Mugen no Ryvius

An ambitious, perilous space opera full of emotional and unstable teenagers. The oft repeated “Lord of the Flies in space” is apt.

Infinite Ryvius takes place in the distant future where man has colonized space, it follows a group of about six hundred youths who board a large space vessel by the name of Ryvius to be trained in becoming cadets, technicians, and various other starship positions. Things go awry, and the ship is stranded with its communications disabled. It's up to the inexperienced trainees on the vessel to make the journey back to Earth while conducting politics, forming a makeshift society with its own economics, ... and trying to maintain governance and order, but really ends up chronicling a prolonged procession of failings and social collapse. On the largest scale of the conflict, the young commanders of the Ryvius use their one mecha to defend themselves from the military campaign of an Earth government's bureau's conspiracy to have the Ryvius eliminated. A lot of the anime’s space battles serve to spur internal conflict in the Ryvius, aside from this reason these fights take up a lot for the anime are only so necessary. Inside the ship, political strife and power struggle emerges between the head operators of the Ryvius with the relatively technically inept masses on the ship, this paired with the increasing resource scarcity over the few months of the Ryvius’ stranding leads to unrest and violence. On the private level, character drama plays out between friends, lovers, and enemies, rivals, etc. and on the internal level characters face introspection toward maturity, social role, and inadequacy. Considering the juvenile subjects, there's much deliberate naivety to the dialogue and actions. Dramatic points are often focused on emotional outbursts, lashing out at others, tearfully breaking down in fear, or wallowing in a pathetic state. This is all expected given their ages and the perilous situation, but it nonetheless is a dramatic style that perhaps achieves a mean of Uchuu Senkan Yamato and 90’s Shounen manga.

Ryvius, being a Sunrise anime of the late 90’s, is done mostly in cel with lots of digitization. The animation is kept reserved and economical, story and content are a tad stretched thin for 26 episodes as there’s notable recap but with thoughtful integration. However, it is wrong to say Ryvius isn’t intensive as often episodes directly follow each other, the cast is large and some important characters are absent for whole stretches of the anime, and the last episode creatively calls back to the first. As for setting, rarely is Earth shown in the anime outside the first episode, most of the anime is set on the Ryvius which has a dull metallic grey and black look to it. Locations on the Ryvius like the deck, barracks, and dining hall are realized well in terms of fidelity and spacing but aren’t terribly memorable.

Ryvius is the precise sort of original, ambitious, and relatively dark type of anime to be expected from Studio Sunrise during creative boom of TV anime following Evangelion. It’s of interest as an anime detailing a long and slow social collapse and political emergence as well as the new 90’s approach to space operas but is not stunningly iconic in images, design, or character.

This show is essentially "Lord of the Flies" on a spaceship combined with mecha fights. Children are trapped on a spaceship, attempt to form their own civilization, and fend off unknown enemies for as long as they can. As time goes on, their morale breaks down, and their civilization begins to crumble.

This show has the pieces to make something special: characters, setting, animation, and story, but average execution affected the overall result.

There are themes of forgiveness, standing up for what you believe in, and redemption, but some characters often go way beyond delinquent into straight up evil. By the end, I thought some characters ... were irredeemable and could not stand them anymore, even when they learned their wrongs. Having to watch a few of these insufferable characters was rough.

The overall plot felt underdeveloped, with me constantly questioning the motives of the outisde-ship villains, the Sphinx, and the Geduld phenomenon. While aspects can be left up to mystery just fine, other parts I felt were critical to become invested in the story. Therefore, with those parts being barely addressed, it made the situation feel less urgent and meaningful.

I did appreciate many scenes and character arcs that happened throughout the story, which is probably why i continued to watch all the way to the end. The shows does make you care about the main characters as they are constantly pushed to their mental limits.

The story takes a while to get going. The real meat of the emotional drama starts around episode 19. Had they kept that level of drama earlier, it would've made me more invested.

Animation, while hand drawn well, had a severe lack of variety of the ships and combat. All the colors were the same, and made it very difficult to follow along with the action.

Overall, a decent watch for space and sci-fi fans, but I don't see it as an underrated gem. If it were available on blu-ray, it would have to be at a big discount sale for me to pick it up.

I wish I could've liked this, really, I tried so hard to like this. The premise was kinda interesting and characters seeming had a story to them... But after 25 episodes of spiraling further and further into a pile of horse sh*t, the last episode did absolutely nothing in terms of conclusion. I've not much to say except don't bother with this. Not a single resolution you want to be made, is made. There is no fulfillment. Seriously. (As for specifics, spoilers below)


...Spoiler Warning...


The main character wasn't particularly bad. In all honesty there's a lot worse out there - take Future Diary's protagonist for example. ... So why in the ever-loving frICK does every single character have a problem with him? And noone really seems too bothered by the fact that his little brother keeps beating him up?? He even got shot by what was supposed to be his 'best friend' and I don't recall him ever apologizing after the fact either. This was just frustrating as hell to watch. MC never gets a chance to fight back because all the people around him are deluded and yet MC is criticized for always going along with everyone. What was he supposed to do? Take charge? Revolt? Then he'd probably get blamed regardless. Most likely by the same little brother who gets offended whenever MC breathes. Oh, and great conflict resolution on that relationship, because I definitely was glad that the tension I was most curious about got resolved OFF SCREEN. What's the point of all that set-up if nothing is ever actually addressed?

Final thing to complain about. So... final episode. If you watch 25 episodes of bad things getting worse, then you would expect some kind of resolution, right? Maybe we see how people dealt with the trauma of the event, how the public reacted, trials maybe, the children's families, ANY progress in that crappy romance? Nope. Instead, it's a timeskip and the brothers are apparently fine now for whatever reason and MC gets back on that ship. The very same one they were held hostage on, assaulted, attacked, harassed and manipulated on. I'm seriously baffled as to how they can act like everything is fine after all that was done. But I guess I shouldn't have had such high expectations going into this.

As a last takeaway: DO NOT watch this series if you don't like injustice, easily affected by negative situations or, if you don't want to suffer. It's not worth it.

TLDR; MC gets treated terribly for no reason and no conflict resolution. No satisfying conclusion whatsoever.