Overall a bad show that isnt worth anybodys time. It doesnt even manage to be interestingly bad: for the most part its just dull and unengaging. But theres a few features that are maybe worth describing in a bit more detail. It has a really distinctive ambience which is difficult to describe exactly. Theres an amiable almost childlike naivet to it. Its never meanspirited or offensive. Theres never any sense of danger or menace. Theres almost no fan service in either the narrow or broad sense of the term. It rolls along goodnaturedly clearly very enthused by the story its telling. Irony isnt a word in the writers vocabulary: the story is ridiculous often to the point of outright stupidity but its told with complete seriousness. The setting in short is this vaguely fantasy vaguely 1930s environment. Its a few years after a big war where both sides used artificial solders as tools to do the fighting for them. Peace has now broken out and artificial soldiers are banned but a few of them are still alive and causing trouble. The evil government wants to track down the remaining artificial soldiers for its own nefarious purposes. Meanwhile our mysterious hero Agate theres a minerals/metals theme to the names arrives at the elite elitist Cluster Academy and touches the hearts of the uptight Beryl blonde and wimpy Fon also blonde. Meanwhile several other characters are coming to terms with the death of the saintlike Chalce who had been campaigning for civil rights for artificial soldiers. Meanwhile the enigmatic Chrosite a fun early role for Kamiya Hiroshi is plotting to overthrow the government although we dont find this out until the last few episodes. https://i.ur.com/V33pWZP.jpg So theres a lot going on and a massive problem is how unfocused the show is. Initially the plot seems to be centred around the Agate/Beryl/Fon relationship but the latter two get forgotten about as the show switches focus to the artificial soldier characters. This segment of the story is filled with digressions where we learn something about Chalce and his personal relationships. In the last few episodes Beryl reemerges as the centre of a fairly new plotline where And then things end in a hurry. Theres quite a few detours between the main plot items: Agates adventures on the wrong side of town an exploration of Chalces youth and family tensions between Cluster Academy and the neighbouring military academy and many others. Tied to this is a complete lack of motivation and urgency. Its never really made clear why anybody wants to do anything or what the personal stakes are for anybody. Agate is written particularly badly in this regard. Hes given no interiority whatsoever so he never progresses beyond his handful of external attributes: hes energetic happygolucky and improbably good at everything. The revelation of his true nature only comes in the final few episodes and so for most of the show particularly the earlier episodes you just see him drifting around being mysteriously talented and solving peoples problems in unlikely ways. In hindsight his opaqueness and hypercompetence was meant to have been a hook whats his deal and why is he so good at everything? Well keep watching to find out. But crucially the show never presents him in a way that arouses curiosity. You just assume his flatness and the improbability of his feats are consequences of the bad writing and vaguelydefined setting and its only later you realise you were meant to have found them intriguing His lack of depth then becomes a large problem in the final episode where but your lack of investment in him as a character robs it of any weight. The very wide lens and the constant range of plot movements means that nobody is given much room to develop or appear in relatable situations. Agate has already been mentioned but the rest of the cast also remains twodimensional throughout. Theres isolated pockets of growth and depth here and there Beryl learns to loosen up a bit Fon gains some selfconfidencebut in general the characters are superficial all the way through it. A big arc is supposed to be how the artificial soldiers especially their leader Chrome learn to get in touch with their humanity from interacting with the humans: but theyre already a goodnatured bantering bunch of friends when we first meet them. Theres no sense of them having travelled any distance by the end of the show. Vesuvia the main villain also suffers particularly from the lack of characterisation: hes given nothing to do beyond being the antagonist for unspecified reasons. https://i.ur.com/KE2pHLE.jpg To the shows partial credit it doesnt club you over the head with worldbuilding and tocamera exposition like many shows do. But it takes this too far in the other direction. Youre well into the second half before you understand the various factions and their goals to the extent that they can be understood. This renders the early episodes often incomprehensible: things are happening onscreen but their significance is frequently impossible to determine. The setting remains weakly developed all the way through which becomes a problem in the final episodes where a dramatic battle between all the factions takes place. By this late stage the storys fictional world has still barely been built and so theres no sense of anything being at stake or what the consequences of the various possible outcomes will be. A theme which dips in and out of focus is the human characters prejudice towards the artificial soldiers. This is painted explicitly as a civilrights kind of issue: we see the more enlightened humans campaigning politically for equal treatment of the artificial soldiers and some points are unsubtly made about how discrimination is bad and people whether natural humans or clones should look past their superficial differences and learn to get along. Like a lot of the show this is all treated with complete seriousness and sincerity but it never engages with the topic in any depth. Theres also a sporadic flirtation with religious imagery. On three different occasions goodguy characters are betrayed to the villains for money. Spiritual redemption through flying in aircraft is an occasional motif. The artificial soldiers are being produced by a sectlike organisation of unclear details prompting some philosophising on the nature of God and creation in the Biblical sense. Finally we discover that in the last episodes which lean somewhat on Evangelions use of Christian motifs. As with everything else the unfocused treatment of the religious aspects mean they never have any weight or interest. https://i.ur.com/DaTyxk7.jpg The use of aircraft is a curious element. Aircraft feature very prominently in the early episodes and we find out early on that the evil government has banned all aircraft except its own military ones. The good guys secretly have one of their own however which naturally builds tension for some kind of aerial confrontation between the two sides. This never happens however. The aircraft plotline fades out for most of the show only reappearing towards the end. Theres a competitive aircraft race between Cluster Academy and the military academy the military seemingly having become somewhat relaxed about their prohibition on private aircraft. Cluster Academy improbably wins but literally seconds later this is forgotten about as another plotline jumps back in to take centre stage a fight between the artificial soldiers and the villains begins just as the Cluster Academy characters are congratulating each other. On the more technical side the style and animation are functional without ever distinguishing themselves. Outside of some vehicle and explosion scenes it never really comes to life. Clearly particular attention was paid to the vehicles: lots of interwarlooking cars and military vehicles and some fantasystyle planes. The background music is fun very synthy. The Ops and Eds have a nice lively mood which fits the show well. The earlymiddle part of the show makes extensive use of flashbacks. Theres two recap episodes in the first half and several other episodes consist heavily of scenes from previous episodes. Interestingly the reliance on flashbacks decreases sharply as the show progresses. Finally this would be incomplete if I didnt say a few words about the homolust or the lack of it. The cast is almost exclusively pretty boys. Despite a promising start nothing ever really gets off the ground Agate and Beryl are set up as this stereotypical fun guy x uptight guy combination but they send up spending most of the show apart so things dont have any room to go anywhere. Agate later has a cute friendship with Chrome that again gets set aside after a few episodes. Overall therefore not a good show from any perspective and one thats been deservedly forgotten. https://i.ur.com/2JTvCL7.jpg Miscellaneous observations In a show filled with improbable events a particularly improbable event comes early on: Fons plane is about to explode and crash into a lake but Agate saves him by doing a sick jump on his motorbike leaping an enormous length off the bike onto the plane grabbing Fon and jumping a safe distance away from the plane before it explodes. This scene is then flashed back to three times in the next halfdozen episodes. Much later on we have a scene where the students of Cluster Academy discover to their horror that Chrome is an artificial soldier. Despite this taking place indoors the students somehow possess a ludicrous profusion of stones to pelt him with. This show like many others with a vaguely oldtimey setting lets you know certain characters are poor because they wear cloth caps and waistcoats have mustaches etc.