Overview:
Houseki no Kuni was one of the most beloved anime of 2017, so I immediately put it on my watch list...where it sat until last month. I went in really expecting to love this series, but I didn't know anything about it besides apparently there are gemstone girls. Maybe they'll sing about making a giant woman? Point is, I'm going in fucking BLIND. The show has areas where it sparkles, but I found myself more bothered by the flaws.
Visual aesthetics and animation:
The big thing about Houseki that makes it unique is that it's among the first "good looking" entirely CGI anime. I put good looking in quotation marks because I utterly despised this show from a visual perspective. It's true that Studio Orange knew what they were doing. The CG animation isn't simply incompetent and laughable like Berserk 2016 or 2017. The problem is that this final product was exactly what Orange intended...and it makes Bug's Life look like staring into the face of God by comparison. I want you to think about that. A Bug's Life was made in 1998 using computers that are fucking DINOSAURS and written with laughably obsolete programs.
CGI does cut labor costs and makes it so studios don't have to pay tons of employees (like Kyoto Animation does) or outsource to Korea. However, it's been over 20 years and CGI in anime overwhelmingly still sucks. (pulls out giant clock) IT's TIME TO STOP! If Studio Orange is the glorious standard bearer and it's getting destroyed by 90s Pixar, that's a bad sign. The best CGI action scenes in Houseki look marginally better than the vector fights in Elfen Lied. Congratulations Orange, you beat a D-list hentai studio from 2004. You still cower in fear of Toy Story 1 from 1995.
Another problem with CGI in anime is that it ages so poorly. Stand Alone Complex looked ungodly awesome when it came out; however, it now looks clunky and dated. This isn't true for everyone, but I have far less tolerance for bad CG than I do for bad hand drawn animation or bad practical effects. I have a large collection of schlock OVAs from the 90s that were made by mediocre studios, and every one of them looks better to me than Houseki. Nobody has a lot of love for Oriental Lights and Magic, who made the original Berserk and Pokémon. They liked to animate as much as I enjoy eating tar. All they do is still images and recycled loops. However, OLM made this schlocky OVA called Gunsmith Cats about cute girl bounty hunters in Chicago. This wasn't a high budget project and wasn't expected to be a major success, but it looks AMAZING compared to any CGI anime I can think of. I would rather anime go back to bargain basement OVA quality from the 90s than continue on its current CG route.
Setting and characters:
I'm going to avoid spoilers, but Houseki is about Earth in the distant future. A meteor blasted Earth into several pieces and fragments of human DNA managed to evolve over a billion years into several different species. These species represent the human body, mind, and spirit. While this isn't exactly how evolution works, this is NOT a hard science fiction. It's 1 billion+ years in the future and the Earth's climate seems unchanged. At that point, the Sun would be a red giant and Earth couldn't possibly have liquid water, let alone plant life. There are around 25 gemstone people and they're all immortal. However, the Angel people from another chunk of Earth wish to break them into pieces and use them as jewelry for...some reason. I have no idea why an energy based species from a billion years in the future would have the concept of jewelry and be attracted to shiny things like primates are. The gemstone people, who are asexual but present as cute girls because marketing, must protect themselves and fight off the invaders.
Our main character is Phosphophyllite, who is the weakest of the gems using the Mohs hardness scale from human geology. Yes, they are using a human scale invented 1 billlion years in the past. I don't know how they found out either. Phos is loveable enough clumsy girl who everyone thinks is good for nothing. She is assigned to become a researcher and learn more about the planet, themselves, and their enemies. They are immortal and have existed for thousands of years, but apparently they still need to learn these things and haven't assigned a researcher before now.
This brings me to my last problem. Houseki has some of the worst exposition dumps I've ever seen in an anime, or really anywhere. Phos is constantly learning stuff about her species so she can explain it to the audience. We're supposed to believe she is thousands of years old and doesn't know basic things about her anatomy. Characters will spout dialogue like "I'm a diamond, so remember I'm the toughest on the old human scale!". You've known this person for 3,000 years! I think she remembers you're a diamond sweetie! Imagine if I went up to my co-workers that I've known for 6 months and just announced "I'm WHITE! My skin burns easily according to the melanin scale!". These gem girls have known each other for 6,000 times longer, so it's 6,000 times dumber than that.
Overall:
Houseki does have positive aspects. Some of the fight choreography is really cool. The characters gradually grow on you and their desire to change both physically and mentally could provide for some fascinating psychological drama in the 2nd season. It deals with questions of identity that have the potential to go somewhere interesting. This anime just wasn't for me though. I had to absolutely force myself to sit though it and I won't be checking out season 2. If you liked Houseki though, more power to you. I'm a weird guy with some pretty awful taste in anime.
