Blue Gender

Blue Gender takes place in the not too distant future in a world where things have gone terribly wrong for humanity. Humans have been replaced at the top of the food chain by the Blue, a race of bug-like aliens that have colonized Earth and pushed humans aside. A space station, Second Earth, has been constructed as a safe haven for humans, with the hope of one day reclaiming the Earth once more.

Yuji Kaido was cryogenically frozen, having been suffering from a disease known as B-Cells. Once awakened, he joins a team of soldiers that have come to Earth to extract him. Unfortunately, nothing goes according to plan as they make their way back to Second Earth.

Yuji will have to deal with the horrors of fighting a bloody war as he and the fighters from Second Earth look to survive. Will they be able to win back Earth without losing their humanity?

Angel, Marlene Main

Kuwashima, Houko Japanese

Kaido, Yuji Main

Nojima, Kenji Japanese

Miyagi, Seno Supporting

Hori, Katsunosuke Japanese

Whistle, Alicia Supporting

Yasuda, Miwa Japanese

Quaid, Dice Supporting

Ginga, Banjou Japanese

Kilmer, Rick Supporting

Itou, Eiji Japanese

Elena Supporting

Nishimura, Chinami Japanese

Heald, Joey Supporting

Suganuma, Hisayoshi Japanese

Li Chang, Su Supporting

Hagimori, Junko Japanese

Davis, Ben Supporting

Nemoto, Hisanori Japanese

Watson, Barry Producer

Hasegawa, Yasuo Producer

Abe, Masashi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Iwanami, Yoshikazu Sound Director

Reviews

Dec 28, 2007

Blackened-Sun

Recommended

Blue Gender is one of those series that a lot of people overlook or brush off for some reason. Many assume that it's just a depthless ripoff of Starship Troopers. However, in the process they're missing out on a substantially underrated and mature series that deserves more recognition.

Story: The initial idea, I must admit, isn't very original. Giant bugs VS. human beings has been done many times over, but this isn't the entire focus of Blue Gender. A variety of locations, plotlines and situations are introduced, the vast majority of them well developed. A wide range of issues related to maturation, bonding, dealing with ... death/violence and mankind's self-destructive nature are explored, and the political intrigue in the latter half of the series is also a nice touch.

Art: Probably the weakest part of the series. While the gritty character designs are appropriate, the art often dips into noticeably distorted bad spots and is, honestly, a little bland. Don't expect too much in the animation department either, except for more important action scenes.

Sound: The music in Blue Gender ranges from the catchy OP, to the ambient (and often somewhat unsettling) background music throughout each episode, to the understated and beautiful ED. Overall, very good.

Character: One of the best points of the series. Even minor characters are given a considerable degree of background and personality, and the leads develop to a significant extent as they gain new experiences and face new trials. I felt that the characters behaved realistically, had understandable motivations and had more depth than those in most other series I've seen. In addition, the matter of relationships (and sex) is handled in a refreshing way that is, in most cases, tasteful.

Enjoyment/Overall: Blue Gender is an action-packed, frightening and ultimately great series. It should be noted that it is rather violent, regularly deals with disturbing topics and, at many points, tells a rather morose and bleak story. However, within this melancholy framework is something that is poignant, intriguing and worthy of praise. I would highly recommend Blue Gender to anyone mature enough to handle it, and to those that want a series that explores some of the darker aspects of humanity and its role in the universe.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Oct 16, 2013

ktulu007

Mixed Feelings

Welcome back, to horror anime month. This week we look at another anime that wasn't based on anything but was an original work. From AIC studios, the same people who brought us such fails as Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari and OreImo, such decencies as Viper's Creed and Quiz Magic Academy and such goodies as Sasameki Koto and Vampire Princess Miyu. Since their work quality has such a wide range I can't even give a good estimate about how this we'll turn out. Let's take a look at Blue Gender and find out.

