n the year 2137, an immense solar flare tore through the Terran solar system on the orbital plane of the Earth. The Geduld Phenomenon, as it came to be known, left behind a plasma field marked by lethally high gravity and temperature levels, which prevented close analysis; 80 years later, scientists are still trying to understand the nature, origin and composition of the vast energy sea they call "the Geduld." Not that this has kept humanity out of space; in 2225, when the first episode of the series Infinite Ryvius begins, space travel is still common enough that vast groups of teenagers are sent into orbit for space-industry training. Aboard the space station Liebe Delta, adolescents play out adult roles as pilots, navigators, engineers and even space stewardesses, but the atmosphere is somewhere between a large-scale high school and a crowded summer camp.
Then an apparent act of sabotage sends the Liebe Delta falling into the Geduld, where it's destined to be crushed by the increasing energy. Separated from their instructors, a cadre of advanced students attempt to save the station then to launch a training ship, in which they've packed the more than 480 teenage students of the Astronaut Training Center. A daring sacrifice buys them some time, and a mysterious pink-clad figure, who navigates the dangerous Geduld like a mermaid slipping through ocean depths, appears to have some relation to the station's plight. Meanwhile, a group of hijackers plan their move, while a mastermind talks about righting old wrongs and a planetary bureaucrat spins his own plans. A great deal of the situation is vague and confusing, but pieces drop into place one at a time.
And along the way Infinite Ryvius introduces its many, many characters. Key among them: tense but good-hearted protagonist Kouji, his insanely hostile younger brother Yuki, their childhood friend Aoi, Kouji's piloting partner Ikumi, reigning bully-boy Airs Blue, an elite pilot trainee and sometime organizational leader named Juli, wan ferret owner Faina, newly orphaned child Pat and many, many more.
Too many Indians—too many chiefs as well
The vast cast is at the heart of Infinite Ryvius' main problem: With so many people to keep track of, the series doesn't focus on anyone particularly closely, and doesn't focus particularly well on its key events, either. The first episode, which occurs before anything about the Geduld is explained, closely approaches incoherency in its scattershot storytelling approach, which throws dozens of isolated interactions and comments together in a sloppy heap, but doesn't draw much of a narrative line through them. By the second episode, some backstory is coming out and the crisis is in full development, but the focus still leaps from individual to individual. Some of the characters revealed by this approach—a couple that's constantly making out, a whitebread rapper whose loud impromptu verses about the situation annoy his neighbors, a fat blond kid who's the victim of choice for Blue's gang, and so forth—are interesting or funny, but seeing what they're up to isn't an adequate replacement for getting enough information about the plot to be able to follow events.
In fact, Infinite Ryvius sometimes feels like a study in how to undermine a high-tension story until it's a plodding, ramshackle one. The story of 500 kids in a dying ship should be dramatic, but instead it's choppy and cluttered and tedious, because every other scene is a confusing "clue" in which characters reveal something important that the audience has no context for and no way to interpret. The just-standard animation, which perks up only when there are complicated outer-space maneuvers in the offing, certainly doesn't help.
The series' saving grace is the gravity it brings to bear on a relatively dense brand of science fiction: Infinite Ryvius does manage to craft a world full of realistic and clever touches, like the zero-gravity transport systems and the decontamination airlocks, among other things that are provided, without comment, as atmosphere and environment. Few of the characters in these initial five episodes distinguish themselves to any great degree—but the world they're in does, and it may be worth further exploration even if the story continues to be this unfocused.
Kouji's close resemblance to whiny Neon Genesis Evangelion star Shinji Ikari turned me against him from the start. While Kouji isn't quite as hapless as Shinji, and does frequently rise to the occasion in a crisis, he does sometimes fall back on self-pity, and the result's as familiar as it is unappetizing.
— Tasha
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