Review for Chrome Shelled Regios: Part 2

Introduction

I’m sitting here trying to come up with a suitable introduction for this review of Chrome Shelled Regios Part 2, but I’m coming up blank. That should be understandable, as when I look back at part 1 and try and make sense of those 12 episodes, I come up blank as well. Those first episodes looked as if someone had taken a bucket full of anime and sci-fi tropes, threw them into a blender, and then smeared the resultant slurry onto a DVD disc, in the hope that parts of it might appeal to parts of the anime audience. Different parts appeal to different people, and that should in theory average out to decent sales figures. Fortunately, the real world doesn’t work like that; otherwise TV dinners would be gross. But that does still leave an anime release to review, and I seriously hope that Part 2 of Chrome Shelled Regios will make some kind of sense. I want to be able to write something after sitting through five more hours of this.


It’s some vague future on an alien world, where the atmosphere is toxic, and humans live in giant mobile cities called Regios. The outside world is full of giant bugs called Contaminoids that like to attack the cities, which is why the cities are mobile, to avoid the Contaminoids. Humans have developed fighting skills with Kei energy, and detection and communication skills with Nen’i energy to help them battle the Contaminoids, and the various cities also compete with each other for resources in mock battles using these skills. And the cities are run by electronic spirits, little techno-fairies. And while most of the cities try and avoid the Contaminoids, some get quirky and actively seek them out to pick a fight.


Zuellni is one of the normal cities, and when Layfon Alseif arrives to attend school there, he’s hoping to keep a low profile and avoid combat, just have a regular education as an engineer. Only he gets drafted into the 17th Platoon, when its leader Nina Antalk faces the choice of rapidly recruiting a new member or seeing her platoon disbanded. She wants the pride of excelling at the inter Regios championships, even though her team are the usual underdogs, and putting Layfon through his paces doesn’t strike her with much hope that their situation has improved. But it turns out that Layfon comes from one of those cities that like to go looking for fights with Contaminoids, and he has more actual combat experience than any of the fighters of Zuellni, and someone has manoeuvred him into being drafted into the 17th Platoon.


12 more episodes of Chrome Shelled Regios, the second half of the series, are presented on two discs from MVM.

Disc 1
13. The Sentiment That Lies in the Barrel of a Gun
14. The Fallen Ones Appear
15. Feelings That Are Not Received
16. Zuellni Run Amok and the Contaminoid Offensive!
17. Salinban Mercenary Training Group, Move Out!
18. Nina Missing! Zuellni in Crisis

Disc 2
19. A Guided Encounter
20. The Night Before the Intermunicipal Battle
21. Felli, Kidnapped
22. The Invincible, Spear-Shelled City Glendan Draws Near!
23. Ignacius’s Fragments
24. The Stirring Cities

Picture

Chrome Shelled Regios gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer. The image is presented in native PAL, with the 4% speed-up that implies. It’s not the most stunning animation with which to show off your anime collection. It’s soft, lacking in detail, and rather deficient in character animation, although the action scenes come across well. It has a colour palette that tends to the lighter end of the spectrum, and there’s a hazy feel to it which means that even at its best, you’re not going to get all that much detail and clarity from it. It up-scales adequately enough though, and is watchable. It still looks like a show that’s ten years older than it actually is.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. The original language track was watchable enough, if fairly generic, and the same can be said of Funimation’s dub for the show. The subtitles are accurately timed and free of error, while the one major crime this show commits is the egregious use of European style techno in its soundtrack. The end theme is j-Britpop acceptable though. This being a port of a Madman release, it comes as no surprise to hear pitch correction applied to the audio, and once more it’s more distracting than just leaving it chipmunked.

Extras

Both discs present their content with static menus and jacket pictures.

The only extras are on disc 2, and amount to the textless opening credits, and three versions of the textless closing credits.

You’ll also find trailers for the FLCL, Linebarrels of Iron and Shangri-La.

Conclusion

I’ve been procrastinating again, trying to find anything else to do instead of finishing this review of Chrome Shelled Regios: Part 2. Unfortunately the wretched thing hasn’t managed to write itself over the last few hours, so I’m reluctantly taking to the keyboard, spilling out some drivel, in the hope that you’ll accept it as a review, and not pick up on the fact that despite watching the first half of Chrome Shelled Regios, and now the second half as well, close to ten hours of anime programming, I still haven’t the slightest idea of what is going on in this show. I’m also beginning to suspect that neither did the producers of this particular anime. Did they just make it up as they went along, did they just create a highlights package of a manga and leave out they actual, y’know, story, or did they faithfully adapt a manga without actually reading it? Did the manga creator just make it up as he went along? Did anyone actually watch the show after they made it, just to see if it actually worked?


My complaints with the show are unchanged from Part 1... These complaints here...

It could conceivably be an interesting and engaging show, if the storytelling wasn’t so dire, and the character overload so overwhelming. There are far too many characters in this show, too many to even hope to keep in mind, while the narrative is thrown together piecemeal, in the apparent hope that it will all make sense when the show is done, and all the revelations fall into place. That approach only works if the show hooks you, gets you invested in its mystery, and involved in the story. Chrome Shelled Regios doesn’t, so whenever the focus shifts all of a sudden to another city, and another bunch of characters, whose names you won’t even learn until way past episode six, you become tempted to give up on the show. That’s to say nothing of the inexplicable film noir type segments, with everyone speaking in Engrish (on the Japanese track), which at this point look like a completely different anime edited into this one for a laugh. I’d be tempted to exclaim “What the hell is going on!” if I actually cared at this point.


Don’t get me wrong. They’re certainly enthusiastic about it. There isn’t any dead weight to the show, events occur at an energetic pace, the voice actors give their all, the animators present the action and odd moments of fan service with a decent amount of care and attention. But I’m still left wondering what the story was, who these characters were, what was going on. It was just episode after episode of WTF! The WTF-iest moment of them all was when one of the characters from the Engrish film noir showed up in the ‘real’ world. Dear storytellers, if you are going to layer mystery upon mystery onto the show, please have the decency to explain it at some point.


Chrome Shelled Regios is a narrative non sequitur. It’s a pointless show. The most that you can do is partake of some of the character interactions, the usual anime goofiness, and the odd moments of fan service. Taken on their own, there are moments to appreciate in the show. But when you put it all together as a story, it’s a waste of time.