Terra Formars,
What can I say about this show. I’m surprised they made another season out of it but to be completely honest I enjoyed Terra Formars. I watched the first season, the uncensored one, in two days and you know what? I liked it. It wasn’t that bad. If you expect nothing else than a gory/dark/horror show with cockroaches it’s quite decent.
So now, Terra Formars is back for another season and for more cockroaches fights. Am I excited? Not really, but I’m willing to give this show a chance so let’s get going!
The episode opens where the first season left, with Akari and Michelle being surrounded by cockroaches. They decide to take a second shot of the magic medicine that turns them into bugs in order to be able to continue the fight while the cockroaches are nicely waiting for them in a circle . It reminds me of those fighting games where the enemies are waiting for their turn to attack. Like, they can’t attack all together at the same time, no,they need to do 1vs1… But anyway, I digress.
So yeah, they take their drug shot and Akari is now ready to fight the cockroaches because then he will see Michelle in the shower.
Oh wow
Nice motivation dude.
I was expecting something like “saving my ass” or “saving that god dam kid in the hospital who’s the center of all the annoying flashbacks of this episode”… Or your friends if you are the sentimental type… But that shower stuff man, Akari bro… Seriously… What happened to you? You know what? Let’s take a quick look at Akari’s last lines from the last episode of the first season. His motivations can’t be that different right?
“Even if you steal our equipment and technology to get stronger, even if there are some sneaky bastards on the inside holding us back, we won’t lose no matter what. Don’t underestimate the earth, and the earth’s organisms”.
So now, he wants to fight to see a girl showering? Okay… No I’m not mad, not yet… It’s only been 1:39 minutes and I can already tell that this review is going to be fun aha.
Okay so right after we have a rather nice recap scene, explaining us again the problem with earth, mars and the cockroaches as well as the purpose of the mission. To sum up quickly for those who don’t know the “story” of Terra Formars: Earth was in a bad shape so humans wanted to colonize mars, they send various stuff on the planet to create oxygen. They also sent cockroaches but they evolved and a virus started to spread on earth. So everything is quite bad for humanity. They decided to send several missions on Mars and this one’s goal is to capture 1 000 cockroaches also known as Terra Formars to experiment stuff on them and to cure the virus. If you want more explanations you should either read Berry’s reviews or the manga. Both of them are great, not like my summary. You can also watch season 1… It’s another option…
So! Back to Mars, all the divisions are surrounded by cockroaches and … nothing really, they fight a bit with no blood but we don’t really have the time to learn anything else cuz it’s time for a long series of flash backs involving Akari and that kid victim of the AE virus. I thought it was the “Ass Erosion” virus but apparently no, well I don’t know, I forgot the real name of the virus. Let’s go with Ass Erosion shall we, not like anyone actually cares…
So Akari is quite attached to this kid since he’s victim of the Ass Erosion virus, like his dead girlfriend. So saving that kid is like saving his girlfriend. Before leaving for Mars he made all sort of promises to that kid like he did to his girlfriend before she died. So Akari’s motivation to fight is supposedly that Kid and the hope of finding a cure against the virus. I say supposedly because now, it seems like he’s more interested in watching Michelle’s ass rather than curing the Ass Erosion virus.
So that’s it with the flash back. The fight continues and Akari is lifted up in the air and punched by the cockroaches multiple times. Then he manages to free himself from them thanks to the help of Yoyo Man ( I also forgot his name sorry) and uses a cockroach to soften his fall from the sky. We have to notice that, Akari is also a magician since the corpse of the cockroach disappeared after the fall. But I’m stopping on little details here, who cares about a corpse missing AHAHA, yeah, I care about those details.
At the same time, the guys in the division 2 are fucking sucking at everything. I don’t know who’s the worst, the cockroaches who can’t reach and grab a clumsy girl or the division who’s dumb enough to spread a net and not include the girl inside. But it’s okay, they don’t all die because the Captain and the only bad ass characters of the show, Marcos and that Boxing guy, arrive.
Michelle is looking for Akari who’s laying on the ground too occupied to have another flashback to care about the cockroaches around. You know, I’m starting to think that there is some rule that exists which allows every shounen hero in a bad position to have the right to Flash back. Like ” Oh I’m in a bad position and about to die, I invoke my right of Flash Back, where I can tell he story of my life and show the reasons why I shouldn’t die”. So yeah, another flash back, this time about Akari’s dead girlfriend, also victim of the Ass Erosion virus. So our young hero wakes up thanks to the power of love and friendship, I suppose, ready to kick some cockroaches’s ass. Will we finally get some epic fights?
