Kurogane Communication: Memories of Earth Collection

By J.J. Matthews     December 15, 2005
Release Date: December 17, 2002



What They Say
In the near future, Earth has been devastated by an immense war. Haruka, a girl living in the ruins of Japan with five robot companions, may truly be the last person on earth. Amid the desolation and constant attacks from Combat Machines whose war will never end, Haruka fights to find a way of life, and track down other human survivors.

The entire series available in one collector's set!

The Review!
Audio:
For aour main viewing sessions, we listened to this anime in its original language of Japanese, with occasional switches to English to spot-check the quality. Audio for this series is nothing special; both tracks are in Dolby Digital Stereo. It suits the action on screen pretty well, but it’s obvious no extra effort was made to really make the audio topnotch. Dialogue is clear and sound effects come in at the right volume level and timing.

Video:
Generally, the video on this production of Kurogane is pretty good. It’s formatted in its native 4:3 aspect ratio. Colors are accurate with few anomalies. There is quite a bit of artifacting, though. It’s not enough to take away from the experience, but it is definitely noticeable in many of the episodes. There’s a small amount of aliasing, as well…but that’s less noticeable than the artifacts. The subtitles are clear and keep correct pace with the action in the scenes.

Packaging:
This three-disc set comes in a standard, double-wide DVD case, with one side of the case designed to hold two discs overlapping. The disks are carried over from the original release. Inside, the only insert is a quick chapter listing.

The front of the case gives solid focus to a rather angsty image of Haruka in a bolder color palette, with a more muted collage of all the other characters behind her. The image gives a good representation to the series...though from a purely artistic perspective, I think I preferred the artwork from the single volume releases. The back of the case is rather sparse, primarily providing the usual technical specs, a story summary and features list. There is one amusing shot of Trigger, and moments from the series are watermarked as background, but for the most part, there’s quick a bit of empty real estate here.

Menu:
Each of the three disks utilizes the same menu style, which is simple and easy to navigate. The menu’s center is a Flyer, a large flying robot from the series. The image itself has quite a bit of aliasing on lines radiating from the Flyer to the menu choices, giving a bit of a messy or rushed look to it. I had no problems navigating the menus on my main DVD player, but did run into some strange problems on another player, with the menu image freezing up or highlights not moving as I navigated from one option to another.

The menu options include: Trailers, Extras, Play, Setup, and Scene Access.

• PLAY: Plays through the entire DVD in one go, including all opening and closing credits. This is actually one series where I would have liked an option to view everything without the OP and ED sequences. Especially later in the series, the action would have flowed fairly unbroken from one episode to the next.


• SCENE ACCESS: The usual. Each episode is divided into five parts. Alongside each episode listing is a series of stills from that episode.


• SETUP: English and Japanese audio is offered and each can be viewed with and without subtitles.


• TRAILERS: Four rather old trailers, carried over from the original release. Nothing special here.


• EXTRAS: Accesses the extras menu. The extras are Creditless Opening (on DVD 1 only), Production Sketches, a Mini Comic, and Outtakes.

Extras:
Extras here are fairly mediocre. A nice attempt was made, but more could have been done. They include:

• The Creditless opening is just that, a way for the viewer to watch the opening sequence with no credits rolling over.


• Each DVD contains a nice assortment of production sketches. It would have been nice if they would have included some background music for this extra.


• All the DVDs also contain a mini comic, which are fun and a nice added touch in my opinion. There is no music during the mini comic, either, which would have been nice.


• The final extra is a set of outtakes on each DVD. These are nice; I always enjoy watching the outtakes from shows when available. The ones provided here are primarily dubbing flubs, with not as many truly funny parody moments as you get on some Anime Works series.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Going into this series, I was not expecting much, to be honest. I had seen the first volume a few years ago, and while it had some charm, there didn't seem to be much depth to it. The shorter episode format (each episode is only 11 minutes long) was a bit off-putting for me and I just hadn't had much interest in pursuing the series further. After watching all three volumes, I've had to revise my opinion drastically. This series is probably going to stick with me for quite a while.

"Kurogane Communications" centers on a young girl, Haruka, living amidst the ruins of a modern city. The Earth has been decimated by a mysterious conflict and Haruka believes herself to be the last human being on the planet. She is cared for by a group of intelligent, self-aware robots who discovered her sleeping in cold-sleep a year before the series begins. Following their core programming to protect and serve humans, the robots chose to revive Haruka and do what they could to keep her happy and healthy. Haruka awoke with only vague memories of her life before the cold-sleep, but now has a new surrogate family in the robots, who include:

• Reeves, a tough-looking robot who's actually the most motherly of the group, fixing Haruka's meals, repairing the other robots when they get damaged, etc.


• Cleric, the "brains" of the operation, who the others all respect and go to for answers.


• Spike, a naive, childlike robot who serves as Haruka's best friend and is sometimes overzealous in his devotion to his job of serving and protecting her.


• Trigger, a little round fella with the attitude of someone ten times his size. As his name suggests, Trigger really likes to shoot things, and tends to get bored easily by more mundane activities


• Angela, a tough, Amazon-type female warrior who, as the series begins, wants nothing to do with any human being, including Haruka.

