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The Spring 2016 Anime Preview Guide
TERRAFORMARS REVENGE

How would you rate episode 1 of
Terraformars Revenge ?
Community score: 2.2



What is this?

As dawn breaks over the Martian landscape, things aren't looking so good for the heroes of Annex I, the second expedition to exterminate the Terraformars, giant cockroach humanoids standing in the way of mankind's survival back on earth. The mission started going wrong the very second they broke Mars's atmosphere, and it's a miracle any of them are still alive, much less eking out victories against the more vastly evolved Terraformars. Akari Hizamaru and Michelle K. Davis are the only two left alive in their group, but they won't go down to these monsters without a fight! As Akari remembers the people he's already lost to an epidemic back home, he steels his nerves and injects himself with more fighting formula, giving himself the bug-power he needs to defeat his bug-foes! For those few warriors who live to see the coming sunrise, their thirst for revenge may be even stronger than their desire for victory. TERRAFORMARS REVENGE is based on a manga and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Fridays at 1:05 PM EST.


How was the first episode?

Jacob Hope Chapman

Rating:

If, for whatever reason, you decide to watch this first episode of Terraformars season 2 without having seen the first season, you might think it was pretty okay. Sure, it's kinda hard to tell what's going on, as humans transform into bug monsters to fight bigger bug-monsters amidst the chaos of a mission failed, but the whole thing is constructed in media res, so maybe you're not supposed to understand everything right away. You won't know who any of these crazy soldiers are, but the episode explains why they're here very clearly, and it even takes time out to give our protagonist some detailed motivation. Besides, the whole experience is familiar territory for anime: characters screaming and fighting for fifteen minutes (complete with a couple shots of nice animation), followed by five minutes of fanservice and sex humor. It seems normal enough, small gaps in comprehension aside. It's nothing to write home about, but if you like watching bug-people fight, there's lots of neat little moments here to appreciate.

However, if you have seen the first season of Terraformars, this noble attempt to revise the past is downright hilarious.

I don't think I've ever seen the second season of a show try so hard to sell itself while frantically crushing the first season into the dust with its heel, desperate to pretend that it doesn't exist. The first season of Terraformars was basically a disaster from start to finish, and it looked and sounded nothing like this belated second season. The first Terraformars anime debuted to lukewarm reviews at best, with its cheap and muddy production work, extremely confusing storytelling, and omnipresent censorship that made many key scenes impossible to decipher. Despite the massive financial success of its source manga, Terraformars's first season bombed in Japan, and no one in the west bothered to even release it. I watched the whole thing out of morbid curiosity and a perhaps unhealthy love of big gross monsters, and it only got worse and worse as it went.

So I have to give Terraformars Revenge credit for going out of its way to not only be completely different from season one, but also better in every way. We get a much more emotionally effective version of the protagonist's backstory this time that actually lends energy to his struggle, and the battle he fights for most of the episode is more impressive and engaging than anything in season one. The color design and lighting choices are a little generic, but it's a massive improvement over the too-ambitious muddy mess of its predecessor. Most striking of all, this episode frequently dabbles in humor, with jovial camaraderie between soldiers and bad jokes being traded off that instantly make them feel more like a team, with personalities and feelings and everything! It may be produced by the same studio as season one, but Terraformars Revenge has a completely different staff from top to bottom, and their improved efforts definitely show.

Now, does that mean Terraformars Revenge will be a good show? Eh, probably not. The premise was always incredibly dumb and tasteless, and the writing of season 2 isn't likely to be much different, even if its story is communicated more clearly. The addition of humor is mostly just a nice changeup from the joyless dirge of the original series, but the punchlines are all lazy sexist garbage. The manga is somewhat notorious for its racist stereotyping of the squad members, which was "fixed" in season one by gutting all of their personalities to "bland and grumpy." Now that they're all acting like people again, I imagine the racism will creep in to join the show's omnipresent sexism. So no, it will probably always be trashy. But at least it doesn't look like trash anymore.

If you suffered through the first season and thought to yourself "never again" when you saw a second season on the way, I'd give this a chance. It might be the Terraformars you really wanted! But despite its best efforts to reinvent itself, there's too much continuity here to start off uninitiated, and I definitely can't recommend sitting through the first season just to try this 2.0 version.


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