No
There’s a big cockroach and they give each other little punches on the stomach for a while, then Akari is about to lose but the whole team arrive and call his name. So after a lot of punching with no blood, Akari manages to behead the massive cockroach and all the other cockroaches are then leaving, because “oh no, the five of them are too powerful for us, quick, let’s retreat.”
Akari falls on the ground again because he has no power left, practicing judo is really tiring you know, and Michelle catches him as he falls. He says “Sorry Michelle-chan I used too much power” or something like that and falls asleep grabbing Michelle’s boobs…
You know what? I was fine with him being a bit perverted in the first season but here, it’s just too much… I don’t remind Akari doing anything like that before… god dammit, he was so awesome in the first season, what happened?
After that, the commanders make a speech telling the crew the situation of the other divisions. Some of them are not responding and others were apparently destroyed. But I don’t remember which division has which number, I don’t expect anyone to remember so this feels a bit useless. At least show us the faces of the commanders of each division. That would be more useful than just the numbers… But eh, it’s okay, I guess. So the captain says stuff like: ” okay fuckers, now let’s rest, we know you’re sad about your friends who died but, it’s okay, no big deal,sleep, eat and the girls are going to take a shower”.
I have nothing to say about the useless Fan service.
I pass.
Akari is awake again and talks a bit with Michelle. She says that they will keep his promise ( to save the Ass Erosion Kid) but he think she’s talking about the shower scene. There you go, that stuff is brought up again… I can tell that Akari is saying all that bullshit about the shower to not worry anyone or too sound like a light headed guy even if deep down inside he has a terrible past but eeeeeehh… It gets annoying after a bit. Now I feel like this shower stuff is more brought up for the comedy’s sake instead of being used to develop Akari’s character.
So everyone eat and jerk around, the night passes and when it’s morning again, the cockroaches are not coming, why ? Mystery, Mystery. Just before the ending, we learn that people on earth have send a rescue ship but they’ve let one country carry all the burden of the operation. Honestly, I’m way more interested in what is happening on earth and all the political strategy thing going on rather than in the shit fights on Mars. That might be just me but since the dirigeants on earth looks like huge douchebags things can get interesting.
Charibo’s Thoughts:
Let’s not lose any time in nice talks about the story and stuff to focus on the main problems:
WHERE IS THE VIOLENCE?!
What’s up with the bright colors?
What the hell of the Fan service?
Why is Akari a hentai pussy?
I was watching Terra Formars because it was violent, gore, and because I was afraid of the cockroaches. Now I’m clearly not afraid anymore. I think the colors are too bright and if you thought the first season had bad animation, let me laugh a bit. The animation here is clearly lacking of everything. In my opinion this episode is worse than everything. During the episode, Akari was “fighting” against some cockroaches but it seems like he was just practicing some judo catches… Like lifting them and throwing them on the ground. Do you expect me to believe that they can be killed like that? Seriously. No blood, no head smashed with eyes popping out… I miss the old season.
For exemple there’s a GIF from the first season, uncensored. It’s a bit graphic so I’ll leave it under the spoiler tag. Don’t click if you don’t want to see a cockroach being beaded.
[spoiler]
Do you feel the despair, the violence and the gory action? All those things that made Terra Formars actually good? WELL FORGET THEM! You won’t see that kind of stuff again.[/spoiler]
I don’t want to talk about the useless fan service. It just pisses me off even more.
Furthermore, I’m not a big fan of the comedy they decided to add… Those guys just killed horrible cockroaches, watched their friends being killed in front of their eyes and they are there, joking, jerking around. Please… The comedy was fine at the beginning of the first season, before landing on Mars because they had no idea of what they were about to live. But now… no… just no… like Marcos and Yoyo Man just watched their childhood friend Sheila die (it actually happened in the first season but in the show, it’s I dunno, like the same day) And they are joking about Akari collapsing. COME ON!