The first third of the series is devoted to gradually introducing this setup. It explores Haruka's world and her relationship with her robot family through several small, self-contained crises while also weaving in a few plot threads that will lead to bigger events down the road. The most significant of these smaller stories is a two-episode sequence that focuses on Angela, revealing her reasons for disliking humans and laying some solid groundwork for one of the series' major themes - the relationship between human beings and the living, thinking, evolving robots that they created.

This theme is not unique in science fiction or anime, of course, but the approach in this series, especially in these early episodes, is rather unusual. There's plenty of adventure and tension going on, ranging from emotional stress - like Haruka's anxiety over her missing memories - to the more straightforward physical threat posed by groups of non-intelligent machines left over from the war and apparently programmed to kill all humans. And yet... there's a laidback quality to the storytelling in this section that is quite different from the usual edgy, kick-ass post-apocalyptic sci-fi. The episodes have an almost "slice of life" feel to them... like everything that happens - from hanging laundry atop a crumbling apartment building to fighting for one's life against deadly machines - is just part of the day-to-day life of the last human girl on Planet Earth.

It's a style that can take some getting used to I think, and this tone was part of what turned me off on my first viewing. The series felt a little too lightweight for its subject matter...an impression that was compounded by the shorter episode length. In retrospect though, I think these early episodes work very well to build a sense of the status quo in Haruka's world so that when the main storyline gets going there's a solid foundation to start building from.

This main storyline begins when the robots treat Haruka to a summer excursion to visit the ocean. The trip is fairly par for the course at first, with Haruka and Spike playing in the water, a brief danger from a large mutated fish, and a summer night of fireworks. However, the next morning the group wakes to find that the ocean has practically disappeared in a freakishly low tide. Cleric discovers that recent seismic activity (which played a small role in earlier episodes) has created a giant tsunami that is closing in on Haruka's home. They need to find shelter or leave the island ASAP.

Desperate for a way off the island, the group is forced to resort to waking up a "Flyer" - a large airship left over from the war that possesses robot-level intelligence. Like Angela, the Flyer has a grudge against humanity, but they manage to convince it to at least carry them to safety. This partnership doesn't last long however, as the Flyer abandons them on the first safe island they come to.

On this island, Haruka encounters a human boy, Kanato, who is leading a life that mirrors Haruka's own. Like Haruka, he lives with a group of robotic companions and has believed himself to be the last human on the planet. Unfortunately, Kanato's "family" is much more dysfunctional than Haruka's, and the newcomers are met with violence and hostility. Haruka can't abandon her own kind, though, and insists on being a friend to Kanato and helping him to see what he's been missing for most of his life.

This is the point where the earlier build-up of Haruka's relationship with her own robot friends really pays off. We don't need to spend a lot of time explaining the basics of Kanato's relationship with his robots. We already know the sort of loyalty and interdependency to expect in this sort of situation and the story uses that effectively by focusing on how those bonds have been twisted in slightly different ways in Kanato's experience. There's some really touching storytelling here as Kanato gets his first look at true friendship and gradually begins to appreciate that he could have that for himself, as well.

This leads me to what I think is " Kurogane Communications’ “ biggest strength - and what truly makes it worth checking out - the character development. The series does an excellent job of keeping all of the characters very real and multi-dimensional. All of them are capable of learning and growing, and that development plays an integral role in the series. Angela comes to the realization that not all humans are as evil as she'd thought, Spike deals with concerns that making Haruka happy (by finding other humans) will mean that she no longer needs Spike for a friend, Kanato is able to come to his senses with a minimum of fuss, and even the Flyer who helps them escape the tsunami proves itself to be capable of adapting and growing with a return appearance later in the series.

With all of this character development, it's rather ironic that the final conflict is caused by one character's inability to adapt and grow with changed circumstances. Kanato's primary guardian, Honi, discovers a transmission indicating that there is human life on Mars. Unlike Spike - who ultimately chooses to make Haruka happy, regardless of what it will mean for him - Honi is unable to adjust his programming to accept the existence of other humans. To bring reality back into synch with his programming, he puts a plan in motion to send a Flyer loaded with explosives to Mars to wipe out humanity once and for all. This final storyline ramps up the tension and action quite a bit. During one sequence where Honi stalks Haruka through Kanato's fortress-like home, I was actually on the edge of my seat - a big surprise, considering how laid-back everything seemed earlier in the series.

This tension doesn’t last, however, and the series ends with a sweet coda that brings the story full circle and wraps things up nicely.

In Summary:
In the end, I enjoyed "Kurogane Communications" very much. After a bit of a slow start, the series provides an excellent post-apocalyptic story that gives its own, character-driven spin to the familiar anime theme of mankind vs. robots. Additionally, the unique atmosphere makes the series a must for viewers who enjoy science fiction with a quieter, more naturalistic approach to the storytelling...if you enjoyed "Figure 17", "Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou", or (stretching a bit) "Kino's Journey", definitely give this one a try.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language,English 2.0 Language,English Subtitles

Review Equipment
Marantz DV4300 Progressive scan DVD player via HD component connection, Marantz VP-12S3 DVI/Component HD DLP Projector, 110” 16:9 Stewart FireHawk Fixed Wall Mount Screen, Marantz SR9300 7.1 A/V Receiver 140 watts/discrete channel (7), DTS/DTS-ES/DTS Neo: 6, DD, D-PLII THX Certified 7.1 speaker system