Terraformars

Episodes 1 - 4

Sometimes a perfectly decent anime series gets off to a bad start. As far as the first few episodes of Terraformars go, however, it's more a case of tripping over one's own shoelaces and falling face first into the ground. A number of questionable decisions take what should be an entertaining series and turn it into something that feels awkward and unfinished. If you were hoping for a fun, alien-blasting romp through space, prepare for some frustrating news.

The idea behind Terraformars is that an alien virus has started to wreak havoc on Earth, and a crew of genetically modified soldiers have been sent to Mars to collect research samples. The trouble is, the cockroaches that humanity sent to help terraform the planet have gone through a bit of an evolutionary growth spurt. They're now big, intelligent, and just a tad murderous. Bloody dismemberments and man-bug vs. bug-man action sequences ensue.

This all sounds like it should make for a fun sci-fi horror series, but problems come up early and often. The production staff elected to do away entirely with the opening story arc of the original manga, effectively skipping the scouting mission in favor of the full-scale invasion. The result is that the story and the audience are both left to play catch-up, which makes for a lot of expository dialogue in the early episodes. There is a prequel OVA that fills in the backstory, but you'll have to fly to Japan and buy the manga it's bundled with if you want to see it.

After that opening stumble, though, Terraformars settles into a comfortable rhythm. It's not the most original story out there, but it doesn't necessarily need to be. All a show like this needs to do is establish that the characters are in mortal peril, then have them fight back in spectacular fashion. To its credit, Terraformars has killed off enough minor characters to show how powerful the cockroaches are, and the heroes' animal-hybrid transformations provide for some interesting battles. It's simple, by-the-book storytelling, but it works.

Sadly, things go right back off the rails when it comes to the visuals. Terraformars is not a pretty show by any means, but the character designs do at least feel appropriate for a crew of super-soldiers. The problem lies in the creature design for the Terraformar aliens themselves. They look like the kind of alien you'd find in a bargain bin full of action figures: a vaguely misshapen head on a muscular human body. At best, it's not very interesting. At worst, it's uncomfortable. Whether it's intentional or not, there's something unfortunate about watching a crew of predominantly fair-skinned characters hop on board a colony ship to fight a race of primitive, dark-skinned humanoids. Would it really be so hard to make the space bugs look like bugs and avoid the debate altogether?

The alien designs are iffy, but the biggest issue with Terraformars by a huge margin is the constant visual censorship. Any time a character dies, the screen is immediately filled with black circles and rectangles that cover up all traces of blood and gore. I enjoy minimalist horror that leaves the graphic violence up to the viewer's imagination, but that's not what the audience is signing up for with Terraformars. Instead of the brutal horror that would've shocked us into rooting for the main characters, we get people having their heads turned into black circles and their torsos turned into black rectangles. It drains multiple scenes of their intended emotional impact, and is almost comical at times. What should be one of this show's strengths is instead one of its biggest weaknesses.

If you're on the fence about watching Terraformars, you might as well get comfortable. The show has made serious strides towards becoming a good source of dumb, violent fun, but it's not there yet. An uncensored version is on its way, and you might as well wait until it arrives before you give the show a try. I really want to like this show, but it's hard to invest much emotion in giant rectangles jumping in front of the screen.

Rating: C+

Terraformars is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Paul Jensen also covers anime and manga at SharkPuppet.com.