Anime: Soukyuu no Fafner: Heaven and Earth

English is not my native language, and while I have little problems with it sometimes I can't help expressing my thoughts in my home lang. Thank you for your patience.

* SPOILERS WARNING *

Souykyuu no Fafner: Dead Aggressor, translated to english as Fafner in the Azure by fansubbers and simply Fafner by Geneon, was an interesting sci fi - mecha series that hit somewhere around 2003. Xebec studio, known mainly from putting vast amount of ecchi into it's productions, did something that's best described as a merger of Gundam franchise and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The plot was fairly complex, the characters deep, dialogues meaningful and mechas... Well, mechas weren't really of Gundam quality, but still good and authors managed to convey some interesting new ideas to this fairly exploited concept of bipedal fighting machines. Add to this a plenty of open questions left at the series' conclusion and you can imagine my reaction when I've heard about full-featured movie sequel going into production, with new series supposedly following. God, how I didn't know what I'm about to see.

Let's start with the good sides. Uhm, well, side. Graphics are good. Not exactly astonishing, leaving you crawling on the floor and begging for more, but really good - just what you would expect from a modern studio known for it's high-quality visuals. It's probably a matter of personal taste, but I strongly dislike the amount of CG put into newer anime. Despite fancy cell-shading techniques, it still looks a bit off, which is painfully visible when CG's are overused. Heaven and Earth would fall into this category in my books.

But honestly, I'd live happily with any amount of CG if the plot was worth it. Dead Aggressor's scenario wasn't really believable - hell, it was borderline stupid at times - but it's "everyone can die" atmosphere was, and still is, something quite uncommon in anime and etertainment media overall. While interesting in itself, it added to story a necessary amount of realism. I believe that over the course of the series, more than a half of overall named cast was gone, and this includes one of three main protagonists. Well, you can forget it now. Heaven and Earth revives him, as it does with several other characters that at the end of Dead Aggressor were declared almost certainly lost. Many fans, perhaps even majority, will be happy that their favourite characters are back - for me, the real risk of them dying was quite an important factor in making them interesting chracters they were. Apart from old, sometimes revived characters, authors promoted a number of secondary cast to more prominent seats. Unfortunately, they don't do them justice and leave them essentialy as background. Cmon, it's 1.5h movie and most of it is wasted on repetitive fights and pointless conversation, instead of an attempt to actually give characters some deep. Even the old ones seem flat now, since their changed personalities are not given any exposure. And to give futher insult to original series, everyone survives even the most dangerous situations.

Arguably biggest failure on behalf of the authors was how they totally destroyed the whole concept of main antagonists, alien race called Festum. Throughout the series, the alieness of Festum were to be feeled in their every appearance. It was clear that protagonists face an enemy that's completely beyond our mere mortals' comprehension. What was especially worth of notice is how Festum were made cold and full of emotions at the same time. It was ruined in Heaven and Earth by presenting emotional Festum - cheerful and happy like a common human. Of course, it's still Festum and viewer is constantly being reminded of the fact. However, having one behaving in a totally human way instantly brings their level down from "alien beyond comprehension" to "just a bit weird".

I haven't written anything about sound yet. Regarding BGM, it's good where it reuses old tracks from Dead Aggressor. New records don't have this epic feeling, which is on purpose I'm sure, but nevertheless it would be much more suitable the other way around. Voice acting is far from perfect, but this is due to the roster on original series - no superstars were doing voices in it, probably because of budget constraints, and now they've had to be kept, regardless of the amount of money put into production. Still, seiyuu work evokes this rare, pleasant sense of familiarity. I'm also glad that this dog you may remember from Dead Aggressor has finally been done properly. As in, it sounds like a dog and not anymore like a barking, growling human actor.

Effectively, Heaven and Earth is one big, stupid, shiny retcon. It feels like a bag - or maybe a trash can - where authors threw all their ideas they wanted executed at the beggining of the new series while not bothering about the actual execution making sense. Characters don't seem like making new discoveries - they just talk about convenient thing at a certain time of a plot and nobody seems to actually realize that, hey, it would help you people ALOT had you made use of this knowledge before. At times, film re-executes some old ideas from Dead Aggressor (i.e. Alvis infestation by tentacled alien...) in, admittedly, pretty - but unoriginal way. All in all, Heaven and Earth would be medicore at best. However, given that it's a sequel tightly connected with original series, I rate it as very, very poor in terms of making successful continuation.