All’s well that ends well… usually.
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In Coppelion’s last episode, the escapees battled the 1st Division and got the train running that allows them to escape from the contamination.
- Summary of Coppelion Episode 12-13: Ibara and Aoi are waiting for the train to arrive when the Ozu sisters appear, to be followed by the rest of the 1st Division. They are afraid to get on board before defeating the sisters once and for all. However, Ibara finds out that Haruto didn’t get on board and breaks down crying. Meanwhile complications arise in Ibuki’s giving birth and Taeko goes forward with operating on her. Aoi consoles Ibara just in time for her to take over driving the train as they are approaching a contamination zone and they make it through just fine. They aren’t out of the frying pan just yet, as Kanon reanimates the giant robot and is hot on their trail.She catches up with them just as Aoi desperately radioes the vice principal for backup. Ibara and Kanon are battling out and it seems the class president is losing, but she turns the tide around with the hand grenade left behind by Haruto and causes Kanon to electrocute herself, losing control of what’s left of the giant robot. In the meantime the vice principal hijacks a chopper and heads out to the Old Capital. The train finally comes to a stop in the evening when it’s far enough from the center of the Capital. Ibuki has given birth to no one child, but twins. The next morning the chopper arrives as well and it’s time to say goodbye to everyone; the three girls remain in the ruined capital as their mission is far from over.
- My impressions: the rescue operations have been completed successfully and the series has finally ended! Yay or nay? Let me list a few gripes impressions I had with the last two episodes before moving on to a review of the complete series.
- It seems no matter how much lead is pumped into the Ozu sisters, they always come back to haunt you like a bad zombie. They are simply indestructible, which starts to be annoying. Why can’t just they go away?
Kanon is back, and with a vengeance! She even reanimates that awful spider thingy.
Speaking of the giant robot, I couldn’t help but wonder how did Kanon manage to fit the thing under the train’s overhead catenaries. As seen in the picture above, the spider is quite large, nonetheless, when it latches onto the train, it fits under the wires? (the wires are usually about one and a half meter above the train’s body.)
Apparently it can miniaturize itself.
Furthermore Ibara yells “hit the brakes!” at one point, but them brakes appear to have no effect at all! The train advances relentlessly. What the…okay, I gave up at this point on expecting any realism from this series for the umpteenth time.
- The vice principal takes a U-turn with his stance and unexpectedly declares that they are going to help the Coppelion unit. What? He’s just going to up and leave the international conference in direct violation of his orders? In the past few episodes he repeatedly declined Ibara’s request for support, citing the very orders that he is insubordinating now, so what made him change his mind?
- Ibara lamenting the absence of Haruto only works if we clearly see that she’s attached to him, which isn’t the case as I see it. So why the tears? The whole scene felt so forced that I couldn’t feel a shred of sympathy with Ibara.
- The scenes where the train is moving forward (like in the screenshot below) reminded me of an old Commodore-64 game called “Aztec Challenge“.
Nice weather with occasional contamination here and there. Also the power lines are drawn incorrectly, but whatever.
The game featured a man running towards a giant Aztec pyramid on an open field with two rows of enemies standing by the road, occasionally throwing spears at the hapless protagonist (as seen here). I never knew what lay beyond the pyramid as I never managed to clear even the first level (I sucked so badly at this game). Here we have a train, heading towards a Zone what is so far away it can’t be seen yet, and no matter how many meters the train advances, it doesn’t get visually closer to its destination. Somehow I get the same feeling I got playing that game.
- What happened with the international conference? The whole political aspect of Coppelion was left hanging in the end without any resolution whatsoever.
Sometimes I wish I could’ve walked aways like this dude here.
- I can’t help but feel that the staff behind this series wanted a conclusion as fast as possible. I mentioned the political aspect which was left unexplored; Kanon starts to give Ibara a speech about how the military had hidden plans for the Coppelions, but she never elaborates on this; the remaining members of the 1st Division, so intent on killing Ibara and the escapees soon turn coat and board the train meekly, going as far as to beg the vice principal to be handcuffed; Mishima vice principal just off and flies to the old capital to arrive just in time to pick up the refugees, and the list could go on and on. – Is this supposed to be a proper ending? Because it ain’t one in my books. It felt more like “okay boys, we have our thirteen episodes, let’s tie off all loose ends no matter how, and see if production gets the go-ahead for another thirteen episodes”. It’s taking the easy way out.
And now on to how I see Coppelion as a series:
If I were to sum it up in one word, that word would be mediocre. I set out to watch this anime with great expectations, only to find something frustrating with almost every single episode. I still have mixed feelings about this series, because no matter how negative my summaries may seem, I still like the premise of this show and my heart bleeds a little bit for Coppelion. It’s just that the story could’ve been told much better, the personalities and the backgrounds of the characters could’ve been explored a bit more in depth, and they could’ve kept an eye on what is realistic and what isn’t. There is much left to explore in the world of Coppelion, both story-wise (who do they rescue next? what happens to those who got rescued?) and background-wise (what happened with the scientist dude in the lab? What became of the international meet? What about other Coppelion units? and so on).
Animation-wise it isn’t anything ground-breaking; the characters are less and less fluidly animated as the viewer progresses throughout the series (this is one thing I was afraid of right at the beginning), the CG blends in nicely sometimes and is quite obtrusive at other times. I didn’t really notice the BGM throughout the series, so no comments on that. The Japanese voice actors are nice most of the time, but Aoi’s VA could get on my nerves especially when she’s whining. I didn’t like the opening and ending themes, both of which are performed by Angela whom I remember for the excellent OP theme of Heroic Age, in fact, I noticed her trademark melodic pattern in this OP theme as well (skip to about 1:13 in this video if you want). The pacing of the story is yet another thing – while Coppelion started off as mostly episodic (and it reminded me superficially of Darker Than Black in this respect, another show I liked very much), it grew apart from this and for the latter half of the series, we are stuck with the same set of characters, following their misadventures through the course of slightly over 24 hours (boy did it feel longer!). In other words, I’m not sure if sticking with the semi-episodic start or embracing the same-arc-through-three-or-four-episodes approach (like in Kamisama no inai Nichiyoubi) would’ve been better.
What offsets my biggest complaints with this show (which were: random ignoring of realism whenever it suited the series; cardboard characters; no real closure) is the absolutely gorgeous backgrounds. They are so beautiful that I’m contemplating on using some of the screenshots as wallpapers on my laptop.
Images like this…
…or like this.
- Basically, come for the premise, get disappointed by the execution, but stay for the visuals and ignore anything else. Do I recommend this series to others with clear conscience? Not really.
