Mar 23, 2025
Uchuu no Senshi's most remarkable aspects are it's musical score; it's animation, which only gets better with the more intense scenes towards the end of it and the way it presents the arc of it's characters in a somewhat concise but very rushed manner. For that it is a nice mecha anime with some expectably shallow commentary on war for what you can do in 6 chapters.
The setting is New Buenos Aires, Argentina in a futuristic world where the military use mech suits that enhance a soldier's capabilities. It holds no weight whatsoever that the story is set in Argentina, there's not really any aspects
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of Argentine culture and the character names sound more Spanish than they sound Argentine. It could probably be argued that since Uchuu no Senshi came out in 1988 the authors wanted to use Argentina as a setting where just 5 years ago there had been a military dictatorship in the government, to which anyone sensible would argue it'd be incredibly disrespectful to the actual victims of it, and I don't believe this to be the case as the military in Uchuu no Senshi could be the military of Japan as much as it could be the military of the USA, beyond the city name of New Buenos Aires there isn't really any other mention of any argentine location and it gives off the feeling that the series just needed somewhere to be set in and Japan or the USA were too cliché.
The characters you'll see the most are young men who are in the military with the protag, they each get their own moments through the story but unfortunately they'll probably leave you feeling let down as most of them don't really get to end their arcs due to the overall theme of the story failing to deliver, other characters are mostly two dimensional but that is somewhat reasonable as the story only had 6 chapters to develop itself. The series names it's chapters after 6 of the characters and doesn't necessarily dedicate the episode to it's titular character but usually attempts to develop them. Some characters, like Azuma the awkward somewhat immature guy, seemed to have potential for a better character arc had the series been longer. Other characters, like Carmencita or Cherenkov, are completely deprived of any meaningful arc and specially Cherenkov is just developed at the very last episode in a very vague way that left me confused.
The main issue of Uchuu no Senshi is it's really foggy and unfinished anti-war statement, it is a good idea to represent war as an alien invasion, the aliens are squid monsters that utilize bulbous growths as structures and weapons, this is a common strategy in anti-war media that wants to portray the horrors of it and how soldiers are desensitized to not think of the enemy as human, this is completely ignored through most of the series up until the very end where Azuma questions the fact that they're killing living beings and then we cut to Rico laying on the ground thinking of the people he met and how he might die, the main group seems to represent different ways that soldiers cope with the idea of war: Suicidal tendencies and romanticizing death, being horrified and wanting out, putting on a though façade to cope with it or making light of the situation and hoping you'll live through it. this is nice, this imo is a good story telling method and it's subtle enough to not be in your face, the bigger issue that the story faces is how it goes through with none of it and the overall tone it ends up developing is that you can win war with the power of friendship and sticking together, we only see a single important character die in the whole series and it's incredibly underwhelming for what it is seemingly trying to convey.
All of these things considered, this is still an anime that is somewhat near the length of a movie, you can watch it in an afternoon and there's some good scenes and emotional moments for it's time, just don't expect much of it because it only has 6 chapters to work with. Watch it to sate your curiosity or skip on it if you feel it isn't worth your time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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