The peaceful Gargantia returns!
Gargantia has ended its 13 episodes run, and seeing how it is an original series, it was a notable series with many potentials to bring it to a full 25/26 episodes to develop the story more but nonetheless, the 13 episodes had been satisfying.
Not based on any previous works, this original series revolves around the elements of science and technology, human behaviour and how interactions between different inter-galactic races will be. Honestly speaking, this would most likely be the case if we were to actually meet up with a real intelligent species from other galaxies. Similar to Ledo, the civilisation that he lives in is drastically different from the one on Earth, which we are familiar about, whereas Ledo's life revolves only in fighting and only the fittest and the useful are allowed to survive.
Our robotic counterpart, Chamber, has also learnt and grown together with Ledo throughout the course of the series, making use of his interactions and learning through his feelings to update its own intelligence and till the end, Chamber has evolved into an "individual" that have the understanding of the "right" choice to make instead of the usual analysis and compliance to orders like Striker has. From the start where Ledo first arrived on Earth with Chamber, I thought that the interactions that were shown of Ledo learning to adapt to life on Earth was taking too much of the series time that we're missing out on something, some action, however, it turns out that it was what the series' core was all about, on the topic of civilisation and how different people treat it to be. By showing how Ledo learns to adapt to a normal human society on Gargantia, it can be easily seen that what his previous civilisation, the Galactic Alliance and how Kugel attempted to change Earth, was a wrong decision to make and a morally wrong civilisation to live in. For a short 13 episode series, I was kinda glad that they decided to leave romance aside and focus on the plot instead, which was the strong point of Gargantia itself. Throughout the series where romance wasn't the real focus, I heaved a sign of relief once it was out of the picture, or that it was just left as it is between Amy and Ledo, rather than forcibly adding it in like what we saw in Robotics;Notes which to me, turned out horrible.
I guess the turning point of this series was the discovery about the true nature of the Hideauze which I am guessing as well that, that was the point where Chamber actually began learning something other than just following his own analysis and based on an AI-sense of thinking. When Ledo requested for Chamber to reveal what was the truth behind the Hideauze, he was shocked and began having thoughts that all those he had killed were previously humans as well and those thoughts and hesitation probably led Chamber to rethink his own options and his own decision making ways. Honestly after seeing how the series brought out the twist, that the Hideauze are actually humans, the first thing that came across my mind was the similarity between this and Shin Sekai Yori, where both had the similar topic on the "evolution" or "devolution" of human beings from the past. Since it wasn't long ago since Shin Sekai Yori had ended, after dropping that huge twist on the viewers, Gargantia's plot twist didn't came as shocking as I believe it would have been, for those who has yet to watch Shin Sekai.
Enemies?
Go to hell, Tin Can!
Ledo's character development did play a significant role in the series, showing clearly how from a mind of a soldier starting to adapt to living as a civilian, and then turning back to his own ways when he discover the presence of the Hideauze and while trying to use Kugel and Striker as an "escape" route to force himself to deviate from his thinking that his enemies were humans as well, he realises his own "true" self and became "human" at the end of the whole series. For a human who was brainwashed by the Alliance to constantly fight against the Hideauze, they were all made to believe that by doing so, it was their only way of living and defeating the Hideauze would be their one and only purpose in their lives. However, I did think that Ledo could have previously felt something other than just plain fighting, after he remembers how his "little brother" got rejected by the Alliance and he teared for the first time in his life. And that was one of the potentials of the series I was talking about. The series did showed some flashbacks of Ledo's past, but none of them were properly explained, which I had hoped that they did. Nonetheless, it was heart-warming to see Ledo finally taking a grip on his own life at the end, where he acknowledges that he does not wish to die and wants to see the future. And that was when Chamber ejected him and asks him to carry on his mission to explore and to survive in this very world that he has ended up in. Not only has Chamber successfully evolved, but Ledo did, as well, as a fellow human being.
Looking back, the series only changed its own pace around episode 9 where previously there weren't much hints about the true plot of the series. And to that, it felt a little rushed in its own ways of trying to wrap the series up and I thought much more of the series could be developed even further. In terms of the history of humankind and the Hideauze and about the Alliance that Ledo had been under in the past. What I was most interested in, was the change of the Earth. From the previous video footages, we did see that Earth had undergone several ice ages and in order to overcome that, some of the humans, called Evolvers, change their own body structure to become Hideauze to migrate from space. And so what exactly did happen to Earth before the Gargantia and the other fleets took their "ground"? Even though we do know that it was the aftermath of an ice age, but what I had hoped was more history about the past, about all those relics that everyone is so keen about discovering. Even the Heaven's Ladder that Gargantia holds, what exactly is the history behind it? Perhaps leaving some parts unexplained makes the series a more debatable one but oh well, at least it had a happy ending and Ledo's back on Gargantia, living a normal human life like any others. The strong points of this series was definitely the human interactions and on how things learn and adapt to in a total different environment, such as Ledo and Chamber and now, even Ledo had a change in his own thinking where he now strives for communication between them and the Hideauze, since they are both humans after all. Overall, this series has been quite successful, it was rather dry at the start but once the plot started to pick up pace, it's as good as it gets. :)
The last bit of Chamber that stays with Ledo
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had been a busy weekend, will update more next week, covering Cosfest as well :)
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