Title: Captain Earth
Release Date: April 5, 2014
Studio: Bones
Genre: Science Fiction, Mecha
Premise: Second-year high school student Daichi Manatsu is drawn to Tanegashima after a mysterious circular rainbow appears in the sky. Deep underground he finds the Earth Engine Impacter - a giant robot designed to intercept alien threats.
Verdict: Now that's how you do a mecha. The level of talent here is truly remarkable; with scripts penned by Yoji Enokido (FLCL) and direction from Takuya Igarashi (Soul Eater, Star Driver), Studio Bones delivers a solid, traditional mecha series.
Daichi Manatsu is a typical mild-mannered teenager, aside from the fact that he is calmly failing out of his second year of high school. He's also not too keen to hang out with his peers, turning down an invite to a classmate's villa. Both seem to have something to do with the boy's dead father, an astronaut who died in an accident when Daichi was just a child.
After the disk rainbow appears in the skies above the island where his father trained (and died), Daichi runs away to the island and revisits his childhood haunts. One of these hangouts happens to be a large base with hundreds of sublevels. Deep in the underbelly, he discovers a strange mute boy who leads him to a stranger elevator and...well you know how this goes.
The pilot is far from perfect. I refer to this as a "traditional" mecha because there are a lot of familiar tropes here - a troubled male protagonist with complicated feelings about his father (aka "daddy issues"), a looming (but possibly just misunderstood) alien threat, and a mysterious female lead with an adorable companion animal, just to name a few. But instead of feeling tired or exasperated, the episode left me only with feelings of nostalgia and anticipation for what's to come. This deserves a spot on your list is you have any love for all things giant and robotic.
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