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Remi is the only female representative of a long retired six-member mecha team that heroically saved the earth decades before. A car accident on the way to a reunion has left her comatose in hospital. While her comrades gather around her deathbed she dreams of a life and death event from her childhood and also of a surreal world in which she and her five friends are fated to die horribly within a few days – in her case only two. The parallels between the two dreams and her actual circumstances are obvious. Will her indomitable fighting spirit prevail? Will this be the final battle of a fading warrior? Regardless of the outcome, the film ends up being a paeon to militarism. If she lives, it’s because her warrior’s strength of will has overcome the greatest battle of her life; if she dies, and with the way the film approaches the crisis, then it becomes a romantic tribute to the soldier’s life. War is the greatest wrong that humans do. In war, even the winners are losers. Anime like Time Stranger promote the myth that militarism is a genuine solution to the problems of the world. Give me Martian Successor Nadesico or Irresponsible Captain Tylor any day. Compounding the problem, in one alarming sequence the six friends massacre hundreds of single-minded Islamic looking adversaries. Due to the absence of any qualifying point of view, the viewer can only accept what is happening at face value – it’s presented as exciting and adventurous, even fun.
Remi is an appealing character, yet she is oddly masculine. The men of the film, for their part, rarely manage to be more than their different manifestations of macho stereotypes, from samurai to soldier, from politician, to businessman. What makes each of them human, thankfully, is their shared love and respect for Remi.
Extended review
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