Review for Coppelion: Complete Series Collection

Introduction

I must be a glutton for punishment. I keep requesting Kazé check-discs for review, despite having constantly whinged about their inability to adequately author anime on DVD. I keep setting myself up for a fall, each time hoping that they’ve improved, that they’ve had the feedback translated into French and actually read it, and I do get my hopes up when they show incremental improvements as they did towards the end of Bleach’s run. And there’s also cause to celebrate when they go and release Magi on Blu-ray, making us the only English speaking territory to get it in HD. So here I am, giving them a twentieth chance, as they’ve only gone and licensed two shows that I really enjoyed when they were first streamed. They’ll be releasing World Conquest Zvezda Plot in a few months, and like Magi, we’ll be the only English territory to get it on Blu-ray. Coppelion is also a show that Kazé are releasing, and it too should have seen a Blu-ray release. It did get a Region A Blu-ray and Kazé have released it in France (Japanese with French subtitles), but this time in the UK it’s DVD only. Will my hopes be shattered again?


It isn’t every day that you see three high school girls walking into an abandoned city, but Ibara, Taeko and Aoi are indeed making their way into a deserted, run down and overgrown Tokyo. 20 years previously, an industrial accident devastated the city, unleashing highly toxic radiation, and forcing an evacuation. The teenagers have been genetically engineered to be immune to radiation, and have been sent in to find and rescue the few remaining survivors in the city. Sure enough, there are a few people still in the city limits, surviving courtesy of hazmat suits, solar power, and a Good Samaritan delivering uncontaminated supplies. But there are dark sides to the city as well, such as a survivalist faction. And for some reason, the radiation isn’t declining as it should; in some areas the hotspots are actually increasing. And on top of that, some of the genetically engineered saviours sent into the city aren’t as emotionally stable as Ibara, Taeko and Aoi.


Coppelion is presented across three dual layer discs from Kazé.

Disc 1
1. Coppelion
2. Future
3. Hope
4. Sunset
5. Life

Disc 2
6. Planet
7. Haruto
8. Sisters
9. Diversion

Disc 3
10. Human
11. Awakening
12. Promise
13. Angel

Picture

Coppelion gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic native PAL transfer on these discs, which is a relief given the NTSC-PAL converted image used in the menu screens. It’s a pretty decent transfer all in, with no signs of aliasing, although perhaps a little too afflicted by digital banding for even a DVD presentation. It’s apparent on smaller screens, and is strikingly obvious when scaled up. Coppelion is a remarkable animation, worthy of a Blu-ray release, and it’s a shame we didn’t get one here. It has a unique style in that it presents world designs, background art that is almost photorealistic, with excellent detail, gorgeous colours, and great perspective. Against that, the character design is simplistic but fluidly animated, but often presented with thick black borders, giving the suggestion of live-action performances against bluescreen. Coppelion uses a stark, bleached palette of colours that is effective in promoting its vision of a collapsed, post apocalyptic abandoned city.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 2.0 English and Japanese, with translated English subtitles for the Japanese track, and signs translations for the English track. There’s also a French subtitle track for the Japanese available from the French menu. It’s all locked up tight. There was a moment in the first two episodes where I thought that I was going to give Coppelion a Princess Jellyfish like slating. For those first two episodes there are no signs in the Japanese version, it’s all with the English audio only, and there are a couple of plot specific bits of on-screen text that don’t get translated. My tolerance for the English dub doesn’t go too far with actors that pronounce Aoi as ‘Owiee’. Once again Kazé demonstrate a complete lack of understanding as to how most UK fans want their anime to be authored.


I would have slated this release but for two reasons. The first is that after the first two episodes, the Japanese version starts translating on-screen text, even if it is only during moments when no characters are speaking (sometimes even the episode titles are missing). The second is that other than the first episode, there isn’t a lot of plot specific on-screen text that you need translated to get the story. It’s no Princess Jellyfish or Mawaru Penguindrum. As mentioned, the English dub set my teeth on edge for one particular reason, but other than that it seems acceptable enough. The original Japanese audio is my preference as always, not least because of Kana Hanazawa in a memorable role as Aoi. The subtitles are accurately timed and are free of error.

Extras

These being Kazé discs, they’re locked up tighter than the Crown Jewels. You can’t change audio or subtitles on the fly. You have no access to the player timer, and if you escape an episode to the main menu to change audio options there, the player will forget where you left the episode from, and you’ll have to restart it from the beginning.


When the discs boot up you have the choice between French and English menus. Discs 1 to 3 autoplay trailers for the Anime Digital Network, Akame ga Kill and Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan respectively for the French menus. The English discs autoplay trailers for the Tenkai Knights, Black Lagoon, and Berserk: The Movie 1. That’s all before loading up the animated menus. The sole extras are textless credits on disc 3.

