So this is a Slice of Life story against a science fiction backdrop, right? Well, that's not quite correct either. There's still a main plot to Gargantia, and enough action and mystery throughout it's running time that it can't really be defined as “Slice of Life”. All the same, its sedate pace and deep consideration of its ideas leave it difficult to call an “adventure” while its overall optimistic bent and high concept science fiction mean that you can't exactly refer to it as a “drama” without some sort of asterisk either.
In a lot of ways, Gargantia resembles nothing more than the best of exploratory Speculative Fiction in the western canon, the Scifi/Fantasy tales that are deeply concerned with their world and their characters, and which give you a window onto interesting events taking place in a time or universe deeply removed from our own. This is the sort of work that's been done in novels like A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) or A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. LeGuin), but attempts to do the same in a visual medium such as television or cinema, where there is a component of time necessitating a particular pace to the story, are quite rare. Successful attempts are even rarer – there has yet to be a faithful adaptation of Earthsea, to my knowledge no one has ever attempted to adapt an entry in the Zones of Thought series and, because of the sprawling nature of most of these stories, original versions in visual mediums are harder to find than a habitable planet in the cosmos: while stories like this can be some of my favorites, they don't tend to go over well when you have to have proper beats every however many minutes to keep the work going, their vision of alien settings would make for a prohibitive live-action budget, and it's hard enough to see something original produced in visual media in the first place.
Along comes Gargantia.
Gargantia has the elements of those deep exploration pieces I mentioned earlier. It has a solid story, but it takes its time with that, so you can really soak in the setting and the ideas. The show knows better than to rush forward, while still having enough movement to continue to be engaging, rather than turning into a schoolhouse lecture on a fictional universe. I think a big part of the genius of pulling this off is that it is a fish-out-of-water (no pun intended this time) story, putting a character from one setting alien to the viewers into another setting alien to the viewers, and learning about them both by how the character in question clashes with his new environment, and reacts to the stress of being somewhere he doesn't fit in.
The ideas in Gargantia are very strong, and would be enough to carry a novel like the ones I listed earlier. They're also treated with a real maturity that doesn't shy away from the complexities of the issues and how they fit into the universe. Ledo comes from a heavily militarized, essentially fascist society, and at the start of the story has known no other life than that of a soldier. As such, he reacts to dangers in a military manner, analyzing foes and determining how to best eliminate threats and complete objectives with full use of force. This doesn't give with the people he's among down on Gargantia, who are often frightened of or horrified by the massive collateral damage Ledo and Chamber can wreak, both in obvious senses and in less obvious repercussions for using full force. But where a less intelligent show might just present this issue as Ledo learning a hackneyed “Violence is Bad” message, the presentation in Gargantia is more nuanced. True, killing every single pirate you come across with the cunning use of well-placed death ray lasers isn't a good solution, but neither is total pacifism expected in the face of armed enemies. Instead of learning a black and white moral that's easy to spout but hard to apply to realistic situations, Ledo learns more about the value of balance and moderation, weighing the needs of “the mission” against the needs of a broader perspective on inter-human relations.
Similarly, it would have been terribly easy to present Ledo's home culture as simply “bad”, “wrong”, or “evil”... but I think that's territory the show intelligently avoids. The bitter harshness of Ledo's background came from a situation that necessitated it, and the philosophies and social systems that are applicable where he finds himself would almost assuredly be just as ruinous if forcibly imported to the spacefaring humanity from whence he came just as the social structure and general practices of his home culture wouldn't be appropiate for Gargantia. Certainly, there's more sympathy for the natives Ledo finds himself among, but at the same time the show doesn't try to force the idea that they'd always be right in every situation. And, because of that, both cultures feel more realized and possible rather than like straw men for a “good (or bad) ideology on paper”. There are deeper examples, but talking about them would start to enter spoiler-land, and will thus be left off.
Speaking of characters, there's an interesting narrowness of focus here. Most of the characters are actually kind of thinly sketched. We don't need a lot out of characters like Amy, Bellows, or Bevel, and so the show doesn't waste a lot of time making them too much more than what they are: windows onto their world, and into their culture. Amy does at least get a few good moments, and Pinion actually sustains some good material later in the show, but by in large, this story is all about two characters: Ledo and Chamber. Ledo, in how he (as a relatively changeable human) reacts to his changed environment, so we can learn more about him as, to an extent, he starts to discover person-hood for himself when divorced from an unyielding need to serve a particular role. Chamber... Chamber is one of the best Robot or AI characters I've seen. And I don't limit that to “in anime” Why? Because he is both a robot and a character. Chamber absolutely does have a personality, and thoughts of his own. He can be interacted with basically like a person, and there's a depth and weight to his existence that's something a lot more than a thousands of years removed descendant of Clippy. All the same, he's also a robot. Which is to say, he's a non-human intellect predicated on rules of coding, and so he sees the world in a subtly but vastly different way than a human character would, leading him to approach problems or scenarios at angles that make perfect sense when you turn things around and try to think like him, but that don't reflect the same senses and priorities that a human would have. Credit where it's due, that's pretty amazing.
The show is also very smart about handling its science fiction, and treats it with more reality than you'd expect out of anything featuring piloted big robots for fighting beings that themselves use biological superstructures. For instance, in the first episodes there's a language barrier, and it isn't immediately hand-waved away, but is actually used to show the passage of time and the process of Ledo learning more about the people he finds himself among, as he is initially nearly unable to communicate withouth Chamber's help. Care is taken to make elements that are deep scifi or downright fantastic in their actual nature seem plausible, even natural. You accept some of the bizarre premises that the show gives you because it takes them entirely seriously.
And, importantly for my ability to enjoy the show, it takes its ideas totally seriously without losing a sense of fun. There's a lot of lighter material in the show, colorful visuals and peaceful or even amusing times that you can just enjoy: the elements that might see Gargantia labeled as at least partially Slice of Life. It doesn't try to be dark or intense where serious darkness or intensity isn't needed or warranted, allowing you to soak up more of the setting and experience because you want to be engrossed in it, rather than wanting to keep it at arm's reach. This is supported by the show's overall look. While it can be visually dark as needed, it's overall very bright and colorful, potentially even oversaturated. This means, when the scene turns to something gray or eerie, you really feel it, because it's contrasted against the overall visual wonder of the piece.
Perhaps the only element I don't remember being particularly notable is the sound. I don't have any problem with it, but I've largely forgotten the OP and ED, and the voice actors are... competent. They sell their lines well enough, which can't be easy in the scenes depicting the language barrier where they have to say what to the best of my knowledge is untranslated gibberish, but make you understand what they probably mean by their tone and inflection. This can be helped if they were always given the translations of their lines, but it's still a mark of skill to pull it off. But at the same time, none of the performances except oddly enough what we hear out of robots is really impressive or memorable in its own right. Everybody does their job fine, it's just not something that really sticks with you, and I don't know how much of selling Chamber is down to his voice, rather than the writing.
SCORE BREAKDOWN
Story: 10 (Counting World-building here)
Art: 9
Sound: 7
Character: 9
Enjoyment: 9
Total: 8.8 (9)
Final Verdict: Gargantia is a real rarity, not just in Anime but in visual media in general. If you're at all a fan of science fiction, it's worth checking out. And even if you're not a big sci-fi buff, everything is paced well enough and given sufficient weight that I feel like it would work without a need to appreciate the speculative nature of the fiction – the fiction is good enough. Do yourself a favor and give this one a watch.
