A somewhat tragic love story addled by a the fact that the anime is a prequel to the manga series. But yet it's as if the creators of the anime decided to forego the conclusion that the Arume (a race of female aliens set on conquering earth to save their species) are perverse genocidal maniacs and the humans are their slaves and create a haunting little love story that takes place at the eve of the Arume invasion between a mysterious Arume starship Captain, Hagino, and Mari, a human girl whose early life was beset by tragedy. The entire show revolves around Hagino's attempts to be human,loving, forgive herself and ask for forgiveness while slowly becoming close to the withdrawn Mari. It manages slice of life elements while keeping a backdrop of surreal alien conflict--almost as if it's telling unrelatd, seperate stories, but slowly reconciling the two faces of Hagino into the troubled individual who stands before Mari.

The schoolgirl friend stock characters that serve to mix things up in the background seem to be a bit cliched as extras as are most of the alien characters, with the striking exception of Tsubael and Aznael (two young Arume women caught on different sides of Hagino because of mistakes made in the past) and serve as a very striking redemption to the Arume plot of the anime--which stands almost on equal footing of the schoolgirl love story, and perhaps the show demands criticism for not furthering these side arcs of these characters.

The weaknesses are that it is a short anime, and tries to do too much in a brief amount of time. Even if the romance aspect is a bit cliched, the characters seem and feel very real thus forgiving some of the more typical conventions. With that said, the anime rushes to fulfill its destiny as a prequel--something that is VERY discordant with its nature as a characer driven story and in the end comes off as a bit schizophrenic, trying to unite and wrap up three storylines Hagino and Mari, Tsubael/Hagino/Aznael, and the invasion of which only the first two are worthy.