Conclusion

I really do like Coppelion. The sci-fi fan in me really appreciates post-apocalyptic tales of nuclear devastation. I suppose that comes from being brought up during the final decades of the Cold War. Coppelion, with its tale of an abandoned city, nuclear contamination, and survivalists really hits all my buttons. Incidentally, it seems that Coppelion was due to go into production a couple of years earlier, but the Earthquake and Fukushima happened, suddenly making what was an escapist fantasy all too topical.


It’s the thirst for cheap energy again that causes the accident in Coppelion. Contracts going to the lowest bidder, and short-cuts taken with safety result in a devastating accident in Tokyo, leaving the city contaminated with lethal levels of radiation. The story begins some twenty years later, as three apparent school-girls make their way into the city to look for diehard survivors. For there are those who find it preferable, or indeed their only choice to remain in the city, supported by locally sourced foods and medicines, living in hermetically sealed homes, venturing out in hazmat suits. Topical as always, there are the elderly that were abandoned by their families when the evacuation order came, escapees from a local prison who would fear arrest back in the outside world, the first wave of rescuers from the army who were politically forgotten when the scale of the accident became clear, and those few scientists and engineers that worked on the project, and indeed would have been enemy number one back in the outside world, but in the contaminated zone could use their skills and knowledge to help the survivors thrive.


The rescuers too have baggage of their own. They’re teenagers simply because they were genetically engineered after the accident to be comparatively immune to the radiation. They’ve also been gifted with abilities, enhanced senses, enhanced strength and speed, and other, more esoteric powers, but the genetic engineering comes with a high price. They’re uncertain about their place in the world, their futures, and ambivalent about their relationship with the people that created them for one purpose alone, especially as they are not born of people, rather cloned to be tools of the military. That ambivalence transfers to humanity in general. They’re sent into the city to rescue the survivors, armed with Aether, a drug manufactured from their own blood to confer a degree of radiation immunity to people.


It’s how they approach their missions that define them. Ibara, Aoi and Taeko are wholly and emotionally invested in their rescue mission. Their lives simply revolve around finding and bringing out the survivors, so every success is a validation of their existence, every failure a tragedy, and their consternation is understandable when they learn that some people don’t actually want to be rescued. The First Division of the military in particular, have a far more negative purpose in mind, revenge for being abandoned in the first place. Then there is the Clean-Up Squad that is ostensibly there to support the rescuers, but Clean-up is a rather convenient euphemism, and their missions are really inimical. Haruto of the Clean-Up Squad knows more about their genetically engineered nature, and really is ambivalent to humanity, while his cohorts, the Ozu sisters Shion and Kanon are quick to abandon the mission and resort to mayhem, their hatred of humanity stemming from the same knowledge, coupled with the genetic inheritance from their forebear.


The first four episodes are really more standalone introductions to this world, and the three girls’ first encounters with survivors, as they learn just how difficult their mission will be, and the kind of people that they will encounter (including some opportunistic smugglers that think a contaminated city is the perfect place to fly-tip nuclear waste). The final nine episodes really comprise one long arc, which introduces the technically inclined survivors living in a fortified planetarium (one of whom is heavily pregnant and needs evacuation immediately) who the girls choose to help. The First Division is introduced here, with their antagonistic leader’s plans, and the Clean-up Crew get involved too with mixed results. The mission is complicated when an international conference is hosted in Japan, and their support gets pulled off the mission and given guard duty at the event, unable to help the girls evacuate the survivors.


This could be a bleak and emotionally charged story, but Coppelion actually plays it, if not for laughs, as lightly as possible. Certainly the character of Aoi is there as comic relief for much of the show, liable to lapse into hysteria at the drop of a hat, predisposed to panic. She’s sort of a cute Corporal Jones in that respect to Ibara’s competent Captain Mainwaring. Taeko is more the emotional heart of the group, quiet but supportive, sort of a Godfrey, and I really ought to stop before this analogy escapes the bounds of credibility completely. But Coppelion is filled with larger than life characters; it really needs to be given most of them are hidden away in hazmat suits, while the action is literally incredible, when cartoon physics apply as near weapons of mass destruction are being unleashed.


A post-apocalyptic story set in the nuclear wasteland of an abandoned city, certainly looks as bleak as you would expect given this show’s production design, but against all expectations, Coppelion is fun, and it is funny, while it gets its emotional beats just right to get the audience invested in the characters and the trials that they go through. If this had been released by any other distributor, with better subtitling, and a better visual transfer (that banding is excessive), I might even have nudged up that mark. But as it goes, Kazé’s release is watchable enough.