Our story begins in 2009 with Kaido Yuji being put in Cryogenic Suspension ... for a strange condition that the doctor's hope to find a solution for before reawakening him. Remember when we developed that technology, froze all those people and completely forgot about all of it? That was a crazy year. He wakes up in 2031 to find that giant insect creatures called the Blue have over-run the Earth and a team of soldiers is under orders to bring him into space, for very stupid reasons. The first half focuses on their efforts to reach the space stations referred to as Second Earth and may Red Shirts lose their lives. The second half focuses on the battle against the Blue and many more Red Shirts lose their lives. You can probably guess some of the story flaws, but I'll extrapolate on most of them. The first problem is that the series is set too close chronologically. The earliest events take place a decade after the series started airing. Using technology we still aren't close to having. What was the point of setting it so soon? It just makes the series dated really quickly. You'd think they could have set it in the “not too distant future” without giving an actual date and it would have worked much better. By the way, the Blue are scheduled to appear in four years for those of you who like predicting the end of the world. I can't really go into the reason that they have to bring Yuji to second Earth without giving spoilers, so I'll just say it fails basic Biology and leave it at that. Another issue is the Blue's motivation. Once you learn it you will get a migraine from the sheer idiocy of it. I'm tempted to spoil it just to rant about it, but I will restrain myself. Then there's the ending. It follows one of the dumbest, oldest cliches in existence. The cliched nature of the series is a problem in general, but at no point is it worse than the ending. The series itself seems to be afraid of trying anything new. Every plot element seems to have been decided based on what a very generic sci-fi work would do which just serves to make the whole thing trite and predictable. The horror doesn't really work. There are scenes where they're obviously trying, but the attempts are just ineffective.

Then we have the characters. The only two important characters are Yuji and Marlene. Virtually everyone else is just a Red Shirt or they'll serve one basic purpose before being relegated to Red Shirt. That brings me to the biggest problem with the characters. There are a lot of deaths in this and they never give you any reason to care. “That character who was in all of two scenes and did nothing is dead.” Yet the series treats them as important and emotional, spending an absurd amount of time on some of them. Blue Gender, if you want your audience invested in your characters, you have to actually develop them a little. Otherwise it just seems like you're padding the series out by dwelling on the deaths of completely pointless characters. Even Yuji and Marlene are pretty dull. Yuji is your standard action hero. He starts out completely out of his element, but he adapts and becomes the big hero that everyone needs all without ever finding a developed personality to call his own. Marlene is more of your action girl who starts out tough but will get relegated to a background role when the plot calls for Yuji to take over. It doesn't help that Yuji is completely ungrateful. There are two cases in which his life is saved and he gets mad at the people or person responsible. It doesn't make him more developed or interesting, it just makes him annoying.

The art is pretty good. The Blue look interesting and the backgrounds are pretty vibrant, except when they're in space and they become kind of monotonous, but that does make some sense. The action sequences could have been good, except that they interrupt the action a lot to show random reaction shots. Because when someone sees one of their comrades killed we couldn't guess that they'd be angry. We have to see it. Another issue is with the facial expressions. They frequently just look borked and convey no real emotion.

The voice acting is good, considering that the actors have very little emotional depth to work with. The performances are still competent and they did get some good actors such as Nojima Kenji Kuwashima Houko and Nishimura Chinami. The music is really good. Whether they're trying to be scary, doing an action scene or whatever, the music could have been used in something that was doing it right.

The Ho-yay factor is a 4/10. There are two sex scenes between a couple of the generic female characters. They serve absolutely no purpose and I have no idea why they were included, but they're there.

So, that was Blue Gender. How does it hold up when taken as a whole? It isn't bad, but it's certainly not good. It's too cliché and generic. Every sci-fi element can be found in much better works, but they can also be found in much worse. In the end it's just a mediocre work that's relatively inoffensive. You might like it if you're a huge sci-fi fan and don't care about originality or if you're new to sci-fi and don't know the cliches yet. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother with it. Final rating, 5/10. Next week, horror anime month continues with a look at Danganronpa.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jun 20, 2023

