Blast from the Past

Continuing my bad habit of impulse-purchasing anime, a few months ago I bought myself a copy of Super Dimension Century Orguss. Never heard of it? Yeah, me neither. But the cover art just screamed Macross at me, and sure enough, the two shows shared character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto. Even better, they shared Noboru Ishiguro as director, one of the more renowned figures in sci-fi anime who also did the first Megazone 23 OVA and Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Those are some solid credits right there, but what about this more obscure show?

From episode one there's a solid mashup of science fiction ideas. In the future, two major world powers are at war, and asshole pilot Kei becomes a key part of one's mission to bomb the enemy's orbital elevator. Not with just any bomb, mind you, but with a deadly Dimensional weapon that, due to a few miscalculations on everyone's part, ends up warping space and time. Kei gets flung twenty years into the future to an Earth comprised of multiple timelines; humans evolved different ways on different timelines, other creatures dominated the planet on others, and machines on still others. Now all possibilities are stuck with each other, and Kei must navigate the warring factions long enough to save the Earth from a slow death via increasing dimensional instability.

So it's basically a free-for-all where anything is plausible, but the plot turns out more grounded than you might expect. That's because the focus is only two or three races and the interactions between their members. In this sense it again recalls Macross, where humans, Zentradi, and Meltlandi found common ground and learned to coexist only after many confrontations. The ragtag crew eventually assembled aboard the Glomar and their conflicts demonstrate on a small scale how people (and robots, and dinosaur . . . psychic . . . things) can more or less live together despite their different viewpoints or backgrounds. Our love for one another makes it possible.

Sounds trite and cheesy? It is, as befits a space opera from the early 80s, but the cast gets treated with enough dignity to sell the idea. Almost everybody wants something beyond just survival, and goes through at least a few introspective scenes wherein they question what they want and what they're doing. Mimsy may be mistaken at first glance as the doe-eyed, stereotypical love interest who eventually realizes she can't live without the hero. But that would be overlooking her long-running goal of using Kei as a tool to help her race, her conflict between duty and friendship as she discovers said race's intentions, and her reservations against entering a relationship that may be fated to end quickly. Kei, for his part, puzzles out the meaning of responsibility without completely losing the free-spiritedness that made him endearing. Shaya is a mess of contradictions and insecurities under her warm, matronly personality, and even mascot or comic relief characters have their own personal conflicts and tragedies. There's plenty of cheesy interactions to be found, which maybe I unfairly write off because I have a thick skin for the stuff, but also lots of emotional meat to enjoy if you aren't totally allergic to melodrama.

Likewise, the video quality itself will either be a bonus or a turn-off depending on the viewer. Orguss is an early 80s TV show. It looks like an early 80s TV show. Quality ranges from decent to janky, with stock footage rearing its head during many a battle scene. The trade-off is that vehicles, missiles, and explosions have a hand-drawn charm that no CGI can replicate, but it's understandable if many get annoyed seeing the same three missiles blow up the same three Nikicks over and over. On a similar note, while the Haruhiko Mikimoto character designs have a beautiful retro look in key art, when budgets wear thin you'll notice eyes wandering all over faces, to say nothing of weird limb movements. The music remains consistently good, at least, never dropping below serviceable, and the opening theme is an earworm.

I can see why people would turn their noses up at this title. It looks hopelessly dated, it's got cheese coming out the ears, and the ending is the very definition of “your mileage may vary”. But Super Dimension Century Orguss is also a show with a lot of heart, one that has fun with science fiction concepts, develops its characters well, and knows how to leave you on a good cliffhanger. Praise be once again to Discotek for letting us own this lesser-known title; no other anime licensor is as dedicated to bringing back neglected chunks of history. Until a decent amount of Macross gets its own release (fingers crossed), Orguss is a worthy successor to the message that emotions conquer all.