Current Episode Score: 6

Hmm, a pure CGI work involving aliens and warships. Honestly this is a very odd first episode for me, and kinda gives me vibes that I’m missing some context or prologue. Even after the flashback I’m a tad bit confused about the whole set-up.

So we have Fog, some alien group, who are apparently sentient weapons who showed up one day in the form of warships and just started destroying naval fleets and coastlines and satellites in space. We don’t really have a reason yet for this happening, though I wouldn’t be shocked if it was somehow related to the climate change they mentioned off-hand. And a couple years after this happened, a submarine somehow had it’s original orders overwritten and told to track down Gunzou and follow his orders. Seemingly Iona must have meet his father, and the father is the one who reset her memory and changed her orders.

And now 2 years on from meeting, Gunzou is traveling around with Iona and some friends from the school as some mercenaries and technically Japanese criminals for stealing the ship. Now sent to travel to America to hopefully get assistance producing a new weapon that could assist everyone in destroying the Fog.

All this feels rather messy. I don’t know who any of these crew members are, nor why they all dress so oddly and have very strange visual appearances, outside of being main characters in an anime. Nor do I really understand why he is technically still a traitor/criminal to the Japanese government, instead of just striking a deal.

Visually I don’t love the CGI, it is very stiff when used with any of the human characters. But as expected it works great in the ship combat. I don’t really have anything else to say about CGI by this point, it looks as you would expect from anime CGI of 2013. Amazing at mechanical and non-human stuff that allows for precision, but anything natural and human like it falls apart.

I hope we can get a bit more backstory and general idea of what the Fog actually is. Are they some alien race, and if so why show up and just take over the seas and nothing else. And why destroy satellites and undersea cables? Or are they some hyper-advanced species that lived in the deep seas, and got pissed at humans for damaging the seas so much. On that count, I feel like I saw/read something with that exact concept recently, maybe a movie. But again, why destroy satellites and cables? I think the answer to the Fog will make or break this show for me.