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Title (English) Blue Gender
Title (Japanese) Blue Gender
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Fantasy Novel

Notes
Classification -
Synopsis "Blue Gender" is an apocalyptic sci-fi/horror story about the Earth being overrun by giant, voracious, and nearly indestructible insect-like monsters called "Blues" that were released in a bio-war. Most of Mankind on Earth was wiped out and only those who escaped to orbiting stations were in a position to attempt to wage war on the Blues. A party is sent down to Earth to try to recover some "sleepers" - people who had been put into cryogenic sleep a few years before the Blues appeared. But things immediately go wrong during a surprise attack by Blues and most of the landing party members are killed and the sleepers destroyed, with the exception of Yuugi, who is awakened to a nightmare world by one of the space soldiers, a girl named Marlene. Yuugi and Marlene have to trek over half of Asia to reach another launch site where they can return to space. There they get caught up in a plan to use sleepers to lead an invasion back to Earth to defeat the Blues. But there are a number of competing forces in the orbital stations with different objectives. Okay - that's the "back of the box" summary of this series - think of it as a "spoiler space" and don't go further unless you want to see how I was "inspired" by the Blues to "ravage" this series. (Dave Baranyi)
Review Mercifully, the accelerated re-broadcast of "Blue Gender" has finished on the "Kids Station" in Japan and I got to watch the last few episodes this past week. "Blue Gender" was originally a late night anime from a couple of years ago - the Kids Station didn't bother to put its repeats into a late night slot. So instead of dragging out for 6 months, I got to go through the series in a few weeks as the Kids Station broadcast 3 or 4 episodes per week.

CONTAINS SPOILERS
First of all, I've disliked "giant bug" stories for years, ever since I learned what the "cube-square" law is and some fundamental biology ( and lots of chemistry ). The Blues have all the features of traditional "bad science" giant monsters. There are elephant-sized wasp-Blues which still fly at high speeds on gossamer wings despite their incredible mass. The land-based Blues are impervious to direct hits by all sorts of weapons that would knock Abrams tanks to bits, but they can be killed with the "right shot" from a side arm in single combat. They also can move at incredible speeds and burst through solid rock without suffering any internal damage to their guts, which are otherwise very easily splattered if the armor is sliced with a sword.
This of course, raises the question of how 7 or 8 billion people could have been killed off by the Blues in the first place. Somehow I really doubt that all of the 10's of thousands of nuclear weapons and millions of conventional weapons that are spread around the Earth today would be turned to plowshares over the next 30 years while competing nations were developing giant killing bugs instead.
The story also relies on a lot of "idiot plot" actions by the space station forces - they continuously drop down small parties of foot soldiers who get terrified at the first sight of Blues and become bug droppings immediately. Why wouldn't they instead happily sit up in their VTOL craft and blast the Blues at a comfortable distance. Then there is the issue of the Blue nests. Instead of dropping thermonuclear bombs on the nests, small groups of mecha-assisted solders are sent inside to be slaughtered.
Idiot plots aside, the other bad part of the story is that, for an action series, it is very static much of the time. Yuugi wanders around in a constant state of angst and "cold blooded" Marlene hopelessly falls for him the first time he keeps her from falling off a cliff. The story really goes into slowdown in the parts in space as a series of EVA-like "sinister plots" start to unfold. It turns out, not surprisingly, that the sleepers have some of the same genetic material in them that makes the Blues so dangerous. At that point I was hoping that Yuugi might turn into a monster and tentacle attack Marlene, but no such luck.
Speaking of tentacles - there isn't any tentacle sex in "Blue Gender", but the producers were obviously hoping to attract the "seinen" crowd with the occasional bit of sex and nudity. The most obvious part is the ending animation, in which Marlene strolls along naked, waist deep in water. We first get to see her legs, then the animation switches to her bouncing boobs. ( It's a fun scene to watch in fast forward. ) In the series itself, at one point near the beginning Marlene lets her partner try to feel her boobs through her combat armor. ( Either a dumb partner or not very good armor. ) Then later on the station Yuugi finds out that "R&R" for the troopers consists of public sex in a big common area - lots of couples are humping along with a fair number of blow jobs going on. But it is right near the end when Yuugi and Marlene finally have sex, just before they go off on their final mission.
BTW - the ending is a real "jaw-dropper". Yuugi and Marlene are leading one last desperate attempt to destroy the nest-of-nests in Guyana, when they find out that all of the Blues have migrated there to die on their own. The Blues had a convenient "self-destruct" program in their genes - once they destroyed civilization and most of Mankind, they simply walked off and died. There is one last super-Blue to protect a giant flower, but Yuugi is able to destroy it despite the fact that the computer analysis couldn't find a weak spot. Yuugi then went into the beam of energy that the flower was giving off and found out that the whole point of the Blues was to eradicate the environmental mess that humans had made, by eliminating most humans. So Yuugi and Marlene go off to start a new life in this new, primitive and "environmentally friendly" world, where the corpses of the billions of dead start to give rise to green plants.
So, what more can I say, except that my neck is sore from shaking my head in disbelief at this joke of a series. "Blue Gender" is apparently being released in North America. I'm not going to tell you not to buy it, but be aware of what you will be spending your money on. If you want a story about environmental apocalypse that is several orders of magnitude better, try "Arjuna". If, on the other hand, if you are looking for nudity, sex, violence, gore and blood - pick up "Devil Man Lady" instead, which is also significantly better.
(Dave Baranyi)

Credits Seried director: Masashi Abe
Episodes 26
Release Jap:DVD, US:DVD
TV Showing See the whole series for free? This series may be syndicated to regional cable, satellite or terrestial TV stations. For Europe click here.
Date 1999 October 7 - 2000 April
Production Anime International Company (A.I.C.)
Broadcaster
Animation
References & Help Look up the latest data on this title at:
Richard Llewellyn's Animated Divots, or
Anime News Network (see Encyclopedia section) ,
or in "The Anime Encyclopedia" (Clements & McCarthy, Stone Bridge Press, 2001).
Help & further information.

 

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