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Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo comes from the future. Project Blue: Earth SOS takes us back to a simpler time with an alien invasion. Midnight Mile shows us the baby steps that takes us into space and Trinity Blood - okay, Trinity Blood is about vampire and lost technology, but it has satellites and stuff in it, too. 

The Count of Monte Cristo is an epic tale, one of Dumas’s greatest works. Gankutsuou takes that tale and turns it into a story every bit as epic and heart pounding as the original, utterly loyal to the source material in it’s own way - just in space, and with giant robots. The story begins as a young viscount Albert and his friend Baron Franz d’Epinay visit Luna, a very Venetian town in the middle of a very Venetian Carnival. They meet an enigmatic blue-skinned man who calls himself the Count of Monte Cristo, and Albert is immediately drawn to him. When Albert is kidnapped by bandits, it is the Count who rescues him, and as they part in Luna, they promise to meet again in Paris, where Albert can introduce the Count into society.

True to his word, the Count arrives in Paris with great pomp and splendor, and though Franz is uncertain of the Count, Albert seems to instantly adore him. Albert introduces him to everyone he knows - his parents, the General Fernand de Morcerf and Mercedes de Morcerf (Mercedes, upon meeting the Count, is instantly plunged into a state of nostalgia which worries Albert), his fiance Eugenie de Danglars and her parents, the Baron Danglars, the richest banker in Paris and his constantly unfaithful wife Victoria, and finally Franz’s fiance Valentine de Villefort and her parents Procueur-general Villefort and his wife, Valentine’s step-mother, Heloise.

Whereas the audience knows the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo and the real story behind the Count, this show takes Albert’s point of view, and thus the Count is a mystery. Albert plunges himself wholeheartedly into the Count’s friendship, despite Franz’s warnings, and thus becomes the agent of the Counts quest for vengeance against four men who betrayed him long ago, when he was a sailor named Edmond Dantes.

So what’s the same and what’s different, you ask? The differences are obvious: while the book begins at the beginning, this story starts somewhere in the middle and makes the story not one of romantic action, but a mystery. The book takes place in the 1800’s, while the anime takes us into the future - though a future very similar in social structure very similar to that of Dumas’s 1800’s. And as textured in description as the novel is, so the anime is literally textured - every surface, every scrap of cloth or wisp of hair is filled with marbled designs or plaids or any number of textures as opposed to simple coloring. The look is astoundingly beautiful, though it does take an episode or two for the eyes to adjust to such busy designs. Also adding to the overall look of the series is the 3D backgrounds, and with all of these elements put together the anime watches like a work of art, breathtaking to behold and utterly fascinating.

There are, however, some differences; some occur simply from the change in format - clearly, a book as large as Count of Monte Cristo can do much more than a 26 episode anime, and some changes are to be expected. Then there are those changes that serve no other purpose but to bring the show to a more anime feel - duels are fought in giant robot suits as opposed to more traditional armor, for example. But no matter the change, the basic story remains the same. Though the Count’s final acts of revenge are different from the book, his motivations spring from the same source: the goodness in Albert.

And what of “Gankutsuou”? In the book, Dantes was imprisoned in the Chateau d’if, an impenetrable prison, where he meets a fellow prisoner who helps bring about Dantes escape and subsequent revenge plot. In the anime, it is a being, demon-like, named Gankutsuou, who acts as the catalyst required for Dantes the prisoner to become a mighty Count, but Gankutsuou demands a greater price. And for Dumas fans, there is a nod to The Man in the Iron Mask to make you squeal.

G: TCoMC is one of the best animes I’ve seen in a long, long while. It’s beautiful, paced tightly with a great deal of suspense and some phenomenal episode ending cliffhangers. I tried my best to watch the show casually, but ended up with a deeply satisfying marathon on my hands. I even cried a little. This is a set to buy, to watch over and over again, and to share with friends. This set alone earns the five star rating.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Project Blue Earth SOS. Remember the days of cheesy sci-fi films where pie-pan shaped saucers came to Earth with their ray gun toting aliens, films like those spoofed in Ed Wood? Project Blue Earth SOS takes us to those days, and even throws a little cheese by way of boy geniuses (think Johnny Quest), secret agents and underground labs. It sounds like it would be good - hell, the previews make you think it looks like it’d be good.

Sadly, it’s not. About ten minutes into the first episode, you want nothing more than to smack around the two ‘boy geniuses’ Billy and Penny - or at least replace them with Hank and Dean from The Venture Brothers. Also disturbing is the character of young pre-teen Lotta Brest (that’s pronounced breest, as in rhyming with priest) - though it’s a bit pervy to see a young girl with a name that clearly belongs on a Bond vixen.

