Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Shinji Ikari's long lost twin brother! XDIf I were to describe Infinite Ryvius at the most basic level possible, I would probably basically say that it very much so embraces the good 'ol law of Murphy. That is that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And boy does it ever!
But what much more do you really expect from a series that, from what I understand, is loosely based off of the classic novel Lord of the Flies? Now I don't know much at all about that novel, seeing as how I've never either read the book or seen the movie, so I couldn't tell you how much of Ryvius is similar to it. However, I can pretty much assume that it's about as loosely based on it as, say, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is based on The Odyssey. It's very much it's own thing, very much it's own story and everything, but the basic premise, main themes, and maybe even alluded to plot points and characters are all pretty much the same at the very least.
Basically the idea is that we've got a bunch of kids, teenagers and younger, who are all students at an astronaut training facility aboard a space station, the Liebe Delta. While aboard, the space station is attacked, and all of the students are evacuated onto an attached ship known as the Ryvius, and pretty much all adults who were aboard the Liebe Delta are killed in the attack. So now we've got a ship full of kids, basically, no adult supervision, barely any competent leadership (save for the ones training to be leaders anyways), and the only ones in the entire galaxy who are even aware of the ship's presence are those who have deemed them to be terrorists, due to the ships apparent heavy load of weaponry. Oh joy........
Unfortunately for the impatient, this series does sort of take a while to really get things going as far as being really interesting and intense is concerned. Especially when you are aware ahead of time the basic premise of this series, then really the only exciting moment in the early goings comes in the form of something you already know is going to happen in the destruction of the Liebe Delta. But then again, I always pretty much saw it as going along with what the premise of the series is, meaning that in the early goings, obviously you're not going to get a lot of really big things happening, they did just start out after all. But as you can imagine, after a while of being in their situation, eventually things start just crumbling down for everyone at a gradual pace. And here begins the truly great part of this series.
But along with it's, well, semi slow start anyways, probably the only other knock I'd throw at this series is, well, not really even a flaw about it in the first place. That is, the likability of the characters. Those who can't stand a lot of your typical teenage melodrama and whinyness probably wouldn't like this series very much. Granted in it's defense, I'd say the premise of the series, the situation they're all in, they sort of do have every right to be as whiny and melodramatic as they are. Although I can still easily see certain people not being able to like the two main characters, the Aiba brothers very much. Basically we've got the same archetypes in these two as two of the most hated characters in anime history: as I mentioned above Shinji Ikari from Evangelion is very similar to Kouji (and not just in character design ;) ), and Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto is also very similar to Yuki. And neither character really develops outside of that archetype until like, maybe the last few episodes or so, neither are their conflicts really resolved until then as well (as you can imagine with the combination of those two particular archetypes, these brothers REALLY hate each other..... ). But once again, this only really comes down to personal preference, because the way I see it the dislikability of the characters are what the basic idea and main themes of the series revolves around in the first place, and it helps strengthen them.
While it probably doesn't matter whether or not you watch the sub or dub of this series, for the truly picky I'd say watch the sub. The dub is truly not one of Ocean's best works of all time, in fact may even be one of their worst. I personally don't really let that sort of thing get in the way of my enjoyment of a series, but I can easily see how it could be a better experience not having to deal with the painful, almost at times laughable dub as well. A few of the more major characters of the story are cast pretty well, and their actors to an okay job anyways, but outside of that the dub can really have you banging your head against a wall sometimes.
All in all though, I'd say if you're willing to hang in there for long enough, this is really quite the interesting and engaging series, pending on your tolerance level for most of the characters that is. But even then, that's one of the things I think makes this series so engaging as well. And at the same time, I will also say that it really can be quite the entertaining sci-fi, almost mech series (kinda spoiler for me to say anything else, heh ^_^' ) as well. Definitely worth a watch for both reasons.
Rating:
(out of 4), 8/10.
