The Summer 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Bye Bye, Earth

Set on an Earth where all people take the form of animals, Bell is the only girl in the world without animal characteristics. She sets out to discover if there are other beings like her. Bell wields a sword and becomes involved in the struggles between the cities and the outside world.

Bye Bye, Earth is based on the novel by Tow Ubukata. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

There's a silly game we, as anime fans, seem to be playing these days: debating whether an anime is “isekai” or not. As a thought experiment, this can be rather fun (eg., Do virtual worlds count as isekai? What if the virtual worlds are populated by fully-conscious AI?) Bye Bye, Earth takes this uncertainty and makes it a core feature of its story. As far as Belle knows, she is the only human in her world. There are cat-people, mouse-people, and fish-people galore. There are minotaurs and other animal people. She was seemingly born from a stone but that's literally all anyone knows of her origins. Thus we are left with the question: are there other humans in her world or is she from our world—i.e., is this a normal fantasy story or an isekai fantasy story?

Beyond this twist, Bye Bye, Earth is also a story about something central to the human condition: the pain of not fitting in. We've all experienced this in our lives to varying degrees—be that due to interests or hobbies, race or gender. In Belle's case, it's her physical appearance that wounds her. She stands out anywhere she goes. People point at her and whisper. She is seen as a freak at best and a monster at worst.

All this makes her feel disconnected from the world—and she wants nothing more than to be connected. Sadly, as those she has encountered almost uniformly reject her, she has concluded that the only way to be accepted is to find a place filled with those like her—other humans. To go on such a search, she must become a Nomad—and becoming one comes with a cost.

Herein lies the tragedy of this first episode. While people at large fear and shun her, Belle has found at least one person who sees her for who she is: her teacher, Sian. Belle's price for becoming a Nomad is that she will have her memories of Sian magically torn from her. In other words, she has to give up the one person who fully accepted her for the chance to find more. It is heartbreaking and, at the same time, adds even more stakes to her impending journey. If she is unable to find other humans, then she will have given up the closest thing she has to a home for nothing. It's good stuff and I can't see a world where I don't watch this one through to the end.

I will never be able to see a proper noun that's some other word spelled backwards without hearing Joshua from Troll 2 yelling, “NILBOG IS GOBLIN SPELLED BACKWARDS!” And while the writing in Bye Bye, Earth isn't quite that caliber, I wasn't particularly impressed with the script here. It has the ailment particular to speculative fiction wherein there are so many proper nouns, dropped with absolute gravity that it starts to feel kind of mushy. If the dialogue had some snap to it or a sense of naturalism, it may have been able to recover—but it's all grand pronouncements and lectures. You know, the kind of writing you find in mediocre-to-bad fantasy novels that are more interested in creating an Epic Narrative that puts the world-building and ideas ahead of decent character writing. When Sian mentioned the true meaning of “utopia” while the camera zoomed in on “Erehwon,” it was a true eye-roll moment.

When nobody's talking, though, it's an extremely compelling show. In the initial action sequence, I questioned whether Belle swinging that heavy sword around like it was made out of balsa wood as she flew and jumped through the air was intentional or poor action directing—and sure enough it was very much a deliberate choice! My skepticism about the direction almost totally dried up when squid ink showered Belle, and splashes of it hit the camera lens. That's a super cool effect! Bye Bye, Earth truly excels when it comes to visual storytelling—and it's backed up by a lovely score by Kevin Penkin.

And the voice cast! I'm not the biggest seiyuu fangirl but there are a few names that will make me sit up and take notice (and most of them are on the cast list). Already, we have Fairouz Ai as Belle and Junichi Suwabe as Sian, and press releases promise appearances by Miyuki Sawashiro, Kenjirō Tsuda, Natsuki Hanae, and Saori Hayami. Even if the script is mush, at least it'll sound good!

There are some good ideas swimming around in the overcooked oatmeal this is the script. Belle dealing with fantasy racism isn't anything new but the way she yearns for a place to belong has some power behind it. The nature of Enolas isn't clear and Sian wasn't exactly compelling but the ending twist packed an emotional punch that I wasn't expecting. It remains to be seen, however, whether it'll be worth wading through the muck.

I certainly can't fault this premiere for a lack of effort. My most lasting impression of the episode is that Bye Bye, Earth is trying really, really hard. It wants to be an epic, tragic fantasy adventure with tons of cool action, a tragic heroine with a mysterious past, and to pull on heartstrings as hard and fast as possible. At the very least, it has all the elements to do all of that but is just a bit too clumsy to fully realize its vision.

There's genuinely a lot to like here. I love the animal-people world and all the variety of designs within the various fantasy races – those mouse people are adorable – and while it's a little tiresome to have every character reiterate that Belle doesn't have any animal features, that dynamic holds a lot of promise. Belle is a classic moody protagonist, but she's also determined and likable enough to make it work. The overall animation is a little inconsistent, but there are a lot of strong layouts across the episode, and the action looks solid throughout. While nothing in this episode blew me away, it was all solid.

