From the makers of cult hits such as Mars of Destruction and Hametsu no Mars, I had very high expectations when decided to watch this anime. Unfortunately, this anime was only available in its original Japanese DVD release or a horrid French hardsub. I decided to change that and voila, now everyone can behold this marvelous anime with glorious English subtitles on Youtube or wherever else you get your anime from.

However, I must mention that I was a bit disappointed. Though this anime is a cinematic masterpiece it can't hold a candle to the true masterpiece of our generation, Mars of Destruction, and thus it left me a bit disappointed. Random characters keep being introduced constantly and then dying dramatic and truly emotionally touching deaths in about 3 seconds but since there wasn't any classical music or beautifully animated gore and blood it just doesn't hit the same peaks. The anime starts and ends with ~5 minutes of music, of course, there is no animation in the op or the ed but they make up for it by putting multiple songs in both. The few seconds of silence between the music tracts changing is a really great addition.

This anime has a diverse cast of characters, both villains and protagonists, and some that blur the line between the two. Though ambiguity in character motivation is mostly because there are more characters in this anime than there are minutes of animation. The fact that the translator clearly doesn't speak Japanese and translated this from the French fansub also makes understanding some parts quite confusing. The French fansub had even more characters, such JAnus, Jannus, Januus, Janius, and Janus, however, the English version condenses all of these characters into a new one called Janus.

The animation is stellar, the story doesn't and cannot make sense, and the overload of information keeps you glued to the screen at all times. Though it doesn't reach the heights of Satou, Yoshiteru-Sensei's top work it is still a must-watch. I wish I could have seen it in theaters. It is really a sad thing that anime has gone down the drain and nothing that can even come close to the greatness of this work has been produced since 2005.

However, in a world where mars of destruction exist, I can only recommend this great work to people that have already seen it and wish to delve into the origins of the genius known as Satou, Yoshiteru-Sensei. But be sure to temper your expectations a bit or you might be disappointed like me.

(In all honesty, this does keep your interest and is quite entertaining as you watch the disaster unfold, but the literal walls of exposition text and lack of any major peaks means this isn't on the level of Mars. I would still recommend it to anyone who enjoys such disasters though. Also maybe playing the game would make this more coherent but I really doubt it.)