So, back to the plot. These contraptions with G-engines (subs, planes, trains, etc) are vanishing, and there’s talk of an array of rainbow-colored lights accompanying the disappearances. One wacky military man swears it’s aliens, and though he gets pretty thoroughly mocked, turns out he’s right. Aliens invade, destroying Earth’s capitol, Metropolitan (done to death, people. Metropolis, the city of Townsville, etc. Be original), and it comes down to a covert agency - and our two boy geniuses - to defeat the aliens and save the frickin’ day.

I think that Independence Day is a lackluster, utterly unoriginal film and that Jeff Goldblum suffered from Parkinson’s while shooting that film, and this is long before Michael J. Fox made Parkinson’s cool.  That said, I’d rather watch Independence Day over and over again than this show. Each episode is 45 minutes long, so not only does it drag while it annoys you, it drags for a longer than usual time while it annoys you.

Take Apollo 13, From Earth to the Moon and make it an anime, and you’ve got Moonlight Mile. The story of two men, a Japanese guy named Gorou and his pilot buddy Lost Man, as they tire of climbing mountains on Earth and separately attempt to make it to outer space, this anime watches like a documentary of two heroes as they move step-by-step into the space program, into training and finally, into space.

Gorou is a construction worker who just happens to be certified in everything a worker on the space station and the moon would need. He’s goofy and silly, but also the most skilled guy around. Lost Man is intense, a pilot at his core. The beginning of the anime follows Gorou more closely, while is good: he’s a fun guy to watch. We see him use his skills to get to the front of the competition for astronaut, and quickly enough he’s moved to training at what is now Johnson Space Center in Houston.

My father works at JSC, and has for as long as I can remember. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, and watching Gorou move through those halls, training rooms and even the baseball diamonds at the back of the center were immensely satisfying to me, as every detail was superbly researched and extraordinarily rendered (save the military base housing on the beach. If only). There is even a moment that anyone familiar with the Apollo missions will tenderly recognize - an astronaut says glibly ’There’s our glitch for this mission’, a phrase used during Apollo 13’s dramatic launch. Among space aficianados, that phrase has the same meaning as ’I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ from Star Wars.

Gorou takes a few dangerous shortcuts, but he eventually makes it to space before Lost Man - who gets lost in a bad dogfight over the Middle Eastern desert.  His plight is traumatizing, but it eventually comes to an end and Lost Man is transferred into the space program, where his talents as a pilot stand out.

The pacing of Moonlight Mile is slower, but it works for the show. It almost feels like a documentary of two fictional characters, with each episode focusing on one of the two. The show is very engaging, especially to those fond of the space program, as I am. There is a lot to be pleased with here, and though I doubt Moonlight Mile will become a rock star of the anime world, it certainly has good legs to stand on. The show is solid, enjoyable, well-written and well made.

Lastly, and more like a game of ‘which one of these is not like the other‘, we have Trinity Blood. It shares with the other shows a futuristic feel, though the plot is more horror-based than action. So, sometime in the future there’s a nasty nuclear war in which the human race evolves into a group of people who have all our technology (and some really nifty looking steam punk-ish looking technology it is, too) but don’t quite know how it works. Also, this nuclear war brought vampires to earth.  Ain’t nuclear war grand?

Anyway, humans and vampires don’t really seem to like each other much - especially when the Vatican steps in. One of their priests is a sweet, clumsy and eternally starving guy named Abel Night road - at least, that’s what he seems to be. In reality, he is one of the Vatican’s finest lines of offense, a creature more powerful than vampire. When the shit goes down, Abel has a nanobite (the nanobites came from an attempt to colonize the moon. Long story) release that’s rather reminiscent of Alucard’s Cromwell initiative release from Hellsing. in any event, his hair defies gravity and he becomes an ass-kicking machine - especially when he fellow Vatican combatants, most notably Tres, the Gunslinger (who has a sexy, sexy voice. Thank you so very much for that, Christopher Sabat).

Each episode walks us through the world, following Abel on his missions for the Vatican, often turning up in places that the highest members of the Vatican - the pope included - are watching. There’s always a little bit of vampy action, and then Abel releases, showing himself for what he really is - a boogeyman for vampires. As sweet as his human form is, that’s how freaky his uber-vamp form looks.

Trinity Blood has been around for a while, and it’s really not a bad show, though it follows in the footsteps of other greater titles in the genre and doesn’t have much by way of new and interesting to add. Fans of Hellsing and D.Gray Man will probably be very pleased with Trinity Blood, as it’s well worth a watch.

Some good, some bad, and some incredibly mind blowing (looking at you, Gankutsuou), this batch of shows may have a sore spot, but there’s no denying how powerful the good is.