Anime: I Wish You Were Here

Zaion - I wish you were here, it's one of thoose animes that seems to be promising but leaves you in the end and empty and strange felling inside after watching it.
In this anime, the premisse is quite simple...an alien virus is spreading creating havoc and death, by turning human beings into monsters with amazing strengh. The humanity response to stop this depends on a special force (the NOA), wearing armored suits maded of nanomachines imune to the virus. But the virus grows stronger and the special force are losing menbers battle after battle, forcing the army to introduce a new weapon capable of better and faster results in a form of a little girl. The story circles around the relationship between this girl and one of the NOA soldiers.
After watching this series (OVA?) i kind had a felling of disapointed. Not only the animation it's nothing to brag about (although with some neat cgi animation, but nothing special), the sound supporting is kind of boring and seems unsuitable for the genre (music was made by Kenji Kawai of Gits, Gits: Innocence and Dark Water...and i love his music). Besides that, the ending theme (perfomed by En Avant) is clearly one of the best pieces you can find in anime theme's. The plot gives some interesting point to go on and to create more character building, but the guys behind this script were lazy and didn't want to move much besides the usual "girl meets boy in desperate situation" theme. Pity, the story was promising.
But not all is bad. Besides the fact that this title was not best handle by Gonzo, it's still a fairly good anime to watch if you don't have nothing to do. You certainly will enjoy a bit.

First let me apologize in advance: this review will not be one of my best, since it's been a while since I saw the series and I really don't want to watch it again anytime soon. However, since there are no other review yet, here's mine for what it's worth.

Aside from bad movies made from good series (think Escaflowne!), I think this is about the worst I've seen of anime. That's not to say it doesn't some nice animation or other technical merits, but they're not enough to save a poor composition and a story that's full of cliches and shallow characters. The fansub I watched had interviews or commentary with the production staff at the end of each episode, and from those I Wish You Were Here seemed to be a "my first anime" project. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing by itself -- Shinkai Makoto's Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko is wonderful, and even some really independent works like Ame to Shoujo to Watashi no Tegami are cute and worth a watch. But no, as much as I hate to disrespect the artists, the creators of I Wish You Were Here strike me as somehow similar to a startup video game studio making their first game, where all the talent is focused on eye candy, and the story ends up being whatever they can scrap together from Hollywood cliches and video game storylines written only for the sake of giving a "point" to the action (read the instruction manual for Quake if you don't know what I'm talking about). Writing a story isn't about following a formula and throwing together the standard conflict/resolution pattern around your basic premise. It's about making something fresh and new. I Wish You Were Here has the feel of a bad Hollywood thriller.

Now sometimes anime can be good even when the story is full of cliche, if the characters are unique and interesting. But unfortunately, from my point of view at least, character was the worst part of the show. In particular, I found the romance between the protagonists disgustingly sappy and pathetic. As much as the anime succeeds in manipulating the viewer to feel for them and want them to be together, the basis of their relationship is dependence and weakness. Don't misunderstand -- I don't have a problem with flawed characters, and in fact normally I want to see lots of flawed characters. But I want to see their flaws treated as what they are -- that is, difficulties to be overcome -- not idealized into some flowery nonsense. Maybe if you have a thing for weak and dependent girls becoming weaker by depending on a man, you'll like this series, but I found it insulting to my intelligence and belittling to the emotion that the series is supposed to be about. My advice to the creators of this one would be to stick to topics you understand. Love certainly isn't one of them.