This is one of those shows that drop you into the action without much to go on, although the show might have been better to be called “Red Gender” than “Blue Gender”. Disclosure Time: I bailed out on this show after three episodes, as it did violate Rule Three of Anime (“If you feel the show is not going to get better, leave it. It is NOT going to get better.”). In my opinion, this is one of the worst animes I have seen this year (fighting for that title with “Terra Formars”) and the worst anime I have seen since “Peach Girl”. Now, this differs from one I don’t like. There are some shows that just miss for me or aren’t worth my time from the capsule description. This one I at least watched to draw my conclusion (and my repeated open).

In the year 2009, Yuji Kaido (that mullet-head up there. What is that hair style? Was it ever popular?) is an average young adult male diagnosed with a serious disease (the “B-cells”) and is put into cryogenic stasis until a cure is found. Twenty-two years later, he is awakened in the midst of a raging battle between armored soldiers and insectoid beings called the “Blue” which have overrun the Earth.

This group of soldiers is from an orbiting space colony, collectively called Second Earth. They had orders to recover “sleepers” around the Earth. Among them is the soldier Marlene Angel, (can you find the girl?) who at first appears to be heartless toward others. On the journey to the space colony, Second Earth, Yuji meets many of the humans that were left behind during the evacuation due to limited resources. Standing orders for Marlene and the other troops are to consider any human survivors on the surface to be already dead, which greatly troubles Yuji.

The problem with this is that it is terrible science fiction, terrible war and terrible horror. It seems these insectoids, which look like giant spiders, when they capture you, ball you up and will eat you later. Well, as you have seen, most people do not roll up well, so there is a lot of physical compaction. Adding to this is that Yuji has zero idea what is going on, except that he is the only one from his facility to survive, as the others are lost. His tube broke open and he was awakened; the rest were still in their tubes and sank to the bottom of the sea.

I don’t mind a show that drops you into the middle of things, but this is too big of a learning curve to have to understand and it honestly would not hurt to take out 10 or so minutes to explain things to him, rather than running the risk of his dying of shock as to how things have so changed in the two decades he was taking his hibernations.

I assume that people would eventually grow to understand, but everyone comes off as a real hard ass, even though they are dying left and right. Just as there is a problem when the fan service comes too soon, there is also a problem when the horror comes too soon. If you do not really hook me in with that first episode, it can be a losing battle and then, I walk away from it. I don’t even recall if I got to episode three, but enough was too much.

In some instances, it reminded me of the movie “King of Thorns” with the cryo units and the hope for a better life that was a lie, but it was still the unrelenting destruction. It got too much too fast and so a lot washed over me, which is why I walked away from it. Certainly not my cup of tea. Better luck next time.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork 8 (Surprisingly competent)
Plot 7 (Good work on a retread idea)
Pacing 6 (Too frantic at times)
Effectiveness 0 (Because I GAVE UP)
Conclusion 0 (GAVE UP)
Fan Service 0 (Didn’t hang around long enough to determine things)

Overall 2 (It’s not there)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. Put me back in my tube.