Snowball Earth

Episodes 1-3

By all means, the first three episodes of this show aren't bad, at least on the level of plot. It's pretty standard stuff that still feels at least halfway fun. We've got a lonely boy, Tetsuo, who develops a relationship with a hyperintelligent robot named Yukio after slaying a violent kaiju. Ten years pass, and Tetsuo finds himself becoming the savior of mankind, fighting kaiju in outer space alongside Yukio. That is, until an accident causes the two to crash on a frozen, post-apocalyptic Earth. Think of it like if The Iron Giant and The Day After Tomorrow fused together and became a fun little mecha anime. Not exactly groundbreaking, but it's fine popcorn entertainment.

The first episode rolls out the plot efficiently enough. We don't see Tetsuo and Yukio fight the kaiju at first, since the anime decides to skip over it to fast-forward ten years into the future. Fine, whatever gets the ball rolling. Plus I don't mind a little bit of delayed gratification here; you don't want to drag out a fight scene during the anime's opening moments when there will be plenty more later on. I mean, I just got done watching Dead Account, which had its final few episodes drag a fight out the wazoo. So maybe it's good that the first kaiju fight is glossed over. I guess even the robot Yukio ages a bit too, since he gets bigger and taller after the time skip.

Tetsuo is too busy fighting kaiju to make friends on the space station he lives on, so his only real pal is Yukio. Did he not have even the tiniest bit of downtime in between fights to form meaningful relationships with anybody aboard the space station? Macross's Hikaru was busy defending the SDF-1 Macross from the Zentradi, sure, but that didn't stop him from interacting with other people and having a relationship with two different girls. Never mind. I do like the neat editing trick after Tetsuo falls back to Earth and emerges from a shuttle; he expects to see the people on Earth he left behind, cheering him on and inflating his ego with promises of friendship and popularity. It's a colorful little sequence with cheerful music that stops on a dime when Tetsuo climbs out and is faced with the grim, barren reality of him stranded alone on the frozen Earth. It's a nice bait-and-switch, and for me, the best moment of the first episode.

The second and third episodes are more about establishing the setting and the characters. We see Tetsuo struggle with loneliness for a brief bit before meeting up with some survivors. Great, now he's going to make more friends, just like he always wanted. The supporting cast are introduced and are...there...for now, at least. They don't make great first impressions, and I honestly doubt that they (or really anybody in this anime) will develop into something novellic. Again, this is popcorn entertainment we're talking about. I'm not expecting much here. We do get to see Tetsuo fight against some more kaiju, reunite with Yukio, and hey, even the Akira slide makes a quick cameo.

It's all fine. Really, it's fine. Totally, completely fine. ..........................................................................................................................

Okay, I lie. There is one thing that bugs me. And it's none other than the dull CG that haunts frame after frame of this anime.

The CG looks so off. It puts a damper on things and makes the anime too video game cutscene-y for its own good. It's not anywhere close to being Berserk 2016 levels of bad, although it gives off those vibes. The first episode has the CG melding with digital 2D animation before going completely off the rails by the second episode. And it's a shame, because the backgrounds are fine, the color scheme is alright, and the fight choreography between Tetsuo and the kaiju is at least passable. What could have been more involving instead becomes so watered down by the CG. I found myself being so bored by how sterile the fight sequences looked that I found myself scrolling through Bluesky instead. It also doesn't help that there are quite a few shots of characters' mouths agape from surprise or shock that look so awkward to look at. You can imagine my shock when I saw a scene that was 100% rendered in 2D animation around the 7:56 mark of episode 3. It's a shot of Tetsuo running that makes his face look a bit too squished and is throwaway at best, and yet it is still leagues better than any of the CG that makes up about 90% of the episode. Art and animation-wise, there was a lot of potential that could have been mined here. So far, I'm not seeing it.

Rating: Snowball Earth is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.