hen Yuji Kaido agrees to enter cryogenic suspended animation, he fully expects to be reawakened within a year or two, after the scientists who have diagnosed his untreatable disease have had time to find the cure. They assure him that a breakthrough is not far off, and he passes those reassurances on to a much-admired friend, who casually agrees that they can run off and see the world together after Yuji recovers.
But when Yuji wakes up, that world has changed considerably. He comes out of his sleep while speeding down a hallway on a high-tech gurney, pushed by two masked and armored figures who are suddenly, horribly killed by a giant insect-like creature. Yuji's haphazard attempt to escape leaves him cornered in a lab full of what look like giant, sticky cabbages, but which he suddenly realizes are crumpled human corpses, balled up and covered with green goo.
Before the giant insect can turn Yuji into another cabbage, he's rescued by Marlene Angel, a striking, snappish blonde in a mecha suit. She and her team of commandos get him to safety and reluctantly, contemptuously explain the situation: Yuji has been asleep for over 20 years. The giant insects are called
"Blue," and they've all but annihilated earthbound humanity. Fewer than a hundred million survivors have retreated to a space station called Second Earth. The commando team's mission was to revive Sleepers and bring them to Second Earth as "samples," but Yuji is the only survivor so far.
Yuji takes this news poorly, with several temper tantrums and ill-timed acts of thoughtless rebellion. But when a wave of Blue attacks cuts down his rescuers' numbers, he starts pulling himself together and asking for weapons lessons. Still, his newfound resolve to work with the Second Earthers is sorely tested when he saves a young girl from a Blue and is repeatedly chided by a furious Marlene, who explains that the remaining Earth-dwellers are to be considered "already dead." As Yuji adjusts to his new situation, he tries to balance practicality with compassion, something his new companions seem to have already abandoned.
Grown-up characters for grown-up viewers
The opening episodes of Blue Gender flesh out a distinctly adult series whose ruthless storyline doesn't hesitate to kill off characters, and whose harsh, gruesome aesthetic doesn't hesitate to show flying, bloody, severed limbs or spattered brains. In spite of the relentlessly quick and gory battles, the series has so far moved at a fairly slow pace, giving Yuji time to adjust to his situation and start growing up. The early episodes are somewhat annoying, simply because of his immaturity; his reaction to his situation is wholly understandable, but his whining insistence that he's "all alone" in a group of rescuers because there's no one from his era (a mere few decades ago) immediately at hand quickly gets tiresome. It's a relief when he decides to do something to better himself, but it's even more of a relief when he does not immediately prove to be the typical Untrained But Miraculously Skilled Combat-God Who Saves The Day.
In fact, Blue Gender avoids a number of common anime clichés, by taking both death and sex seriously, even when it's clear that the protagonists don't. Those grown-up characters are older, wiser, and more damaged than the usual teen prodigies inhabiting mecha shows, and the character design reflects
this relatively well, although the animation is unpredictable. Seen in close-up shots, in relatively static images, the characters are beautifully detailed, painted and shadowed, and the action scenes are relatively smooth, but much of the rest of the series looks much cheaper and more haphazardly executed.
Not so FUNimation's DVDs, which should reassure some of the fans protesting over the company's handling of the Dragonball Z franchise. These discs are well designed, with an assortment of mostly minor but interesting extras, ranging from a director's/actor's commentary on disc 1 to character and antagonist profiles to multiple credits options on the opening and closing sequences. The English voice cast does a reasonably sophisticated job with the dubbed version—particularly FUNimation vet Laura Bailey, who brings just the right balance of anger, callousness, world-weariness and budding emotion to Marlene's voice. Overall, FUNimation's done a professional job showcasing what's beginning as a sophisticated series with respectable standards.
Blue Gender got off to a slow and somewhat standard start, in spite of the first episode's deliberate attempts to prolong the mystery of where Yuji was and what had happened to his world. But it's been consistently surprising since then, which seems promising for episodes to come.
— Tasha
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