Captain Earth: Somewhere Between Mediocre and Decent
Noirit Mustapha
The staff over at BONES animation studio that worked on their previous mecha show Star Driver returned to the scene with Captain Earth in 2014, which was hyped to be one of the biggest mecha shows of the year. Sporting a colourful cast of characters, it involves the protagonist and his friends being chosen by the nations main defence organisation to protect the Earth from an impending alien threat. Typical premise aside, it does throw in a few twists and conspiracies here and there, and most of the character interactions are fun to watch in and out of the battles. Unfortunately, a lot of the show just falls flat and then energizes up in too many parts to make this consistent in any way.
BONES was always one for action and sometimes great mecha designs, and that is easily seen in Captain Earth. The fights are fast, fluent and intense, juxtaposed nicely with the soundtrack filled with hype-inducers. Animation during the more quiet segments is also pleasant to look at, especially with the variety in the cast as well. However, the show tries to juggle too huge a cast at times, and as a result fails to make many of them engaging. The plot tends to suffer from a very formulaic tedium as the show goes on too, which is a huge contrast to the immensely exciting first episode.
With all that inconsistency then, it becomes rather hard to really be able to recommend Captain Earth to anyone. It dances around exciting and boring so often, especially during the second half of the show, which only makes you less and less excited for any fun encounter that does happen. The completely weird and sudden ending after the revelation of an extremely predictable true villain also mars the immersion into the show. Anyone looking for eye candy can try this out, but otherwise this is another disappointment.
