Why Blue Gender and its Plot Should be Remembered (Blue Gender Retrospective Ep1)
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- Time for a new Retrospective! In accordance with the latest poll, the next retrospective will be on the little remembered mech anime Blue Gender. Now as this channel has hopefully proven before, obscure definitely doesn't translate to bad, so lets look at Blue Gender and see what there is to appreciate! We will begin as we always do, with a general plot overview and some context. And of course...
All properties shown here belong to their respective owners. "Blue Gender" is a production of AIC and its creation is credited to Ryosuke Takahashi . And.....
Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing
0:00 - 3:54 Introduction and General Context
3:55 - 12:02 Plot Summary
12:03 - 12:21 Why the Title?
12:22 -14:44 Why the Plot stands Out (its Grounded)
14:45 - 16:21 Blue Gender The Warrior The Movie
16:22 - 18:09 Other Quirks
18:10 - 19:24 Conclusion - Фільми й анімація
Blue Gender was so good. To this day Marlene is the best female character in anime
Marlene is definitely a highlight of the series. She is without a doubt my favorite character of the series and her arc is quite well done. Seeing her go from cold robot to emotive human was quite nice!
Her and Yuji are one of my favorite anime couples!
Out of all the anime I have watched since the late 90s. I have never seen character growth and relationship handled as well as Blue Gender imo.
As a kid, this was the first time I recollect having TV inspired nightmares. I was probably 6 or 7ish when this was airing on late night TV. I still watch it from time to time at almost 30.
I remember having odd nightmares from TV every now and again as a kid. I think my first was from the 2004 version of Fullmetal Alchemist. I guess I just happened to tune in really late one night when I was like 9 or 10 and it was the episode where upside down head Shou Tucker shows up. Young me remembered that for a while.
The final fight was so awesome it was like a video game boss fight.
I did like how the final Blue had no core and kind of validated the idea that you don't need to hit the core to take down a Blue, even if there was a focus on that early on.
Love seeing more Blue Gender content online. This has been my favorite anime series for quite a while and I always feel very alone in it. Seriously, there are not many anime with the tags: +mecha +horror +psychological +insects
I'm glad you enjoyed! I'm happy many people seem to remember this series, even if it is obscure, and I was impressed by how much there was to talk about. I didn't expect to make 13 videos on it, but each of them was really fun!
One of my favorite anime. Its some Eva and some AOT kinda mashed together and it's great.
I remembered it as a fever dream almost, from my childhood watching adult swim. Took years to find and nobody talked about it. Honestly it has more commonality with starship troopers than eva. I liked the two main characters and the ending was solid seeing they did not plan to make any sequel or prequel. Cheesy love story, but I am ok with it. Solid one off series. The movie was trash tho.
I see I'm not the only one thinking Blue Gender was a tad Starship Troopers-esque! In all honesty I do see that, and probably should have mentioned it in passing. I read someone describe it as an Eva clone though, and for some reason that really stuck with me so I felt I needed to explicitly state its not. And yeah the movie is far from great.
The best part of the movie was Seno's death scene. It gave him a much more satisfying death rather than everyone losing their minds and killing him.
@@Zer0.-_ I will say, Seno manifesting some sort of regret and making certain decisions because of it does feel more organic than everyone just going crazy.
Yeah, I was hoping the movie to be better. It was obvious that some footage was used from the series and some was made just for the movie. It does provide an alternate timeline if Marlene decided not to go after Yuji once they arrived on second earth.
This has one of the best character arcs of any Sci Fi anime I've watched, it's arguably better then many of the Gundams, even rivals Neon Gen in some aspects but nobody seems to know about it.
I've always wondered why Blue Gender isn't more well known. While it has some flaws, its still unique and a lot of that stems more from unique writing/story boarding decisions as opposed to objective flaws. In addition, I think it did air on Toonami and had international releases. Sometimes I wonder if Blue Gender is obscure because there were simply too many other options available at the time, sometimes if its because Blue Gender is more grounded than simply "the good guys win", sometimes I wonder if its because it wasn't as big a hit in Japan as other well known stories of the time. I know some people dislike it because it isn't the most conventional, but it also has a lot of fans who fondly recall seeing it back in the day. For my part I think its very interesting and I thank you for watching!
I am here now, you have summoned me and may I say❤Yyyyyyyyaaaeeee bbboooiii😂🎉 you the man!
I'm glad you're excited!
Man just writing this comment at 2 am as I finished the anime 30 minutes ago. It was worth the loss of sleep of though. Also the first anime I've ever seen besides the Studio Ghibli movies.
