In the future, Humanity has abandoned Earth, lost ages ago. Of the many colony ships that departed earth, only one is now known to remain, menaced constantly by spaceborne biological terrors. We follow a young mecha pilot as he sets out to protect his home from the enemy’s tentacles.
Wait, that was the pitch for Knights of Sidonia. Silly me, getting them confused. The pitch for Gargantia is… um, exactly the same setup, actually. But we’re only in space for half of the first episode. This time our main character sorties against the enemy, gets thrown through a hyperspace bypass, and crash-lands into a whole new world and a very different plot.
Indeed, despite sharing the premise of
the society our lead character comes from and his role therein, and a
similar respect for classical Science Fiction ideas and modes of
storytelling, you would be hard pressed to find two stories with
themes and traits more different than Sidonia and Gargantia. This is
not just because the main character of Gargantia is a fish out of
water (Recall, Tanikaze was as well); it would have been all too easy
for Gargantia to be about fighting different baddies for a new
community.
Our main character is Ledo, a young man
who has been raised to serve as a soldier of the Galactic Alliance,
and despite his youth is set to very soon be granted citizenship in
the great colony ship Avalon that holds the bulk of humanity’s
remaining millions. Before he can gain such a great prize (though he
doesn’t seem too excited, having no idea what he’d do with it),
there’s one more mission to go on, intending to strike a decisive
blow against a stronghold of the Hideauze, the squid-like space
monsters that have hunted humanity across the stars. The battle goes
badly, however, and a retreat is sounded. Ledo, along with his
commander, Kugel, are only able to make the edge of the induced
wormhole and get thrown.
The next thing Ledo knows, he’s
awakened in a strange place with very strange people. They don’t
share a language (which is handled very well, and which I credit the
show for including), and at first Ledo has no idea whether or not
they’re hostile. However, even as he tries to negotiate by taking a
native girl, Amy, hostage, he’s struck with a much bigger
realization. This occurs when he reaches the outside, rather than
the ship’s hold, and sees that he’s on a planet. And the only known
habitable planet is the mysterious, lost Earth: the planet of
humanity’s origin.
From there, Chamber manages to machine
translate while Ledo learns the language and after some initial
tension, starts to learn the ways of Gargantia (the name belonging to
both the fleet of ships he finds himself in and its core ship) and
how their way of life differs from the Galactic Alliance.
Gargantia’s world is one dominated by
ocean. Unlike the 90’s movie Waterworld, Dry Land is mentioned as
something that exists, and the bottom of the ocean is also known, but
otherwise the aesthetic is very familiar: Miles of blue, and upon the
surface a ramshackle collection of metal salvaged and maintained from
former, technological eras with clever and intricate hackish fixes
re-purposing or repairing the old to serve the new. But, where
Waterworld was bleak and miserable most of the time and depicted its
world as one that was slowly dying, Gargantia is bright and vibrant,
literally and figuratively colorful and populated by mostly nice
people like Amy, who works as a messenger, the salvager Bellows, and
the repairman Pinion. The latter is kind of a jerk, but in a way
that’s not generally too malicious and can be perhaps a little
endearing. The others, and most of the incidental characters we see,
are all essentially kind.
The basic kindness and community of
Gargantia stands in contrast to the austere, utilitarian, arguably
Fascist existence of the Galactic Alliance. For instance, Amy’s
younger brother is permanently bedridden, a state that Ledo notes
would have seen him disposed of for the good of the group in the
Galactic Alliance, while he’s taught and cared for in Gargantia.
Ledo is also brought into Earth’s
different approach to conflict when dealing with a pirate raid. In
the first wave, he dispatches Chamber and unleashes something
approaching their full power, setting the sea awash in flames and
disintegrating the attacking pirates while sparing the citizens of
Gargantia they were attacking. Though this is a rescue, it horrifies
the natives, who fear escalation eschew lethal force when they can,
with less, mitigate the damage or convince their foes to shove off –
principles that he takes to heart when helping fend off the revenge
of the Pirate Queen.
