Review of Terra Formars

Would you like to hear a joke? Terraformars. That's the whole joke. Terra formars follows the expedition of strong humans to mars, who have the task of killing and capturing evolved fighting cockroaches that were used to make Mars more inhabitable for humans. The objective is to find a cure for a disease that came from Mars, which could lead to the deaths of many people on earth. Terra formars is very much a sci fi, horror anime. The shows main message is trying to look at the perspective of "If humans were the pests" instead of cockroaches. It does this by looking at the themes of evolution andhow humans could lag behind in terms of further development in the future, leading to extinction. Another theme is medical advancement as a way of combatting the evolved cockroaches, this involves taking the characteristics of certain organisms and fusing them with humans to give great fighting abilities. The show also highlights the characters personal reasons for joining the expedition, and their goals for the end of mission too. In terms of atmosphere, there is tension throughout due to the many fights constantly going on, leading there pace being similar throughout. Fighting is very much prevalent with many characters and cockroaches alike being killed, showing that no one is safe. Furthermore, the show looks deeper at how the characteristics of the organisms enable humans and cockroaches to fight.

However, in terms of story, there is little to be desired. The shows pacing was steady due to the fact that 8 of the 13 episodes contained none stop fighting. This in turn lead to a lack of suspense as there was no plot development for nearly all of the whole show. It's over focus on new abilities and 'epic' fights lead to a rushed ending, which, in turn, reverted back to focusing on the epic fighting rather than focusing on other topics such as how the cockroaches managed to evolve. Unfortunately, the excessive focus on humans and cockroaches dying lead to the story being one dimensional. This was upsetting, as the introduction to the show had good pacing and took more of a holistic approach in explaining the plot, character interaction and fighting. Lastly, it's choice of how episodes were ordered was very questionable, as the pacing suffered severely with the focusing on developing 2 or 3 characters for a few episodes. This in turn lead to further plot development troubles.

In terms of the animation, the picture quality, overall fluidity of fight scenes and scenery as a whole was to a high standard, as expected from a 2014 anime. The character models were quiet varied, offering more distinction between the different types of organism characteristics the humans had. Overall, it was a pleasure on the eyes.

However, the models of the cockroaches do look very stereotypical of black tribal warriors, which could be offensive.

There is a huge cast of characters involved in Terra Formars, many involved characters with powers and none combatants. It mainly focuses on the characters with super powers, which a narrator explains which organism the abilities have been taken from. Character development is prevalent with some, but not all due to the size of the cast.

However, the shows lack of remorse for characters makes it difficult to like, as many characters could end up dying. This makes it tough to find a "personal favorite". Also, the show seems to lack a solid main character, as there are so many characters important to the mission, so many that die and so many that are under developed, the lack of structure means it's hard to determine which is the main character. Although, some characters were developed to a good standard, and it did attempt to explain many characters opinions.

In terms of the music, both the opening and ending are more focused on rock music, which was fine but not entirely too my liking. It's OST was very pleasurable, highlighting and amplifying tension in battle, as well as more orchestral music for character infractions, which I enjoyed.

In all, Terra Formats fundamental errors in it's writing and in basic story telling lead to the show looking more like Fight club than a sci fi horror.