Dawnleaf Watches Coppelion: Episode 1 - Of Magic Skirts and Thick Outlines

For me, one of the hardest parts of blogging like this is when I come across an anime like Coppelion.  Because, well, my reaction to it is very difficult to articulate.   Because me just saying “THEANIMATIONTHEANIMATIONTHEANIMATION” over and over in a post would just be boring, but that’s really how I feel.  So, I guess the easiest place for me to start is trying to describe dat animation.

Now, this makes me regret starting the season with Coppelion, because I know everything (probably including its subsequent episodes) will look nothing like this.  There are almost no still frames in this anime.  The wind’s always blowing, the characters move their hands and heads while they’re talking, the camera’s flying and swinging about like they taped it to the back of a drunk eagle, or the focus is going in and out. 

This does a magnificent job of making the setting, a giant abandoned city (because of a nuclear bomb, or at least I think it’s a nuclear bomb) seem truly massive, empty, and atmospheric.  There’s also almost no music, so the only sounds (besides the talking) are the ambient sound effects (wind, water, etc.).  Now, I personally like music, but I think that this anime’s silence is actually used fairly well to make the girls seem truly alone.

Now, on to everything else.  Um…  Well, actually, I think that everything else is handled decently.  I mean, the plot is as anime as it gets (high school girls with short skirts exploring post-apocalyptic city), but they actually try to give everything a reason.  Why are these high school students sent into a city full of nuclear fallout?  To rescue people.  Why them, in particular?  Because they are genetically engineered to be able to handle the nuclear radiation without hazmat suits.   Why the short skirts?  Well… um…

Reasons.

This anime also seems like it’s going for a more serious tone, and I’m pretty the thing that happened to that one girl that was characterized a bit less than everyone else would’ve been shocking to people who don’t have a sixth sense like me (I totally knew that something was going to happen to her the moment they left her alone).  I assume she’s dead, but they left at the end of the episode like they were going to save her, so I guess that the other characters don’t have the same foresight I do.

I think that this whole system of sending high school girls who clearly aren’t mentally ready for this sort of thing in unsupervised is a touch flawed, no?  I mean, one of them is fine with everything, but the other one freaks out and cries and the other one’s totally dead.  It seems like this system would only send in students (and on that topic, are they all female?  Shouldn’t there be some male students, too?  Oh wait, anime) who were ready to handle this stuff, and one of the girls clearly wasn’t prepared at all. 

And, apparently, the animals in the area are all dangerous and feral and stuff, and that also didn’t warrant a warning or perhaps some guns (I know it looks like she’s holding a gun in that picture, but it’s for administering medicines).

Onto the girls themselves, we have the one who’s all tough and badass and rebellious, who is of course the only competent one and thus my favorite.

We have the one who eats a lot and seems pretty chatty and cheerful, but completely cracks under pressure.  From her reaction to the events that unfold this episode, one gets the distinct impression that she was expecting to have a fun picnic instead of going to a city to rescue people.   She’s kind of annoying in that regard, but I guess it’s forgivable at this point.

Then we have the dog-whisperer, who is dead, and, I’m calling it, will become the other girls’ motivation for the rest of the series. 

They also angst about how they’re just puppets and aren’t human or something, but I think that they have no room to complain.  They aren’t really puppets, they are in control of what they’re doing (I mean, the one girl even rebels against orders a bit and doesn’t get punished) and they’re exactly the same as humans except more awesome. 

So, Coppelion?  The animation alone could have carried this episode, but the plot looks like it might go in some very interesting places, and it actually is going for a serious tone, as opposed to the lighter, more comedic tone that’s becoming the norm nowadays.  It actually also has tension and stakes, too.  So it gets the Dawnleaf seal of approval, at least for now.  Now I have to wait a week before I can finally start watching new anime on Crunchyroll.  Pfft.