Planet earth is in shambles while a colony survives on the moon. Three guys from the colony discover the true nature of their world.
This confirms what has been happening in the last decade. To get good scifi we need to go to Japan.
This series of seven OAV (Original Animation Video) is a long heartfelt homage to moon exploration and the Apollo program. We start in the moon colony, with old earth seemingly destroyed, when our hero discover that, maybe, there is still somebody round here and so set off to do what the Apollo astronauts have done in the 60s, but this time in reverse.
The mecha design, all the technological bits, is wonderful, extremely detailed and lovingly crafted. We felt like we were watching the real thing.
On the other side the story and the characters sadly aren’t that good. The idea is very interesting to say the least but the execution often feel contrived or fall flat altogether. This is an interesting problem. As viewers we often complain when the writers of our favorite show invent stuff on the fly just to “keep going”. On the other side when they so clearly decide beforehand what is going to happen in very single episode they can have trouble finding things to fill them. Case in point, in very single episode of freedom something happens, which is good, but often is not enough to fill an entire episode and so we were left fidgeting while the protagonists did what amounted story wise to nothing.
The characters also lack in subtlety and feel Manichean without being engaging. The morale of the story is spelled right from the mouth of the main heroine.
In the end this is very interesting for space exploration lovers but other persons can stay away.
On a related note there is an interesting case of product placement. Nissin Cup noodle financed “Freedom” for his anniversary and in every single episode we can see our characters eating Cup noodles and declaring them to be delicious. Just like in a live action movie!
I know that it sounds terrible but if I get more interesting animation honestly I don’t care. If I can live with James Bond telling us how wonderful is his latest watch I can certainly live with this.
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