nozomiEX

Not Recommended

Blue Gender started strong... for 15 minutes. It's all down-hill from there. Despite having a ton of tags & genres, it doesn't do any of them well. Quite the opposite, it manages to do every single thing it attempts worse than if it had just neglected to tackle it in the first place. I honestly don't even know where to start with this, but I guess since he was the first thing you're introduced to, let's start with the main character, Yuji. Awoken to a hectic battle, with the power to simply run away in horror, you can immediately empathize ... with him. He's alone, in the dark, being chased by ominous soldiers and hellish bug monsters, with no clue when or where he is or what's going on. You can understand the angst, the despair, the frustration, the confusion, you can see why he's frightened and jumpy, or to put it simply, this isn't Yuji at his best. However... as the situation relaxes and he gets his bearings, you unfortunately get to see what Yuji is like even when he's feeling better, and it's just as bad. He's sanctimonious, selfish, rash, and his only "good" traits are that he has a basic moral code, and that's it. Unfortunately his more consistent traits, his self-centered impulsiveness means he's always going about doing the right thing in the worst way possible and only the power of hack writing can save his sorry ass. If it weren't for the foot-thick steel plot armor (sometimes literally) around him, he would do more to damage his cause than any mindless bug alien mook or cartoonish evil government asshole. At his best moments, he's tolerable. He's never likable, you will never say "man I can't wait to see Yuji" or "How will Yuji deal with this situation?" An insufferable lead character, and that brings us to his better half (only marginally), Marlene. Marlene is the cool, stony soldier, tough as nails and committed to the mission: except when the author gets horny. Yeah, Marlene is either the stand-in for Yuji, the object of cringeworthy lust or romance-pandering, and basically eye and heart candy, never rising above her stereotype.

That brings me to one of the biggest issues with this show: this "romance" is basically the driving force of everything in the show after the first couple episodes, and it SUCKS. Yuji sucks, Marlene sucks, the two pining for each other sucks, and the amount of ways the plot has to warp and bend to get them apart then bring them back together then take them away from each other then bring them back together over and over again is excruciating. I would suggest you grab a spoon if you wanna watch this with which you may gag yourself. The major conflict of the first quarter of the show is Yuji being torn between Marlene or some nomad fling he meets on the way to the next story beat. It is so ridiculously contrived, and the writing is so sloppy that only that aforementioned double-duty plot armor can keep them from meeting the same fate as the rest of the meat puppets the show throws into harm's way to give the illusion that life in Blue Gender is fleeting. Going by the quick departures for the rest of the cast, with particularly gruesome and unceremonious deaths early on to this end, you would think that life is extremely fragile and death could come at any moment. Yet after the first episode, you can't ever fathom that Yuji or Marlene could ever die. They will always be the last ones standing in the face of wave after wave of endless (and purposeless) bug attacks. The grimdark tone the series wants is entirely undermined by how hasty the writer is to throw Yuji and Marlene into peril and how half-assedly it bails them back out. There's no tension for either of these fuckheads but everyone else in the show is so throwaway and doomed from their entrance that there's nowhere in this to place your concern. The major conflict of this show isn't pragmatism vs idealism in wartime, it's not man vs nature, it's not even man vs man, it's "when will Yuji and Marlene get together?" Gory deaths for the side characters, dismal outcomes for everybody not in the starring roles, frightening stakes for those not graced with plot armor all give the illusion of a serious, mature world and story, but this is a juvenile romance novel for tweens at heart. And to make it clear, I'm not mad that it's a romance. I'm mad that the romance is ass and all other aspects of the show are undermined by it, not that any of them fare much better in terms of quality of the writing.

The show is split into basically two halves, the first half being Yuji and Marlene's meet-cute on Earth and ensuing romantic escapades, and the second half being Yuji and Marlene being kept apart by a comically incompetent evil government in space and tying up (poorly) all of the underdeveloped story threads that aren't the romance. What's going on with the blues? What does the goofy ahh government want Yuji's ass for? Well, you'll get your hand-wave answers but you'd probably be more satisfied if you got your answers from chatgpt. The story is loose and only there to facilitate the cheesy action-adventure-romance, the action is exceedingly dull, similarly perfunctory. Waves of mooks, stormtrooper accuracy and cartoonish bad-guys, the bugs are flip-flopping between unstoppable terminator-ass forces of nature and squishy mindless walking corpses, the action is under-animated and veiled in darkness and often occuring entirely offscreen or on radar screens and there's a lot of standing around gesturing while nothing is happening. Even when it's just combat, no bawdy kissy kissy garbage involved, it's rather dull. Throw in the unwelcome, misplaced, and overemphasized horniness/loneliness and it's just a puke-inducing drag. There's no moral conflicts to chew on, there are no characters or plights to get behind, the only thing keeping you watching will be to find out if it gets on the rails and ever delivers on what the first episode made it seem like it would be, but rest-assured, it doesn't. Nothing but moaning, groaning blah awaits.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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