F Is For Fafner

Well, as you may recall, last week I did some capsule reviews and expressed my opinion on the first half of Fafner. I have since finished the series, so now I will revisit said review, albeit a little more in depth. There may be spoilers.

So, Fafner is a robot show. The whole premise is that there are these creatures called Festum who are attacking the world. The inhabitants of Tatsumiya Island are waging a full on war against the creatures. Pretty standard right? Cool. So, we have a bunch of kids, who, for the most part, are not really all that angsty. They pilot a seemingly endless line of Fafners. The adults man the control stations. You know. Then, there is the third side in the war, the Neo UN, who is at odds with Tatsumiya Island.

Now, this is all well and good, but it just feels like it's been done before. Oh wait, it has, several times. But that's ok. The robots are cool. The Festum look really nice. But the problem is the characters. What we have here is a a bunch of kids who, honestly, I couldn't even tell apart for several episodes. It didn't help that half the characters had K names. Kazuki, Koyo, etc.  The same applies to the parents. All the mothers look the same. Middle aged, with short, black hair. I didn't know which kids belonged to which parents.

But the problems don't end there. In an effort to raise stakes and drama, there are a handful of characters who die. I usually love this, as it shows that the creators are willing to make an irrevsible change to the world of the story. However, in Fafner, many deaths feel empty, because we simply don't know enough about the characters to care. The first such death is the worst offender, as we literally know two things about the character who dies. Sure, her friends are shocked and devestated when she died, but I found myself not really caring. And that's bad.

In addition, alot of the story feels under developed. What is MIR? Are the Festum really just aliens?  Why did Maya's father leave the island? What's the deal with Soshi's and Kazuki's semi-kinda-but-not-really assimilation? And on that note, what exactly is their relationship? These are all questions raised during the show, but we never get concrete answers. What we get is vague descriptions and visuals that push these instances forward, but with no definition. I had no idea what was going on half the time.

It's not all bad though. There are a handful of extremely good episodes, where everything just seems to click and work right. Unfortunately, these episodes come after the halfway point of the series, and if you aren't interested by then, you're probably not watching. As I mentioned, the Festum look really cool, and they are also very creepy when they say, in that staticy voice, "Are you there?" Creepy. But again.... This is not really explained. It is hinted at but... Yeah.

So there you go. Fafner isn't the worst thing ever... But it's certainly less than stellar. While having a fairly interesting premise, the confusing characters and muddled revelations just bring the whole thing down. After the last episode, I just didn't care. I didn't care about Maya or Kazuki or Soshi. Maybe I'm just too dumb to get it, but as for now, I'd have to say that Fafner is worth skipping... Go watch Gurren Lagann!