I really loved this from beginning to end. It reminded me of several different sci fi franchises. Yuji and Marlene's relationship might be my favorite in all of fiction. And that's probably due to how it develops through the entire season. They definitely play with quite a few themes in this anime. One such theme is the loss and regain of one's humanity. Soldiers on second earth are trained to completely ignore and even downright kill civilians if they get in the way. It does seem kind of odd as with a dwindling population, sacrificing the people that are left doesn't make that much sense to me, but whatever. It's fascinating how Marlene though seems to regain her humanity thanks to Yuji, as well as Yuji's descent into madness thanks to his b cells controlling him. And of course, the action is really cool. The animations are crisp, they kind of remind me of youtube clips of the pokemon show. I know somebody else said that this looks like Starship troopers. Sure, at the surface it does. But beyond fighting bugs and even some of the soldier uniforms looking exactly like the ones from ST, I don't see a lot of similarities.
As you've said though, it's not perfect. I think my biggest complaint is that it really needed a second season. Im not sure if they weren't allowed to make another one, or if they chose to, but I felt like I had mental whiplash with how fast everything was happening. A second season would've been perfect to let the plot breath. I'm sure there a lot of people that disagree with me on that though. Another thing this reminds me of a little is Starcraft BW. Just in that I was kind of confused if the Blue were a creation of humans, or if the Earth created them. I'm pretty sure it was the latter. But anyway I got a strange bit of nostalgia because I experienced a similar feeling with Starcraft BW being a little confused at first about how the Zerg came about. One of the terran missions suggests that the Zerg might have been created by the confederacy as a weapon.
My second biggest complaint is the quality of the sound effects. I think there were a lot of stock sounds being used. And I think the soundscape for the show could've been a lot better if they had more original sound effects. Music and voice acting was fantastic though. The music starts becoming more industrial, louder, and bopping whenever a blue was about to approach. And then ominous atmospheric music outside of combat. It reminded me of video games that do the same thing when you encounter enemies.
I can't believe I wrote a whole essay on something like this so late in the morning. But I guess I just liked this series that much. I love it, even with it's biggest flaw of not being long enough. And I'll probably watch it all again soon.
Congratulations on having finished your first series! I think Blue Gender is a good first anime as it has some strong characters, an interesting (but not super complex) plot, some good social commentary, some interesting production values/issues, and of course great visuals and action. I do consider it a sleeper hit after all, and it is impressive how well written Yuji and Marlene's evolving relationship is in a series, on paper, about giant killer bugs.
As for some of the flaws noted, a lot of them probably stem from the nature of anime production. While there are many famously long or high value productions, there are many more which try to get by on modest budgets and solely afforded one standard 26 episode series to get stuff done. This can both help and hinder many productions as while it can force the creative team to use its resources as efficiently as possible and streamline stuff, it also means that issues consistently doing so can cause many unforeseen issues to crop up. Sometimes 26 episodes simply isn't enough time to really do stuff right, but the production staff has no real other options and must try to make everything work. This often causes the tonal and mental whiplash you noted. It should also be noted that this was a bigger issue in the 90s and early 2000s as the industry continued to evolve.
In spite of these flaws though, I very happy to have found stuff like Blue Gender because it proves there are a lot of small gems waiting out there to be viewed. While I Love a lot of more well known series like Dragon Ball and Ghost in the Shell, etc. etc. There's always something special about watching a stand alone 26 episode series and appreciating all the creativity and effort that went into it.
Just rewatched this, honestly I don’t remember a lot from when it was on adult swim. However it was pretty good minus the pacing issues
I still don't really understand why Blue Gender is as obscure as it is. I know it was a little divisive back in the day, and it certainly has some pacing issues, but its also pretty unique and memorable. I'm glad people still remember it exists.
@@obscureanimememories6697 I think it’s due to the time it came out. Gundam,dragon ball were some of bigger shows on Cartoon Network. The obscurity is what drew me to rewatch it
Love blue gender
I'm surprised it isn't talked about more considering its solid premise and the era its from. It really is a fascinating piece to me not only for what it is but because of how its almost a time capsule in Anime's journey to wider audiences.
Wow shout out to those who voted for this anime
I thank all the viewers! Thanks for the views and Suggestions!
Masterpiece
Blue Gender really is!
I don't see too much of a resemblance to Evangelion, tho there is a sort of sexual frustration I guess. Evangelion is all about the frustration of needing closeness, and this is a Japanese show, so all those monstrous mouths are supposed to bring to mind the vagina dentata. Oh happy day. But a more direct connection would be to Gunbuster through the idea of Nature creating monsters to kill humans. Same basic idea just those monsters come from outside the galaxy in Gunbuster. The manga Parasyte (could not watch the shonenised anime adaptation) has an interesting take on what im guessing must have been a much used trope back in the day - there the monsters who invade from space mostly live as humanoid mutants and are content with the state of affairs as they can eat humans all they like at this point, but a human becomes their leader and organises them for full human extermination as this is the right thing to do, because humans are just so destructive. And as this is a channel dedicated to the obscure, maybe you could look into an obscure genre - shoujo mecha? Escaflowne seems much better than how I experienced it way back when, and the Magic Knight Rayearth manga was a lot to take in, haven't finished the anime that deviates a lot from the source, but its a journey. Anyway i love your work and appreciate Blue Gender so looking forward to the next video!
