Fafner Volume 1 and Mermaid Forest Volume 1 Anime DVD Reviews
© Holly Ellingwood
"Their paradise was a deception..."
Fafner volume 1 from Geneon Entertainment, is one of the highest quality animated TV series I've had the pleasure of viewing. A solid sci-fi adventure put together by the same production staff that brought us such high end titles like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Seed, and Nadesico. And it shows. With character designs highly reminiscent of Gundam Seed, the story's sensitivity to the consequences of war, and the complex characters and plots, reminded me forcibly of Evangelion. Here we have possibly one of the highest quality science fiction series of the year.
The first episode opens up on a quiet town living on an idyllic island. People work, children go to school, everything is normal. That is, until the perfect scene is marred by the sudden and brutal attack of aliens known only as the Festum. Suddenly the island paradise is thrown into chaos. Through it we discover that all is not as it seems. Not the island, not the adults, and certainly not the children. The children don't know it yet but they are about to find out in the brutal midst of the alien attack that they are the key to defeating the aliens. Ominously, the question looms greater with each episode that, though the young people are the key to piloting the Fafner, they pilot them at what cost to the children?
Fafner are the humanoid attack robots that only certain of the young people of this island can pilot. They find out the hard way the horrors of war as they witness their friends killed before their eyes and parts of their town are destroyed. Their parents thrust them into a fight they've never known existed and the struggle begins. What are these children fighting for? Why can only they 'synergize' with the Fafner? What is Alvis? What is it the adults know and have been hiding for so long from their children? And what truly is the island they call home? An island that the rest of the world has been searching for while the adult residents have been hiding their paradise from the rest of civilization. Last but not least is the constant question being asked by the Festum "Are you there?" over and over again in an innocent and haunting tone. Within the first four episodes we see innocents as they are thrown suddenly into the midst of a war they never knew existed and have yet to understand. This series sets up right from the beginning several plot points underlying the main story and showing the promise of much more to come as we discover the secrets and lies surrounding the island and those who inhabit it.
