18 months later: Suisei no Gargantia

I finally finished Suisei no Gargantia after stopping at episode 11 way back in June 2013. I forgot almost everything about this show and got it confused with Aquarion Evol for a while, and for the longest time I didn’t know why I didn’t want to spend an hour of my life to watch two episodes of anime.

Tonight, I realized why: Suisei no Gargantia is an incredibly mediocre show.

With a great and peaceful setting ideal for slice-of-life and an opening episode that hinted at epic battles and shit, Suisei no Gargantia looked like the successor to Eureka Seven. But why, damn it, why??? Why did a robot become the main character? Why did the last episode revolve around the character development of Chamber, and not around Ledo?

Gurren Lagann was cool because Kamina sacrificed himself and Simon went all out fist-fight in the end. Eureka Seven was cool because we got to see Eureka and Renton’s relationship flourish.

It’s not cool if you take Eureka, turn her into a machine, and then sacrifice it! I don’t care about ChamberxLedo! I don’t care about Chamber’s sacrifice! I just want to see men in big metal death machines fighting other big metal death machines and acting like badasses!! I don’t want to have Ledo’s character get overshadowed by Chamber’s development!

Gargantia rushed its ending, hopped back and forth slice-of-life and MECHA ACTION way too much, and introduced terrible characters like Bevel. But it would have at least been decent if the last episode didn’t make a robot a martyr.