I don't really see the Eva resemblance either, which I guess is why that statement really stuck with me. Nothing against Eva, its just that I was bothered someone dismissed Blue Gender because the 2 had a few surface layer similarities.
As for Escaflowne, its been suggested before, and I think I will include it in the next poll. I think I was hesitant to before because I misread the production notes for it and thought it incomplete. For some reason I read "39 episodes pitched" as "39 episodes planned/written". I know now though that the whole story was actually completed in 26 episodes and the series is therefore complete.
Thanks for the support!
Hey folks from the past you want an anime where humanity messes up so bad that Earth lets bugs evolve to the point that they exterminate humanity forcing them to a space station until they learn their lesson? If so Blue Gender is for you!
That's a pretty spot on summary of the series! I'm glad this channel introduced me to Blue Gender as its really grown on me, and a great example of what lies in the realm of the obscure.
This came out more in the ending haydays of mech, after Gundam, but evangelia was such a amazing show plus Inuyasha that this one kinda just got covered over. I watched this on adult swim but didn't hold my interest like the other animes on adult swim.
Thanks for the historical clarification, I will be the first to admit I'm not an expert on the mech genre timeline stuff! Its cool hearing someone recall seeing this on Adult Swim too, as I never even knew that before looking up the broadcast history of Blue Gender.
@@obscureanimememories6697 Np, I only caught it a bit. Since I would watch Toonami into adult swim, but I think it only showed a few episodes at that. Since I don't remember seeing it other than like 3 times. But I'll probably look it up since your video was interesting plus I miss the styles of the 80-90 anime. There is an anime called Outlaw Star that showed on Adult Swim but seems lost in the passage of time since I never see anyone talk about it in any way
Best ending theme song ever!
It really is a nice change of pace from the action packed intro to a slower closing piece, showing a more human side to the series. I can't believe I've been doing this a year and never commented on any closing themes in any of my videos!
@@obscureanimememories6697 Wolf's Rain had a nice closing theme as well👍
Just listened to it, you're 100% correct! Yoko Kanno is a real master of the musical craft! @@andrecannon8559
@@obscureanimememories6697 wholeheartedly agree👍
Starship troopers: the anime....the other anime
It seems there's a few of those
@@obscureanimememories6697 was roughnecks japanese?
I don't think so... ('I'm assuming your referencing Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles) @@carloschristanio4709
@obscureanimememories6697 just looked it up, roughnecks was american
Well said, it is an odd one but I loved it way back thanks for explaining it to me after like a decade dude!
Thanks! I Love looking over older works like this and seeing just how many greats lay under the surface of time!
I have so many issues with this anime. From the combat system to the characters. So many things make little sense. But the biggest issue is Yuji, he is mostly insufferable. Marlene also goes from emotionless to over emotional but as you said she remains strong at least. I think they could write Yuji better. To be fair the first half was very enjoyable because Yuji went from crybaby to fighter but after they went to space he suddenly becomes crazy Yuji, and i know it's because B cells but still, he really is insufferable. The final fight was the best thing in this anime for two reasons. First, they went to a place where no man should go, it reminds me movies like Anihilation or Ad Astra where the protagonist has to pass lots of obstacles to go to a very alien place and pass one last obstacle. And second, the last Blue was so well designed and the fight was the best fight in the series.
Blue Gender is definitely not perfect, and you bring up the legitimate issues I noticed with this series, especially in Yuji. I completely understand your issue with him and I will admit he isn't likeable at all times. While his early progression is quite nice, it is undeniable, at least in my eyes, that his fall from grace feels rushed and forced. There definitely seemed to be an issue or two in the writer's room as I honestly don't think his fall is done particularly well. While some kind of logistical explanation/groundwork is laid, it isn't substantial/drawn out enough to really make his fall feel realistic/justified. It does kinda feel like someone went "hey what if Yuji went berserk" and everyone said "cool" and ignored the guy in the back asking how that was to be done well in 5 episodes. I also did find it kinda weird that he never really reflected on losing himself. I can kinda understand him being forgiven (he did stop Tony after all) but its really odd how little reflecting he does after the fact and how preachy he seems to get at times to. Myagi kills Doug in blatant self-defense (arguably saving Yuji too) but then Yuji goes on some weird rant calling Myagi a murderer? For better or worse, Yuji is quite human and emotional, and that does result in some honestly dumb lines and tonal issues here and there.
😡 Promo SM
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. I do appreciate constructive criticism though!