2014, 13 episodes:
AniDB
Mars was seeded with engineered cockroaches and mould. Five hundred
years later, they ate the first manned mission. The second one had
only two survivors. Now it's time for the third.
Just to provide a bit of incentive, the survivors apparently
brought an incurable plague back to Earth. And the cockroaches are
intelligent, human-sized, and tough. But the people sent to fight them
have been upgraded with special powers derived from various other
animals on Earth…
So basically this series is (someone's tragic backstory leading to
signing up with expedition), (fighting), (explanation of amazing
animal-derived fighting power), (more fighting). Rinse, repeat, kill
off a character or two every episode just to keep up the tension. Or
something. After the first couple, the majority of each episode
involves combat, and the proportion only rises as things go on. Lots
of people die, and we're probably supposed to care about it.
I couldn't be bothered to keep track of the characters, especially
with most frames so under-lit that you can't generally spot their
distinguishing features anyway. Even in the extreme close ups that
mean we can't get much of a look at the fighting styles either.
Direction is by Hamasaki Hiroshi, who's made much better work before
(he directed Texhnolyze and the excellent Steins;Gate) and I hope he
will again.
And of course there's no conclusion; this is a manga adaptation, and
the manga is ongoing, so what we get here is more of a chapter
boundary. There's the core of an interesting dystopic SF story in
this, but it's buried under darkness and fighting. Maybe the original
manga is better.
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