It was a summer I could never forget.
Perhaps the suprise anime for me this year, Captain Earth is a series spanning 25 episodes. Focussing around the boy Daichi Manasu, son of an astronaut who died defending Earth from an alien menace called a Kiltgang, and his friends.
Earth is under secret attack by the Planetary Gears, beings out to harvest the Libidos energy of all living beings on Earth, and convert that into Orgone energy to power their machines. Luckily for Earth, when they come from their vessel they materialise near the moon, giving humanity a small window to react to.
When Daichi as a younger child meets a mysterious girl called Hana and a boy named Teppei, it turns out that years later he is destined to follow in his fathers footsteps and become the next Captain Earth, the leading protector of Earth.
Slowly he learns the truth about Hana and Teppei, with the former being a `bio-part` created to command the spaceship Blume, and the latter being an actual Planetary Gear member that doesn`t want to destroy humanity.
Now, this series has a DAMN AWESOME launch sequence for the mechas. Okay, the launch of the returning Freedom in SEED Destiny was awesome, but this one goes over it by a factor gazillion. A normal three stage rocket launches into orbit (the `Pegasus` rocket), and once cleared ejects a small mecha, the `Earth Engine Normal`, about the size of 5 humans in height.
Three orbiting stations then align, and the mecha travels through a central tube amongst them, receiving the legs, body and head modules to turn into one very big and mean looking machine. I really loved this, and if you want to check it out, see this YouTube video I found.
The series at first turns around the development and as such creation of the Midsummers Knights, consisting of Daichi, Akari - the daughter of the base commander and the satellite governor and computer wizzkid -, Hana and Teppei, who will respectively command additional Engines, namely the Nebula, build from Teppei (Albion)`s destroyed Kitlgang mecha, and Flare (until hana will take control of the Blume again).
They face off against a various series of different goal organisations like Salty Dog, while at the same time trying to locate and stop the different Planetary Gears, as well as the alien supercomputer Puck.
When the Blume is revealed in an attempt to stop a meteor from crashing to Earth, Operation Summer starts, which is to destroy the ship of the Kitlgangs hiding near the edge of out solar system. During this battle though, it is revealed Puck was playing the sides against each other and one by one picks on the Gears destroying their ego blocks, putting them to the level of Teppei of having the powers, but no longer the possibility to manifest themselves as mechas, and becoming suddenly mortal as they are now trapped in their avatars.
Both sides band together to fight Puck, as he tries to take over Hana and the Blume for his own powers, but as the Gears are so noble to sacrifice themselves and by doing so embrace their humanity, it is Daichi who will save Hana and Earth at the very end.
I really liked this series, and I can definitly recommend it to all the fans of anime. The dramatic finale of the series has a Macross Frontier feeling, while at the same time the series has a bit of a lighter undertone like Aquarion EVOL had at times.
It has been confirmed there will be a series 2 forthcoming, so I guess in that we will be exploring the fate of the now Neoteny Kiltgang members for one in that...
Oh, and
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