The first half of the show, though, is
largely concerned with getting Ledo situated with Gargantia and
developing his friendship with Amy. They do a lot together, and
though Ledo comes from a very different world, it’s clear that he
appreciates the human kindness that’s otherwise alien to him.
Chamber, along the way, acts as something of Ledo’s conscience,
typically advising him to avoid acting rashly and promoting his
growth.
The show takes a turn, however, after
an encounter during a salvage operation. Ledo, using Chamber a a
submarine, goes underwater to help bring up relics of the old
civilization, but there encounters a giant “whale squid”, which
both Ledo and Chamber identify as being a Hideauze, but which the
natives of Gargantia find to be a sacred creature. The two of them
kill it, which causes a massive stir in Gargantia. The act, along
with the death of the Gargantia fleet’s captain, precipitates a break
in the fleet with Pinion leading Ledo and a group of ambitious
captains on an expedition into whalesquid waters for revenge and
treasure.
Under Pinion’s direction, Ledo
slaughters the Whalesquids/Hideauze and enters their underwater nest,
which seems to be a ruin of the pre-flood world. Within, he
discovers recorded historical data, revealing the truth of the
Hideauze, Galactic Alliance, and Earth.
Essentially, as Earth headed headlong
into a deadly Ice Age (from which it has now thawed), two factions
attempted to flee: “Evolvers” who believed in using generic
science to become superhuman creatures, and an orthodox faction that
fought them at every turn. In the end, both escaped via wormhole
(the Evolvers hijacking the orthodox faction’s efforts) but also left
members behind. Among the stars these factions continued their
conflict as the Galactic Alliance and Hideauze. On Earth, they came
to live peacefully after the end of the Ice Age and
Waterworld-creating flood as humans and Whalesquid. Ledo is even
able to glimpse one of their young, humanoid form not yet disguised
by their squid-like shroud… just before Chamber squashes it. Ledo,
naturally, doesn’t take the idea that his hated foes were just
another branch of humanity the whole time very well.
However, there are more pressing things
to worry about. With the Whalesquids gone, not only is Pinion able
to dredge up quite a few toys from the depth, but every
treasure-hunter and pirate who gets the word is looking to jump the
claim. Ultimately, though, the big change comes with the arrival of
a long-missed face: Ledo’s commander, Kugel, in his mecha Striker,
and a fleet that has fallen under their sway.
Unlike Ledo, who’s adapted to the
culture that found him, Kugel and Striker have taken control and
remade their fleet in the image of the Galactic Alliance, ruthlessly
disposing of the old and weak, waging war to integrate new groups of
humanity into their system, and ultimately planning to take over and
“civilize” the world. Ledo, while intitally happy to see a
friendly face (something he didn’t think would be possible given the
6500 light year gap to the nearest Alliance outpost), is horrified by
the application to other people of norms that were once the only way
of life to him, and comes around to wanting to resist Kugel. He’s
not alone: Pinion plays up his greed and willing acceptance of
Kugel’s dominion, but has no intention of letting Kugel really have
his way; the pirate queen defeated earlier, now serving Kugel, has
every intention of backstabbing him; and a message that functions as
both a warning and a call for aid is even relayed to Gargantia.
To make things even more complicated,
when Ledo confronts Kugel, it turns out that Kugel has been dead for
some time, and in his absence Striker is actually the one managing
the whole thing.
Gargantia is a show with a lot of
binary contrasts: Humans and Hideauze, the culture of the Galactic
Alliance and the culture of Gargantia, and ultimately a very good (if
very late in the game) conflict of AI interests between Striker and
Chamber.
Both of them are very well written AI
characters. Striker and Chamber have personalities and wants, but
they’re also clearly nonhuman intellects. They have the ability to
grow, but they also have core programming giving them purpose. And
in what they’ve faced on Earth, Striker and Chamber have come to
opposite conclusions from the same starting point.
