Directed by Noboru Ishiguro
Featuring Voices by Katsuyuki Konishi, Daisuke Kishio and Takashi Kondo
Galaxy under constant military threat seeks one brave, apathetic main character to inspire long talks of rebellion.
The Series
The galactic Valdana Empire rules over planets and planets with the iron fist of the Tytania military family. The powerful, generational-old clan spreads fear and tyranny across the stars that even the emperor fears to speak out against. But then the young space admiral Fan Hyurlick hands Tytania its first defeat in a battle no one expected him to win, including his own country. Now Fan is on the run as the cracks in Tytania’s armor grow more and more in the face of a restless galaxy.
This collection is the first half of the series, starting with Tytania’s defeat and following the ensuing ripple effect. Tytania, it seems, hasn’t been making too many friends as it plowed through space fleets and conquered worlds for the empire.
The premise sounds like a good revolt in the making, but everything is so slow. Much of these episodes are characters just sitting and talking. The main five Tytanian leaders often gather alone to talk about how glorious Tytania is and how they should protect and enforce their persuasion to random dissenters. All while the main character Fan evades detection and runs into new allies on the run who also like to talk the audience’s heads off.
For as big of a space battle opera as this show wishes to be, it has too little sense of scale. Tytania is a supposedly large army, but so few are ever focused on. The same with the dissenting forces. Only about five or six characters on any side ever get screen time, so when dozens and dozens of cheap CGI ships appear for a space battle, they seem lifeless because all the characters are safe on the flag ships. There’s no audience impact when ships get destroyed because there’s no audience connection with characters they never see.
Plus it’s all too far in between. Only four major battles actually happen in the collection, and two of them are in the last two episodes.
Everything ultimately feels uneventful as very little seems to be getting done to progress the story of rebellion. Side stories with fairly benign characters take up entire episodes that accomplish no real character growth or plot development. The main character Fan is almost entirely indifferent to the events around him. The characters who do get up in arms against Tytania are ineffective at best. It’s all a boring experience that becomes a chore to watch. The story isn’t inherently bad. It’s just drawn out and improperly focused so that it loses any interest to captivate viewers long enough to finish one disc, let alone go out and buy the second half.
4/10
The Video
The series is in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen. The colors are bright and vibrant (almost too much on some characters). The animation is pretty stiff though, and the CGI for the spaceships looks pretty cheap (especially when exploding).
5/10
The Audio
Only Japanese 2.0 audio. With all the talking in this series, it really could use an English dub. Otherwise, you’re going to have to stay glued to the screen just to follow the conversation. The soundtrack is fairly average and forgettable.
4.5/10
The Packaging and Bonus Features
The two-disc collection comes in a standard DVD case. The art on the cover and on the discs is well drawn, and the general jacket design itself is fine. The extras are the basic trailers, DVD credits and clean opening and ending animations. Nothing special there.
4.5/10
Tytania is a drudge to get through. Lot of dialog to pay attention to even when nothing happens. Despite its pedigree of the director of the original Macross series and the author of the Legend of the Galactic Heroes novels, this collection is completely passable.
Overall (Not an Average) 4.5/10
The Review
The Series 4/10
The Video 5/10
The Audio 4.5/10
The Packaging and Bonus Features 4.5/10
Overall (Not an Average) 4.5/10