Chrome Shelled Regios Critique ~ Doujin Manga Society

Chrome Shelled Regios((鋼殻のレギオス Kōkaku no Regiosu) is a Japanese light novel series by Shususke Amagi and illustrated by Miyu. An Anime version produced by Zexcs aired from January 11-2009 to June 20-2009 and is licensed in North America by Funianimation Entertainment

Chrome Shelled Regios

The plot is set on a post apocalyptic world were the harsh contaminated environment has forced human kind to live in huge mobile cities called "Regios". Controlled by advanced A.I. known as "Electronic Spirits", that are responsible of the cities movement, air filtering and several other life supporting futures.

These Electronic Spirits require a special ore called "Selenium", this ore is the only fuel capable of maintaining an Electronic Spirit alive which forces cities too battle each other for the control of Selenium's mines. Although a treaty exist forbidding Regios from different types to battle.

The types of Regios are :

Academic Cities

These Cities are controlled by the student population that lives there, their main function is to serve as something similar to an university.

General Cities

Containing most of the worlds populations, these cities are usually bigger and more powerful than academic cities, although there might exist cities with specific titles they still are considered to be "General Cities".

I know I been absent for a while, but I'm finally back and despise this being an Anime I like very much, I will still be as merciless as always and show the good side and the bad side of this Anime.

Like always I want to remind all the readers that this is just my humble opinion and that it's alright if anyone disagrees with me.

Plot

The plots of this series is rather simple as most Shonen oriented Anime, set on a pretty standard post apocalyptic world with some nice cyber-punkish look and features. Being originally a visual novel like so many others you have already seen my criticizing, you might be wondering why I like Chrome Shelled Regios when is basically all what I have said to dislike.

Well first I'm glad I watched this series despise the fact that after reading a few "synopsis and reviews", I thought this series was nothing more than a cliche setting with some sci-fi elements and some poorly made and developed characters with a simple and unimportant plot. Yet 2 elements still caught my eye and convinced me to give this series a chance.

A powerful and skilled main character that tries to leave his past life as a warrior and start a new.
Monster....(yes I love anything where I can see a bunch of monsters destroyed...specially in games)

This series features a main characters that tries to escape his past and live a peaceful life, yet his past would follow and force him to take arms once again. While this setting is nothing new, there is really few Anime that could pull a main character like that and the best example I can come up with is the famous Rurouni Kenshin/Samurai X.

Secondly anything that has some sort of monsters (the good ones not the type of googly eyes slimes you see in many games and Anime), is interesting enough for me to give it a chance,yet as you correctly supposes I was still skeptical of the quality of this series.

Probably what most People think I do when I watch Anime...

Development

Usually one of the conflicts I have with most Shonen-oriented Anime is that they often have a pretty repetitive setting which doesn't allow for real character development or takes hundreds of episodes for any real progress, another thing is that most of this have a group of main characters which consist of the protagonist and his close group of friends and a bunch of secondary characters, which make is really hard to actually follow each character growth and development.

In Chrome Shelled Regios we are quickly presented the protagonist, the main characters which we will mostly see around the protagonist and the handful of important secondary characters that will be constantly presented and all that was done on the very first episode.

Right from the start we know the characters, each one of them have a decent amount of screen time and we know what role they will be playing on the Anime, making it a lot easier to actually see them grow and develop.

~~Avengers~~ Secondary characters Assemble!

Wile the protagonist does show some progression and growth, the really interesting ones are the group of main characters that are near him, specially his quasi-love interest and the rest of his friends.

Each one of them have interesting past and progression as the series goes. Not exactly unique but well written and designed, most of the time more entertaining to watch than the protagonist himself.

He is not coming back...

Background Story

Unlike so many other Anime of this same genre and type, C.S.R. quickly explains the world the story is taking place in, constantly shows how the world look like, events of the past and the impact those had on the present while keeping still several more questions unanswered. Also another good point was that while the series took some time to explain the world, they did it in a non expository way but rather in a much more natural character-dialogue based one.

Sadly even if the series did so many things very well, it also did one extremely wrong.

Withing the Anime there is also another Anime inside! (someone said Ani-ception?). Being a pretty common phenomenon in Anime, having another one inside as something the characters watch on TV or movies, sadly C.R.S did it awfully specially with a series that takes place in the past and was supposed to help understand the current situation of the series.

With a Complete different art style, on a more Seinen-like animation and with voice acting completely in English(which sounds really funny hearing the Seiyu trying to make their best American accent as possible), honestly when I first saw the Anime I thought something was bad with the video I was watching..worse the clips are just a few minutes long which make it really hard to understand what is going on, and they will appear randomly during the episode starting from episode 3.

Script

Some of the things I liked on the series were the well written, yet very natural dialogue between characters, each one of them will keep a constant and very entertaining personality. All of them even the minor characters have several memorable lines and are really easy to understand except for the protagonist.

I will let you all figure out what is going on here...

