotions and personality outside of the soldier, but it pretty much falls to deaf ears for more than half the series. Since I enjoy making comparisons, I�d consider it safe to say that fans of films like Aliens and The Thing would enjoy Blue Gender quite a bit. While none of those movies were post apocalyptic in any way, they both have a very similar feel to Blue Gender. A very dry, dead, scary and rather depressing feel, and where characters are very two dimensional only due to the fact that they don�t know how to act otherwise, constantly in fear or ready for combat. This is the world of Blue Gender in a nutshell.
Like I said earlier, Blue Gender is a pretty depressing anime. It doesn�t pull any punches, and doesn�t leave too many characters alive for very long. But besides that, it�s also rather sad to see mankind forced into outer space to live in some space station they call �Second Earth� all because of some giant bug infestation. I find it pretty far fetched that mankind, as stubborn as it is, didn�t just nuke the hell out of Earth before letting the Blue take it over and multiply even more in a sort of �if we can�t have it then nobody can� type of deal. Or at least dropped a few tactical strikes on the locations with the most Blue and then sent in an assault team to take out the rest. But, what do I know? It�s not like I�ve ever been in a post apocalyptic reality before. Without nitpicking too much though I will compliment the series on its cultural diversity. Besides Yuji and a few others, the characters all seem to range in nationality. This is a problem I always had with most post apocalyptic stories regardless of it being an anime or some other form of media. The main characters would all come from one country, and the major threats would all seem to center around one location, which doesn�t make sense with it being a global event. If Blue Gender does one thing perfectly, it�s making sure the Blue are all over the world and not just in Japan or some other part of Asia, and also making sure that many characters of the story come from different places. It�s not often I watch an anime where names like Yuji and Rick can coexist.
Although I did imply something about the characters being very two dimensional, that doesn�t mean there isn�t any character development throughout the series, but it is rather limited. The only characters that really have any development are Marlene and Yuji, our two main heroes of the show. It�s interesting to watch these two characters slowly evolve throughout the series, especially early on when they are so different from one another. Yuji wants to save the world and everyone in it, while Marlene just wants to eradicate the Blue and doesn�t give a damn about collateral damage. These two characters grow rather fond of each other, and by mid/late-season actually begin falling for one another. What is strange (and actually quite annoying in my opinion) is how the writers decided to use these two characters during the later half of the show. Without spoiling too much, lets just say Yuji and Marlene have a bit of a personality shift. Luckily things don�t stay like this for the rest of the series, but it was a tad bit infuriating to see more than a dozen episodes worth of character development get flushed down the toilet in a single episode.
The audio and visuals of Blue Gender are not what you would call high quality, but they get the job done I suppose. On the audio side, it�s all actually very good at setting the mood, but there just isn�t a whole lot of it. One tune in particular seems to play throughout the entire series. I�m also 99% sure I heard the song �Angel� by Massive Attack in one of the later episodes (during the orgy scene with Alicia and Yuji) but it was only the opening of the song and nothing else so I can�t be completely certain. But if so, then that was probably just something FUNimation threw in since I know they like to use �real� bands in their productions� The animation in Blue Gender is often times pretty cheap. The blood effects for example should have been a lot better when you consider the year it came out. Another thing I found funny was how the Armor Shrike�s (the mechs piloted throughout the series) had wheels attached to the bottom of their feet as a way of moving around. This probably made things easier to animate since they rarely had to animate the movement of the Armor Shrike�s legs and could easily just slide them across the screen (which also looked pretty cheap, since I doubt giant mechs would glide almost silently across rocky badlands). To be blunt, some of the movements of the Armor Shrike�s looked like they were done using a Macromedia Flash motion tween. With that said, I really don�t think this is an anime mech fans are going to want to pick up if it�s for the sole purpose of seeing some hot mech on bug action. Blue Gender has its flaws and certainly isn�t something I can guarantee you�ll enjoy, but if you�re ever in the mood for yet another post apocalyptic anime then I don�t see how it could hurt to check out Blue Gender.
My Score: 7.5
Version Watched: English Dub
