Story & Characters: Cagaster of an Insect Cage takes place in 2125, when a terrible illness known as the Cagaster starts to infect large populations. This disease morphs the inflicted into gigantic, savage insects. These insects are large, fierce, and kill on sight, sporting large sickles and hard bodyarmour-like shells. Kidou is a professional exterminator, very adept at killing these insects with his quick thinking and strong physic. While on a mission one day, he stumbles upon a damaged car with a dying parent, who pleads Kidou to take his daughter, Ilie, to find her mother, as they're stuck in the middle of nowhere. Taking his request, Kidou takes Illie to live with him in his base of operations where he vows to help track down this mother, with very little to go on. In this town, we see how bad it's gotten due to the Cataster outbreak and how humans eventually turn on each other when things get desperate. This, along with the Cagaster nest that's discovered, bring about much tension for the audience. Or so the series tries to do anyway.
On the face of this all, I wouldn't mind the story so much if it wasn't executed so poorly. It's suppose to make you on edge at all times because of these ferocious insects, and they spoil any opportunity to do so. There's so much in-town strife that, really, doesn't involve the main problem at all. Lizzy, who we meet about halfway through, is taking care of orphaned kids and the entire thing adds very little to the overall plot. My guess is that it's there to serve as a reminder of the effect that these insects have on kids' lives, but it really didn't speak to me. I think part of the problem is that we are always "told" of the damage that both the virus and the resulting insects do, but we're never really showed much of it. While you never want to show death after death all the time, it serves to tense your audience and this series sorely needed more of that.
Kidou seems to care pretty deeply for Illie, but he forces himself to show no care for her when he can. He's just a mindless puppet that seeks to kill. And while I love me some killing machines, that's literally all Kidou comes off as. Ilie is a slightly better character in that she tries to toughen up and show Kidou that she 'can' be useful, but her weak physic does get in the way more often than not. It feels like plot armour at times. That being said, she does have some backstory that's revealed to us a little later on, and while it's a decent, again, I just don't feel like they execute anything around it very well. It's suppose to be tense, but I just found myself bored.
Side characters are pretty meh all around. Franz is a scientist that gets introduced to us a few episodes in and following his agenda of ideas is confusing at the best of times. He makes weird decisions leading to problematic outcomes so you can never really get what his motivations are. Acht is a confusing character as well, as he has motivations and that decently laid out to us, but the conclusion of his story seems so random. You get why they left him off where they do, but what was the payoff for him? Mario is a bar owner, which houses Kidou. I loved Mario. Highly excitable, acts on words and hilarious to top it all off.
Despite the fact that the show wanted us to feel tense, there just weren't enough high moments to offset the frequent talking and lack of action. I expected an apocalyptical chaos-driven story, but this lacked that at so many corners. (Story: 4/10, Characters: 5/10)
Art: For being full CG, this looked really ugly at just about any time that didn't include the insects. Now, I love the designs for these insects. They looked dangerous, ferocious and would have probably me feel like I was watching God Eater or Attack on Titan, if we showed in action more than they were. However, most everything else looked pretty flat and boring. (6/10)
Sound: The OST was decent here, but blank at others. Most times, I only really ask for that. The OP and EDs were fine, though I kind of wished three of them weren't by the same band. Voice work was mostly fine. I really don't get the appeal as to why Aleks Le (Kidou) has been getting these main roles lately, but I haven't been a fan of his work lately and his work here left me wanting more. Most of the other VOs were solid - Todd Haberkorn (Franz), Griffin Burns (Acht) and Kim Strauss (Mario) are all worthy of praise. I've always been on the fence with Ryan Bartley's work (Ilie), but she was decent here. (7/10)
Overall Enjoyment: Cagaster of an Insect Cage really leaves more to be desired. The story went around in circles, had pacing issues at others, and had characters that I mostly didn't care about. When a post-apocalyptic world with gigantic insect killers lacks excitement, you've done something wrong. (5/10)
