Wasure Hoshi no Volicia (Volicia of Pluto) is an incredibly strange Anime, deliberately so. At every step, in every scene, it deliberately takes actions that make the plot harder to follow and the motivations of characters even less clear. It is not even as if the plot is strong enough, or meaningful enough, to warrant this - it is just, quite simply, a self-indulgent story. Watching this through and trying to understand the plot seems like a fruitless endeavour with massive events, and supposedly important characters just being thrown in haphazardly. It is genuinely only through the help of taking an extreme amount of notesthat I seem to have come to a slight understanding of the plot. For instance, one can be pretty sure that Ayano is a Vampire, and Akio becomes a Vampire at the end, but even that is uncertain.

Reading through that one might get the impression that the series is utterly unenjoyable and an effort to try and traverse, but if you ignore the plot, can learn to forgive parts of it thanks to its nature as an indie project, and instead focus on the characters arcs of the two main characters (Akio and Ayano), what you are left with is a pretty compelling Yuri Mecha anime about to girls who taught each other how to live and would give up everything - paying a great price as Akio did at the end - to be together. This results in a rather incredible open ending as you begin to see the price Akio had to play and brief, ambiguous, scenes of their future together. And considering that this is just 30 minutes long and an Indie project the sheer amount they managed to convey is genuinely impressive.

But the positives don't end there. The production values are also vastly superior to most other Yuri that seem to be produced. Despite its nature as an indie project, the action scenes are compelling and dynamic, the animations are genuinely fluid, and even at its very worst (some of the animations feels quite artificial in places and the perspective is off), it still manages to look better than Sasakoi. The music is also incredible and genuinely feels like a perfect match for the series.

So when this comes together, if you can forgive the plot, you get a genuinely enjoyable, in the action sections even exciting, Mecha Yuri with a genuinely compelling relationship and strong main characters. It's an easy anime to recommend - if you can even find it anymore.