Both began as piloted war-machines for
the Galactic Alliance, intended to serve its aims and their pilots in
particular. Striker, bereft of her pilot, has cast aside the idea of
“Serving”, seeing herself as a program for the uplift and
enhancement of humanity as a whole rather than any particular human,
thus championing, spreading, and enforcing the ideals of the Galactic
Alliance. Chamber, however, fully embraces his state as a tool. The
Galactic Alliance is not his objective, Ledo is, and Chamber sees
Ledo as someone who is able to outgrow the need for a guide.
It’s just in the last episode, but they
have a pretty good philosophical debate during the final battle. The
end result is that the Kugel fleet is destroyed, and most of the
wonder-technology pulled from the Whalesquid nest with it. Chamber
sacrifices himself to take down Striker, and the humans survive and
largely rejoin Gargantia, Ledo setting his past aside to become a
productive member of his new society, including such things as
learning to live in harmony with the Whalesquids.
And that’s basically the show. While
Knights of Sidonia was a military Science Fiction story about brutal
clashes with an enemy and how technology shapes warfare and life in
extreme circumstances in the depths of space, Gargantia is an
exploratory/social science fiction tale that uses its premise to
explore a meeting and conflict of cultures in a surprisingly nuanced
way. One thing I noticed about Gargantia is that while much judgment
was leveled against Kugel’s (really, Striker’s) fleet, the same
wasn’t pointed at the Galactic Alliance. Chamber theorizes, after
the truth of the Hideauze is made known, that peace between the
spacefaring Hideauze and the Galactic Alliance is still impossible,
meaning (though not explicitly) that the arguably inhumane austerity
measures of the Alliance may still be necessary for life… in the
Alliance. What’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander. All
the same, the pacifistic message and slice-of-life bent recalls very
different creators than did Sidonia; more Ursula LeGuin than David
Weber. In fact, with the vibrant colors and frequent flying scenes
with either Chamber or Amy’s kite as well as the ultimately anti-war
vibe, it doesn’t fail to recall Miyazaki, a creator far on the other
end of the spectrum from the thoughts behind Sidonia.
All the same, it does feel similarly
classical. The attention to detail is a big thing; I absolutely
loved the use of the language barrier, and that it wasn’t trivially
disposed of even if it had to be overcome fairly quickly. And the
questions of artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and the nature
of war are ones that Science Fiction stories have been addressing for
a long time.
But perhaps the most remarkable thing
about Gargantia is not in how high it reaches, but rather how
remarkably absent deep flaws are. You could say that some of the
characters are fairly thinly sketched, but then they don’t exactly
need to be: only Amy really would have benefited from extra character
study. At heart, this is Ledo’s story, and that’s how it remains.
Similarly, you could say that the pace is somewhat slow and sedate,
but then that’s a factor of the genre, and it’s actually impressive
how Ledo’s daily life on Gargantia keeps moving forward in a visual
medium with a story that’s not intensely suited to it. You don’t see
visual media taking on social sci-fi a lot, and there’s a good reason
for that. I’m hard pressed to find any reason to really not
recommend or recommend against Gargantia. The best I’ve heard is
that maybe the last arc, with the Kugel/Striker fleet, may have been
a little unnecessary. Certainly, it was much heavier handed and more
action-oriented than the rest of the show. But I think Ledo really
did need a good opportunity to do something with his new perspective;
he’d left the Gargantia fleet still, at heart, a soldier seeking the
extermination of the Hideauze, and by the time he learns the truth in
their nest it’s too late for him to change the outcome there. Facing
down against a mirror of his own past really gives Ledo the
opportunity to solidify his growth and really go over to the side of
Gargantia, making amends with his former transgressions and breaking
cleanly with his former life. So in my mind, it works.
In the end, I’m somewhat torn because
while I wouldn’t recommend Gargantia too strongly, I would recommend
it to just about anyone, and think it’s a very good show as a
complete package. Sidonia had intense highs and lows, while
Gargantia was more average on the whole. For me, that gives
Gargantia a B+: a very solid pass with a few high notes. It’s
certainly one I think deserves to be watched.