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Chrome Shelled Regios
Anime DVD Review
Well, you know, I really gotta hand it to them. They tried. And they did something I thought couldn't be done. They managed to combine every trope in anime and it becomes, not a genre-busting moment as it was in the outrageously brilliant 'Project A-ko', but almost a death-scream for anime itself.
Taking place in a presumably post apocalyptic world, domed, mobile cities travel around the planet, trying to avoid huge nests of bugs the size school-busses. We've all seen this before, if you've ever seen Blue Seed or Nausicca, and the mobile cities remind us plenty of Howl's Moving Castle.
 They have plenty of advanced technology, although things like tanks, flamethrowers, or building underground cities, or getting off the planet entirely never seem to occur to these people. Also, certain warriors are gifted with magical super powers, which when channeled through their sword-like weapons allow them great advantages when fighting the bugs.
Now that you've got the background, ignore all that as it's not important. Instead, the series is about the internal struggles of one platoon, the secrets of the main protagonist, and the larger politics of the city they are in and how that affects the politics of the other cities.
 While the characters and their motivations are interesting, along with some fascinating flashbacks into what's going on and how they all got into this mess, ultimately, the series veers all over the place, and can be quite confusing. So much so that you start to lose interest.
And while there's enough excitement every episode to keep you in your seat, nothing ever *really* happens. And while I admire the female platoon leader Nina Antalk (as she's really the only one holding the group of misfits together), she's not a strong enough leader. Every character is so focused on their own problems, they almost never really interact as a unit. Each one of them needs to learn that there's no "I" in team.
 Chrome Shelled Regios is one of those series where I'm not convinced they thought this whole thing through, where I'm asking questions like "Where do they get water from?", I mean, suddenly you understand why other series like this *have* fanservice, to distract you enough from examining the serious flaws in the plot.
Reviewed by Brian Cirulnick, March 2011
Below: Scenes from Chrome Shelled Regios.
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