The problem is that Bye Bye, Earth wanted me to be blown away. The back half of this episode pours on the tragedy by revealing Belle's backstory and giving her a bittersweet farewell from her beloved mentor, Sian. The problem is that it crams all of that into about half an episode before we've gotten attached to either character enough to care. I can understand Belle's feelings in this moment, being forced by some unexplained but apparently necessary "curse" to lose her memories of Sian so she can become a proper "Nomad," but I can't connect to that sadness or get caught up in it because I've known Sian for a combined 5 minutes and have no idea why any of this is necessary for Belle to travel the world. It just feels like the show is blowing its load too early with this, and it would have been better to reveal this at a later point when we've actually gotten to know Belle and understand all the magic stuff involved in this.

On the one hand, I appreciate that the show wants to go as hard as possible right off the bat, but that impatience for a big, emotional payoff makes me skeptical about its long-term storytelling abilities. I'm also not the biggest fan of Tow Ubukata, who penned the original novels, so that gives me more reason for skepticism. At the very least, I'm interested enough to see another episode or two.

There's something very self-conscious about Bye Bye, Earth's first episode. It knows that it's trying to tell a very specific science fiction story that stands to have a Deep Meaning, and nothing says that better than the writing on the swords. Protagonist Belle's blade bears the word "Erehwon," while her teacher Sian's sword reads "Enola." If you've had any experience with the Enola Holmes franchise (books or movies), you'll immediately recognize that as "alone" spelled backward. When you apply the same principle to Belle's sword, you'll find that "erehwon" is "nowhere" spelled backward – which is apparently both the name of her curse and possibly the story's underlying theme. Just before he quite literally cuts Belle loose, Sian remarks that the name of her curse and the word on her sword may prove to be what they call a utopia; the fact that that word is, in fact, "nowhere" seems to indicate that no such place as "utopia" exists and that Belle may not find the answers she's seeking.

Is it far too on the nose? Yes, a bit. Sian's curse of being ultimately alone is a bleak statement, and the fact that Belle is the only human rather than beast-or-bug person in her corner of the world feels like a too-apt metaphor for her journey. Belle is subject to discrimination, both for how she looks (the people call her "featureless") and for how she functions in the world, with abject horror at how she eats fish flowers. People are happy for her help, but not that she's the one giving it. As a set up for a journey of self-discovery and finding her place in the larger world, it's fine, but with such an interesting world, I'd have hoped for something a little more off the beaten path.

Still, the worldbuilding itself is engaging. Belle is called to defeat the fish flower in the first place because it's polluting a freshwater lake with salt water, killing all of the regular fish. But what Belle discovers, or perhaps knows all along, is that the fish flower is just looking for a way to go home, and since it can't return to the sea itself, it will send forth its seeds so that maybe they can find a way. When Belle takes one of those seeds to drop in a river, she's helping the antlered octopus-dragon because she relates to its goals, and even though her job was to kill it, she still feels for the doomed creature who isn't welcome in the place it can't seem to leave. Add in that people are a mix of full-animal and the more frequently seen beastpeople (with animal features), and watching Belle explore could be really interesting, even if the mice did give me major The Secret of NIMH flashbacks.

I don't love the foreshadowing of what Belle may discover on her journey, although admittedly, I may be putting a darker spin on "nowhere" than I ought to. But this is intriguing enough that it merits the old three-episode test to see where it goes, and I'm willing to give it that.

Something you should know about me, readers, is that I am a hopeless simp for the music of Kevin Penkin. Ever since Made in Abyss permanently broke my brain, all it takes is hearing a few notes of a supremely lush and ethereal Penkin score for me to be transported to my happy place immediately. I won't even pretend that Bye Bye, Earth has the most striking or original OST that Penkin has produced, at least as of now. It's telling that even the man's lesser efforts outpace the music of almost every other show this season. In short, this premiere could have been twenty straight minutes of hot garbage in every other respect, and I still probably would have had a good time on account of the music alone.

Thankfully, Bye Bye, Earth is not garbage. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit! Particularly, the blend of cheesy fantasy tropes, anthropomorphic animals, and a somewhat melancholy tone is right up my alley, for one. The premiere also manages a brisk and fun pace that works exceptionally well for this kind of premiere; we get all of the exposition we need about Belle's place as the lone human in this fantastical world of hers, but the show never feels like it is hobbling itself just to go through the motions. My biggest problem with a lot of fantasy anime isn't just how rote and familiar all of the worldbuilding can feel but how unexcited they seem to be about the wonderful possibilities of their own genre. Bye Bye, Earth is going to some lengths to establish a unique setting that doesn't just feel like a rehash of everything that came before it, and Belle's quest for self-discovery is a compelling one. More importantly, though, it feels like it's having fun. That makes me have fun!

In other words, this is one of those anime that feels tailor-made just for me. I only have two complaints, and neither is enough to ruin the show for me. I will admit that the way that Belle's mentorship with Sian concludes feels a bit rushed for an opening chapter, and I would have liked to see that payoff run its course over another episode or two. Also, while we get some lovely cuts of animation throughout the premiere, Bye Bye, Earth's visuals suffer a bit from the flat colors and staging that can drag an otherwise solid production down. Still, as I said, I'm fully on board with this one, and I am more than willing to overlook the series' minor flaws to see where it goes from here.