The protagonist at first glance seems like the usual airhead guy that is completely oblivious, somehow gets a bunch of girls that he really doesn't care for and is overly nice, simple minded and caring.

And all of that is true, yet the character shows also some contradictory traits in his personality.

Like any good character trouble with his past and forced to star again, under that dumb confused face he is a cold, sharp killing machine who has no trouble killing for the sake of survival. For him things such as honor, pride and rules are things that are secondary.

"I sought to become stronger to survive longer. That's all"-Layfon Wolfstain Alseif

A very interesting an complex character

Art

The Art used in C.S.R. is the usually one for this type of Anime, not exceptionally well made, but very good and the over animation was colorful and appealing. Even some of the CGI (computer generated images) used on some of the filth monsters/contaminoids is really smooth and nicely made.

The combat scenes are also pretty well made...when there are no..
superpowers involved..

The series also relies on the use of chibi-like characters and a much more cartoonish background to help on the several comedy scenes shown in the series.

This style is cleverly used and often gives characters with few lines more charm and cuteness and helps to release some of the seriousness of most of the episodes.

Felli is so cute ♥-♥....err...yeah even I can fanboyish from time to time

Despises being 5 years old, it still manages to deliver some nice visual effects and graphics, though a shame the soundtrack used on the series didn't receive the same level of detail as they often play the intro music over and over. Gladly the intro music and lyrics are nice and is not really annoying, sadly towards the end of the Anime most of the well thought and designed battles scenes are replaced by the much more common over the top "super saiyan" type of battles and that has several bad impacts in the rest of the animation.

Very well made effects!

Not so well made effects...

Even with the explanation above some of you might still be wondering why I like this Anime so much if compared to others it's either to cliche or not flashy enough. Well the short version is that unlike so many other series, this one did most of the things right.

Starting with a well designed world, even if the idea itself has been done so many times. Chrome Shelled Regios managed to give a new interesting twist to the post apocalyptic setting, despise the lack of information regarding how the world ended that way.

Then we have a protagonist who looks like your average Shounen hero, but as the series goes on he becomes far more interesting and ruthless. Sadly still some of the usual events and unnecessary cliche settings are still used for the sake of traditionalism I guess...

Cause even after the apocalypse
Hot Springs will never die!

And flashy Super Powers in form of auras...

At least the obligatory super power was used in a smart way and during the series is clear that the writers gave some thought to it and is not only used as a plot device, as for the fan service...it was kept to a minimum...but still...something that bothers me.

Now one of my favorite things, the characters. Layfon might be an interesting protagonist, yet for me the characters that really steal the spot light are the 2 female main characters Nina and Feli...and no it has nothing to do with them being cute..or me being a guy...they are pretty good characters on their own, having charm and well made personalities.

Feli Loss

Nina Antalk

Both of them play a very important role in the Anime, Novel and the Manga is made from Nina's perspective. their character traits are not unique as you could label Feli the quiet emotionless type and Nina the cheerful on the outside but troubled on the inside type. But the complexity of their characters goes beyond stereotypes and quickly became my 2 favorite characters of the series.

Feli's Kick!

Just remember that doesn't mean the other characters are bad nor less interesting, characters like Barmelin also caught my eye and looked like an interesting character, same for some other of the Heaven's Blade keepers. Sadly those characters have almost no time on screen due to the fact that they are not relevant to the main story and are only shown on the very last episodes for a decent amount of time.

Barmelin Swattis Nolne, she is actually more my type

..I do know I have weird tastes ^^"

Characters are one of the most important aspects of Anime I take into consideration alongside plot and development, Chrome Shelled Regios has a wide range of interesting characters, combined with some comedy , a solid plot and nice development. One of the very few Shounen-oriented Anime that I can say I fully enjoy despises it might look like a really stereotypical and cliche series.

The series is not perfect, it has troubles and unnecessary events, but nothing to major to actually complain or that has a huge negative impact on the Anime.

Still the 1 thing that I mostly enjoyed on this series and something that I took far more into consideration that even the characters themselves:

The MONSTERS

I know it might seems weird, specially since the Filth mosnters/contaminoids are not really antagonist or villains, just a constant threat for the humans living in the world of Regios acting as some sort of "natural disaster". To be completely honest I think they deserved a far more in dept description in the series, the monsters are so interesting to me for 2 simple reasons:

They are well designed and depicted.
They actually act like true monsters.

In a contaminated world were there are no plants and water is hard to find, Filth monsters/contaminoids are organism that survived adapting to this harsh environment, extremely adaptive and efficient they seek only to reproduce and feed, anything in their path is consumed.

And to think that is just a simple larva...

Capable of living without food or water for an undefined amount of time, some even reach the ability to regenerate in matter of seconds. Is no surprise they are the only living being on the surface of the world of Regios. A threat so big that the Electronic Spirits are set to avoid them as much as they can, and whenever they reach a city it literally means their doom.