Divergence Eve

Summary: >

Misaki has recently been assigned to a remote space outpost, but unlike other the cadets, she's inept at pretty much everything. Some seem to believe she holds a secret which may allow them to turn the tide against a mysterious enemy which threatens to overwhelm them over time. The truth will reveal what happened to her father who went missing many years ago.

Thoughts: >

I'll admit I'm being VERY hard on this anime. Not to say it has no redeeming qualities but the faults of Divergence Eve are severe enough that I'd never recommend it to anyone, despite it how much it pains me to rate any sci-fi show poorly.

The foundation of Divergence Eve is solid science fiction. The theories are intriguing and revealed in short segments before the anime intro. Building on this would have worked better if dedicating an episode or two explaining things. Instead there are short pre-episode segments that make it hard to piece together. Divergence Eve likes to be mysterious, but fails to flesh enough out so the viewer has a reason to care.

Things go really wrong with the "pacing". Stuff normally associated with sci-fi are exciting things, like space ships flying around the galaxy and so forth. Divergence Eve strangely spends its time showing the most mundane dull details of science fiction. Ships docking, computer screens showing "stuff", people tinkering with controls. Most sci-fi shows have this kind of background fodder, however in this anime it's in the majority. The show is padded out to the point where it gets mind numbing. The biggest mystery in Divergence Eve: how action can be so completely boring. It's a combination of terrible CGI animation, horrid design, and overall bad choreography. If a Japanese person actually did the horrible mecha designs for this anime (and I have a hard time believing that), he needs to be deported for dishonoring the genre of giant robots. Most early 21st century CG aged poorly, but hardly any effort was put into the show in this area. With so much being a snore, I'd actually have to rewind when I realized something happened. The way the show coasts along , did make the death scene in episode 10 bone chilling because it's so totally unexpected.

Later on a story takes shape, and it's not bad aside from only being a small layer in a mundane sandwich. Just when I thought that perhaps the good foundation could be leveraged in a good story, Divergence Eve devolves into "stop the mad scientist". Don't get me started with the total total cop-out ending. I sat through all this for THAT?

Divergence Eve is poorly animated with some okay character designs - mainly oriented around females with gigantic boobs (possibly the best/worst feature in the show if you like or hate those). Dubbing is typical for ADV releases around the time - not completely terrible like the 1990s but still sub par quality. I sound down on Divergence Eve because I'm unhappy with the result. It bugs me the most how a show squanders so many good ideas as basic materials. This should have been much better. Sci-fi anime becoming rare these days, I'd still recommend staying clear of it.

* Note: Misaki Chronicles is the title for the second part of the series. Not sure why they gave it an entirely different title.

Screen Caps: >