3ET: Coppelion

"Help, I'm surrounded by Japanese schoolgirls."

Studio: GoHands

Director: Suzuki Shingo (K), Kanazawa Hiromichi (K, Setokai Yakuindomo), Kudou Musumu (K, Dear Boys)

Writer: Nakamura Makoto (Cuticle Tantei Inaba)

Main Cast:

Tomatsu Haruka as Naruse Ibara

Hanazawa Kana as Fukusaku Aoi

Akesaka Satomi  as Nomura Taeko

Character Design: Suzuki Shingo

Music: Endou Mikio (K)

The Fall 2013 season begins with Coppelion, a show that was produced back in 2011. But, since releasing a show about a nuclear disaster right after the Fukushima meltdown was seen as a bit tasteless, it was delayed until now. That means that this is the actual debut for several members of the staff, including one of the directors and the guy behind the music. Many of them worked on the last GoHands project, K, an uneven show that looked nice, but whose plot fell flat more often than it did not.

Stuck in a nuclear wasteland? Time for riceballs.

The main plot of Coppelion takes place a couple decades after a major nuclear accident in Tokyo. The city is a ghost town, and three genetically engineered girls have been sent to search for survivors. They are resistant to radiation, and therefore do no need to wear hazmat suits, a fact that astonishes the few people they find living there. Inaba is the leader, Aoi is the happy girl who likes to eat, and Taeko is good with animals. And while the other two don't get much characterization, we do get to know Inaba fairly well in the first few episodes. She's encourages her team with a slightly flippant attitude and genuinely wants to help people. Also, I like the dialogue in the opening episode, it does a solid job at introducing the audience to the characters without feeling too much like a total infodump.

In fact the show is at its best in the opening episode. The girls are exploring the ruined Tokyo and this scenery is gorgeous. It looks exactly like I would expect a metropolis to look two decades after being abandoned, a combination of decay and natural regrowth. In this episode, we also meet the girls' commander or "vice-principal", who epitomizes the stereotypical Japanese military man. He's no nonsense and has a soft spot for Inaba and her group. The first episode closes well, with Inaba determinedly stating she's going to rescue a missing Taeko as Aoi realizes how hostile Tokyo has become to humans.

I'm not sure if the show is being classy by not showing her panties,
or creepy by having this shot to at all.

Sadly, once the girls actually start finding and rescuing people, the quality significantly drops. Part of it is that the behavior of the people in Tokyo is erratic at best and nonsensical at worst. The second episode focuses on a family headed by a pair of prison escapees. The parents seem to have no rhyme or reason for anything that they do, and when they die, it looks like it's just to get them out of the way so their daughter can have her own little arc. But that's not the worst of it. The worst thing about Coppelion is how heavy handed the show is in trying to get the audience to care about the girls. It seems that they question their humanity, seeing as they were genetically engineered test tube babies created specifically for the purpose of entering the irradiated Tokyo. And this is handled with all of the subtlety of a brick to the back of the head. This feels like an arc for halfway further into the show, not an establishing character trait. And that comes down to a simple reason. I don't want to listen to them whine for five minutes an episode about not being human. It's already annoying as it is.

But, the urban exploration with an overarching mystery that showed up at the end of episode three grabbed my attention. And because it finished fairly strong, I'm going to pass it. I want to know why a stealth bomber is circling the city and how the nuclear disaster happened. I realize there's a chance the entire show could completely fall apart into a Pinocchio-esque mess. But there's also a chance that Coppelion could be a great show about the dangers and benefits of science. And it's a risk I'm willing to take.