On the other hand, we get excessive flashbacks of Akari and the sick Kid in the hospital, reminding us why he is doing all that. But it’s not like I care about the characters anymore. I used to like Akari in the first season because he was bad ass. Now he’s just … eeeeeh, like the show… Just… no…
The OP is fine, but it can’t compete with the first one which is one of my favorite OP of all time. Just listen to it and you’ll see the difference. But now, listening to it makes me remember the first season… God… What happened Terra Formars? This episode is even worst than censored version, because now, we can’t even hope for a better version…When I’m writing those lines I’m actually listening to the first opening again and again, crying on how good the first season was compared to this shit. Now, there’s no need to censor anything since the fights are no violent at all. I get it, Terra Formars made a lot of noise when it first came out because of the censored version but I think that this is worse. Trying to make a lighten version to avoid the censor is killing the spirit of Terra Formars. Remove all the gore, the dark and threatening atmosphere of the first season, add more comedy, shittier animation, fan service to avoid the censorship and you’ll get Terra Formars Revenge.
Will I watch it? Yeah. So that I can put a very bad score at the end. That would be my…
*Revenge*
Get it?
I’m not even sorry
Will I blog about it? HELL NO. I don’t have a lot of time on my hands right now, and I don’t want to waste it reviewing this. Maybe it will get better, and if it does I’ll probably do a review of the whole show once it’s over. Other than that I don’t think I’ll write more stuff about this show. I’ve already said too much. My head is hurting, I’m sad and disappointed. It’s fun to write about how bad a show is for a couple of episodes but after a bit, it’s not funny anymore, it feels like torture and I don’t hate myself enough to to do this.
“…With their buttocks completely eroded, victims of the horrible AE virus are unable to sit down and eventually die of fatigue.”
I heard that victims can’t evacuate stuff that they need to evacuate. Also, apparently their butt is contently bleeding so they just bleed to death. The Ass Erosion virus sure is scary.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything. And I take back that I said the animation was better, it wasn’t. Hoo boy do I have a lot to say:
Like you said, WHAT HAPPENED? WHERE IS THE VIOLENCE? The fighting this episode was so stupid and it wasn’t scary. I was always creeped out when the roaches appeared, but this time…nah. I don’t understand why they suddenly did an art change, too? This is supposed to be a seinen, but the new art makes it look like a shonen. The violence is nonexistant. Like…why did they do this? They completely changed Terra Formars! It’s suddenly feels like a different show with its lighthearted atmosphere. The bright colors don’t fit at all. While the first season’s animation sucked, I liked the more mature art style and the darker colors because it really matched the feel of the show. But…this…THIS doesn’t. I don’t know what this is. The random out of place fanservice, the weird chibi, this is just not right.
I didn’t really like Terra Formars too much, but even I’M offended by this. I’d rather take shitty censorship than this garbage. I’m only giving this two more episodes, and if it doesn’t get better I’m done with it.
I’m still crying over this. I actually re watched the last episode of S1 to make that review. I didn’t now I could miss the old Terra Formars that much.
I think they did change the whole animation, violence and stuff to avoid censorship. This anime is actually licensed in France and yesterday almost all the libraries were selling the first volume of the manga at 1€, less than a dollar. It was clearly a marketing operation so I do think Terra formars is trying to touch a larger audience. But by removing all the violence and the gore it loses the old viewers like us who were watching this show for those elements.
Even he details on the faces changed… like you noticed before it was so serious and mature… now it’s just … eeeeehhh. I used to love Akari in the first season. But now.. eh. I also think they removed the abs of the characters. In the manga there’s a shower scene involving Michelle but she has huuuuuge abs. At least she’s a fighter… Here, she doesn’t have any, she’s like the rest of the girls. COME ON!
You know what? This doesn’t exist. 2016 is a wonderful year for anime and manga, so logically, this doesn’t exist. Average anime I can stomach, but this? No way. No. Way. It’s just a nightmare. Yes it is. We’ll wake up, and find out that it’s all just a dream.
(Ugh, I seriously want to dump whoever responsible for this abomination into a pile of dung…!)
We need to burn this show with fire. It’s the only way to get rid of it
Time to break out the bug spray and roach motels!
OMG when i saw the first promo pics and trailers i was like.. WTF HAPPENED TO THE CHARACTERS DESIGN?.. but omg.. watching the first episode was so fucking painful… ugh.. the show is shit.
Aha well, I’m still watching the show actually. It’s getting worse and worse.
I was hoping that the shit animation, the lack of blood and people smashing cockroache’s head was an April Fool since the anime aired on the 1st of April but it wasn’t .
So I’m still mad, and sad about this