Terra Formars: Revenge is the second season of Terra Formars, based upon the manga. It is 13 episodes long with a few OVAs. It begins immediately after the ending of the first season where the various squads are still scattered around Mars, fighting for their lives against the Terra Formars. Set in the future where humanity tried to terraform Mars by placing moss and cockroaches on its surface, it was successful to a certain degree. The cockroaches evolved unbelievably quickly and have no taken on humanoid form and still retained the advantageous characteristics of cockroaches. They have super strength, have a hard shell and are difficult to defeat. While most of them are portrayed as simple minded creatures, there are variations including one with huge muscles, and another who seems smarter.
The characters have all taken operations to give them characteristics of an insect or animal, in order to give them a fighting chance. They have come to Mars as they require samples of the cockroaches to help create an antidote for a virus on Earth which has a 100% fatality rate. By injecting themselves with a special serum, the characters' bodies mutate and gain the powers of the anime chosen as their base, but scaled to humans. In the first episode, we're treated to a desperate battle among the squads as they struggle to fight off the cockroaches. However, their strengths are never consistent, in one scene, a single one is strong enough to destroy a whole squad, in another, one character easily defeats hundreds of them. It doesn't help that the cockroaches tend to just stand around and do nothing when they could have simply swarmed and win with their numbers and strength.
It is still hard to believe that in those short years, the cockroaches have managed to evolve to such a significant degree. They are intelligent enough to use weaponry and devise strategies. Despite their primitive look, they are actually fairly advanced but the series makes no effort to try and justify this. There are weird tonal shifts in the anime. In one scene, they're fighting desperately for their lives against the cockroaches, the next scene, everything is okay with fan service scenes and the cast joking around with each other.
The flashbacks continue to happen but thankfully, they are not as obtrusive as they were in season one. Also, thanks to the various squads, it frequently changes perspectives such that when big showdowns happen, you don't really care too much about the characters since you never gotten close to them anyway. There are exceptions though, since some characters' backstories were sad and understanding their motivations can make their sacrifices even more profound. For the other characters, their motivations are harder to grasp. Some don't even make sense. There are a lot of contrived occurrences which just makes you think "what the hell". The anime plays this off as some grand plan or something to be proud of, which makes it all the more annoying.
The focus shifts early on from battling against the cockroaches to battling against each other. Since the team sent to Mars was a joint effort between countries and it was already teased in the first season that they all have different agendas, it's only natural that they would clash. This development kind of takes away the premise and we're still left wondering about the cockroaches because they are just so shrouded in mystery with no answer in sight. The fact is, the cockroaches (if they can even still be referred as that) have an agenda of their own. From the very beginning, they were taking the corpses of the fallen and then turning up with their powers. It's a plot point where you'd wish they would go and clarify or reveal what's happening because it's frustrating.
The biggest thing against the anime is that the storytelling is not cohesive. You can see it had a lot of potential, from the politics to against the Terra Formars themselves but it is told in such a bland way that it does not keep your interest at all. The fact that everyone doesn't even bat an eye when they lose limbs (the pain should have given them shock at least) or the fact that they can regenerate in a second is a bit too hard to believe. The lack of consistency hurts the anime significantly, to the point where the final scene of the last episode happens which is supposedly something massive, it just felt like another leap of logic. It's like the writer thought this was cool and went with it without considering if it makes sense or fits in with everything else.
The animation is also hilariously bad in the last scene, you do wonder whether it was intentional or not... When you reflect on the whole season at the end, you realize that there is a severe lack of content, with the characters basically achieving little. Overall, Terra Formars: Revenge is a subpar season. The writing, the pacing and the plot development leaves much to be desired. The cockroaches are constantly shown with some sort of new power, without explaining how or why that might be the case. It's a wonder with their abilities and powers, why they haven't even repelled the protagonists from Mars yet.
---------------------------------------------
For other anime reviews, have a look at this page.
