Manga Adaptation by Liden Films
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

In the distant future, attempts to terraform Mars have caused the creation of a race of sentient cockroaches. Akari Hizamaru is an underground fighter with special abilities. After he learns his childhood love had finally succumbed to an alien disease, he decides to join a group of humans modified to take on the aliens. Oh, by the way, the aliens look like early twentieth century racist caricatures. So yeah…

Marlin’s verdict: Offensively Boring

There’s a lot not to like about Terra Formars. The jingoistic plot is bad enough as it is, but add on to that just boring exposition and it makes something I already wasn’t looking forward to be even that more excruciating to get through. If it wasn’t for the grace of God that I had my friends in Glorio to watch this stuff with, lord knows I’d never be able to get through it. What little action there even was had been censored to such a horrible state that we would have been better served just having the audience give us reaction faces. This episode also just felt plain lazy. After the bear fight, we get nothing but people sitting and talking or standing and talking, and they’re not even that well drawn when they’re doing that.

To the shows credit, what little I’m willing to spare it, it seems they have at least replaced what I think is the worst part of the Terraformars. In art from the manga, they always seem to be drawn with hair distinctly resembling short, curly, african hair. Combining that with their complexion its easy to make that jump that these were made to be designed after african people. Here they seem to show the hair-like part as if it were a solid shell. Still, there are more than enough points against this adaptation that I don’t even need this added bit of nastiness to make my decision. With most shows I’m still willing to give them at least one more episode, but Terra Formars will not get that luxury.

Zigg’s verdict: Generically Grim

There’s very little to separate this from the dozens of other dark and violent urban fantasy dramas that have been popping up with some regularity recently. There’s the same flat, dull art style, the same dreary palette, the same brutal violence, and even more brutal censorship that has no concept of the idea of ‘less is more’. There’s zero attempt at any sort of coherent characterization or even legible storytelling, instead leaping from scenario to scenario with wild abandon. There’s never a pause to establish what the real stakes are, or why we should care about the people in front of us. Exposition is dumped left right and centre with no context and the entire thing feels exactly like what it is – a shoddy adaptation of a way longer, more developed plotline. Do I even need to mention the highly dubious racism that seems to be forthcoming? An unpleasant experience all round.

Gee’s verdict: No Substance

Being somewhat familiar with the manga prior to the anime’s release, I already knew what to expect from Terra Formars. If nothing else, it really is like many anime in that you could sum it up as, “If you got rid of all the bad parts, and made the okay parts good, it could alright.” But even that is only due to the fact that I know about some of the novel concepts in the story that aren’t even introduced in the first episode. Between the hideously unimaginative censorship, the meandering characterization that goes nowhere, the incoherent pacing, and the complete disregard for doing anything interesting, Terra Formars fails on too many fronts. Not only are the designs of the aliens questionable at best, it’s also a bad anime altogether. One can look at Attack on Titan, its success likely the reason something like Terra Formars got greenlit in the first place, and see how it does it so much better. Regardless of where it went down the road, its first episode does an amazing job of establishing the bleak oppressive setting while also giving its audience enough flash and style to keep them engaged. Terra Formars does none of those things and the sooner forgotten, the better.