"Blue Gender" (1999) TV series 1999-2000

Directors:

Koichi Ohata
Ryôsuke Takahashi

Writers:

Katsumi Hasegawa (writer)
Koichi Ohata (writer)

Seasons:

1

Release Date:

7 October 1999 (Japan)

Genre:

Animation | Adventure | Drama | Horror | Romance | Sci-Fi

Plot:

The year is 2031, and after being in cold-sleep for twenty-two years, Yuji Kaido wakes up in the middle...

Plot Keywords:

Giant Insect | 2030s | Anime | Color In Title

Cast

Laura Bailey	...	Marlene Angel (26 episodes, 1999-2000)
Houko Kuwashima	...	Marlene Angel (26 episodes, 1999-2000)
Kenji Nojima	...	Yuji Kaido (26 episodes, 1999-2000)
Eric Vale	...	Yuji Kaido (26 episodes, 1999-2000)
Kyle Hebert	...	Seno Miyagi / ... (16 episodes, 1999-2000)
Meredith McCoy	...	Su / ... (12 episodes, 1999-2000)
John Burgmeier	...	Joey Heald / ... (11 episodes, 1999-2000)

Runtime:

25 min (26 episodes)

Country:

Canada | Japan | USA

Language:

English | Japanese

Color:

Color

Certification:

Australia:M | UK:12

Company:

Anime International Company (AIC)

Movie Connections:

Remade as Blue Gender: The Warrior (2002)

Emotionally Driven Cartoon

I'm not really a big anime guy; in fact, the genre as a whole sort of repulses me. Blue Gender really only piqued my interest because it was on Adult Swim's lineup around two, three years ago (back when AS was worth watching) and I caught a couple episodes. I'm a total sucker for post-apocalyptic scenarios, and giant, mutilating bugs never hurt anything, so I recently got hold of the series in complete. 36 hours later, I'd watched the series from beginning to end; not so much because it was gripping (that's only partially true), but more because I'm a maniac.

Blue Gender is driven not by the prototypical giant robot action Japan is (in)famous for, nor the horrendous monsters, nor even, for that matter, the dialog. The viewer is compelled through Blue Gender by the characters and their subsequent emotional arrangements, more specifically the leads, Yugi and Marlene. It's basically an epic, sci-fi soap opera with heavy metal and big bugs.

Marlene is the ideal woman. (Yeah yeah, she's a cartoon, "ew gross", get over it: that's not the point. The point is the idea being conveyed by whatever layered ink it travels through:) Marlene portrays the aesthetic of an ideal woman: strong, self-sufficient, but irrevocably feminine. I'd argue that she's more of a focal point for the viewer than Yugi, but Yugi is also a necessary component.

Yugi is a bumbling, sometimes whiny character that often accomplishes incredible things. This the viewer can appreciate and identify with; his relationship with Marlene, because of the viewer's identification with him, is the key in the ignition for this work. The audience is propelled through the series hoping intensely he'll get himself together and snag this pristine idol of a woman.

The interactions that follow the setup between these two are worth the 500-whatever minutes of moderate quality animation and dialog.

The other characters, for the most part, are semi-interesting. Some, however, are notable (eg, Dice). The atmosphere and setting are kind of cool; the creators do a pretty good job of portraying an insect infested planet Earth, but again, this is mostly beside the point.

In this ultimately lonely life, people often underwhelm us. I'm constantly disappointed by the trite selection of people placed before me. Fiction provides a remedy to this, allowing us to construct a composite ideal of characters we'd like to know within the stage of our minds. After all, the only difference between memory and reality is the level of detail.

Anyways, philosophic drooling out of the way, I'm glad to say that this series instilled in me memories of a character I appreciate, and I'd endure double the length of these episodes, spotty details and all, just to glean what I have.

On an end, this series has softened my harsh glare towards cartoons. While I doubt I'll be browsing the Anime section anytime soon, I'm a bit more open to taking animation for the ideas it's portraying as opposed to the raw, intrinsic value of the animation itself.

Oh, also, keep a keen eye out for the hilarious Engrish used in the animated computer interfaces... "Meesuement Impossibility!".