Once in a while one must kick back, stretch a bit and enjoy the lighter side of anime, setting aside the critic eye and simply going with the flow of the series. Perhaps my opinion of this series would've been worse had I watched it some other time, but for the present moment...it just hit the spot.
The Mars Daybreak (MD for short) is almost a run of the mill mecha series, tickling my soft spot: journeys.
Set in a more original setting, MD is not intent on doing something grand or awe-inspiring. It set its purpose on being entertaining and, in all due honesty, it achieved it with great ease. It's hard to get mad at a series that is this honest with its goals and that shows such efficiency in conveying to its viewers the light-hearted feel that the pirate life is supposed to entail.
Animation
Being set in an underwater environment, MD tackled quite the challenge in trying to present the under-water world of terraformed Mars. In quite a number of ways, it looks stunning through the way it's drawn, the way the mechs move (called Round Bucklers in this anime), the way the explosions are made to look. One sequence that I found to be absolutely awe-inspiring was the Ship of Aurora surfacing. I can't quite put my finger on it, but that scene stuck with me.
However, all is not fine and dandy. Mars is a terraformed planet now, able to sustain life in the vast oceans covering the surface yet most of the time there are no creatures in the ocean to grace our eyes. I understand it's about the budget so I'm not going to be harsh about this. But I will call it a damn pity as the moments when there actually is some life in those dark waters are created absolutely beautifully.
Heading a bit farther from the barren background of MD one must admit to the aspect of the battles. This anime is not a very action oriented one and, as such, serious battle moments are pretty rare although there are quite a number of confrontations between the pirates and the army, but things usually get settled terribly fast. When the story demands a battle in greater detail...well, things chance. The movement is fluid as it would be expected in a series of its year, the action is dynamic and the overall feeling image that the fight leaves behind is a good one.
All of the above and the somewhat generic character designs make MD into a visually soothing anime to watch. As in other aspects, it's not grand, but it is fine.
Sound
And another anime receives a saving grace from a well thought out musical score. The series takes full advantage of its great choral sequences as well as the overall awesome battle music. It is an anime about pirates and the music manages to be a bit more than the generic sound in the background and pulls the viewer into the anime. As I said: a saving grace.
The opening song is somewhat forgettable and the ending is more than forgettable since those are songs that you'd find in almost any mecha anime, the exact kind of music.
Aside from this, all that's left are the voices and those are done great since the VAs fit their characters and it's all done very well.
Moving on...
Story
As I've said earlier, this anime does not try to do anything grand but instead, it just tries to be entertaining. If I were to make a comparison, I'd probably compare it to an underwater Vandread lacking the harem element.
In case you haven't seen Vandread, I'll enlighten you as to what I meant by this: pretty soon into the whole thing, the characters of MD are engulfed in a mission to search for some treasure simply for the fun of it. Oh that pirate life...so carefree that I'm almost jealous of the characters.
So, with little information, a lot of mysteries and quite some lack of logics...the search for the treasure begins. And, conveniently, the clues are quite easy to find and acquire. As the so called story progresses, the viewer is treated to even more mysteries typical of a pirate life.
But in the end it just feels like the producers decided to lift their middle finger at all the viewers and simply end the anime with almost no explanations for anything.
Ok...so we have a treasure that seems wanted by quite a number of parties...what's it good for? Why should we find out? We're simple viewers...we're not important.
There's a robot appearing out of nowhere in the first episode. Hellooo...what's with that guy? Nobody's curious about it?
"Oh, so you found it...that makes our robot not unique anymore...ok, we'll keep you on-board and we won't bother with the details." I'd say those are pretty big details to be omitted. And the story just keeps on omitting such details like why we have a talking, super genius cat. Eh, who wants to know?
Another problem I had and somehow chose to ignore was the complete lack of logic behind the background story. As they presented the history of Mars and the first colonists it made them sound as if, from a race of people that could fly to other planets, they reverted back to the early stages of cultural evolution. Pirates hoarding gold and gems in submarines? Some kind of Indian customs? Secret technology of old? Weird...I don't know if the producers realized just how ridiculous this would seem in the end but one can overlook it if you view the anime as a simple SF comedy show.
From what I'm saying, the anime should be a chore to watch, right?
Wrong! MD has its bad parts but it makes up for them through the light-hearted feel and the simple take on all the things that would make an anime serious.
Character
One thing that I can say about the characters first hand is the fact that they lack any and all signs of development. Gram, as the main character, is developed to some degree but that's a thousand times more than I could say about the others.
Ok...there's a girl that can hear the silent voices of all living things. Ok, she's interesting, kind of generic but she's interesting. That's enough...
We have a guy that is said to have a destructive behavior. I always watched to observe this but it never happened. Too bad...at least he proves to be something more than what he is initially portrayed as.
There is a talking cat and some kind of dolphin...ooook, next.
A loud kid? A rash captain? Some super-strong ship navigator? A generic pretty boy? A gay looking pirate? The usual girl with "Oni-chan" always on top of her lips?
Any of these sound familiar? They did to me but I chose to overlook it simply because of the main character and the bad guy, both of which are characters that are impossible to not like simply because they're charismatic. I would go as far as to say that Gram carries the whole show on his shoulders. He can switch from goofy to serious, from unaffected to concern...Gram is a humane character and it's one of the best I've seen in anime.
Value
All in all, this is an anime simply to be enjoyed. It's not a mind-bender, it's not an adrenaline rush and it most certainly it's not a full comedy or a drama. It's little bit of each and can only be enjoyed as such.
Personally, I liked it because of my general liking towards anime that present a journey of sorts, adventure anime. I admit that I am quite biased to such things and this came straight down my alley.
You can live without it, you can live with it...I repeat: this is an anime with no high ambitions and it should be treated as such. Mercifully...
