Divergence Eve Volume 1

In the year 2317 humans can now travel across the universe at the speed of light by “tunneling” through different dimensions. Out in the depths of the universe is Watchers Nest, a space station built between a split planet and home to 10 million people. But recently mysterious accidents have been occurring on the station. Are these the effects of bad maintenance or a more sinister threat?

Over the course of this series we follow the adventures of Misaki Kureha and her crew of recruits for the military organization Seraphim. But we learn this after the first few episodes. I’ll go on the record here and say that the first episode of Divergence Eve was the most confusing starter I’ve seen. It threw me off more than the first episode of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The show starts off simple enough with it’s flashy intro with a thumping electro beat to boot but then we are lunged head first into madness. The first episode actually takes place between episodes 12 and 13, as a result this contains way too much techno talk and information about goings on that really I had no idea about. This was an attempt to create curiosity for the viewer in an attempt to hook you into watching more. Unfortunately it failed, badly, and really just left me confused more than anything.

Episode 2 is really the first episode and this is where we get the introduction of the characters and basic story. With the ability to travel at the speed of light through different dimensions comes a problem. Think of the universe as layers of dimensions, for this story at least, to travel at the speed of light you must tunnel through different dimensions to get to your destination but at the same time beings from other dimensions can also enter yours. This is where the main plot comes into play. Mysterious creatures, also know as GHOULS are attempting to break through the space barrier into Misaki’s world, unknown to the general public. That is the basic story in a nutshell; Bad guys from one dimension are trying to crash the party in another. Who will win, tune in to find out!

The concept is actually decent but the execution is poor, it strikes me as a case of too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Everyone on the production team wants to leave their imprint on this series, but this leads to too many aspects trying to grab your attention. There Is way too much technological talk for the viewer to take in, along with the CG but I’ll get to these points in a minute. The techno talk is what you’ll find if you open an engineering manual to a random page and start reading, you won’t understand a thing but boy does it sound fancy.

One of my biggest problems with this show is the CG graphics that have been implemented, about 60% of this show is CG and it’s nothing to be proud of either. The mix between CG and animation is poor and sloppy at the best of times. That’s not to say the animation was amazing either, the character designs are generic but somewhat cute. However every single female character has the biggest set of boobs I have seen, you could watch a Hentai flick and see less cleavage it is that bad. OK, OK, before you bite my head off I don’t mind fan service but when it impedes on the shows integrity then it’s just got to go. There were scenes in the first 5 episodes when they were trying so hard to be serious but then I would notice one of the characters bouncing around enough to give someone a black eye…or two and any atmosphere that was created is now gone.

The soundtrack is one dimensional and it is 99% electric/techno that you see in every other show like this. The only song to offer some variety is the ending theme, but even after hearing that for a few times it begins to get on your nerves. The biggest peeve of this was not the poor animation and execution but the dub. The dub cast on Divergence Eve has a massive range of experience and looking at some of the characters previous shows I wonder how they can put in such a lackluster performance. The characters carry no emotion nor is there any effort to make the characters work.

After a somewhat few disappointing episodes things do start to pick up and the show goes from being completely confusing and pointless to fairly interesting. It is not going to knock your socks off or make you think “Wow” but it’s good enough to watch once things get going. Episodes 4 and 5 were definitely the best on this disc and hopefully they can continue what they setup in these episodes onto the next volume.

The extras on this DVD are nothing to write home about. There is the clean opening and ending and a mini manga on Misaki and how she ended up joining the military. One of the more interesting features was the commentary that is available. It lasts for one episode, so roughly 20 minutes. Granted it bears no relevance at all to Divergence Eve they do talk about voice acting and the methods/techniques used. One thing I did spot in the commentary even more was that the voice actors did have personality off screen, they were laughing and making jokes etc in the commentary yet they didn’t transfer this charisma onto the performance and that really annoyed me.

In Summary

Divergence Eve isn’t going to be for everyone. The poor CGI and animation leave much to be desired and the characters don’t seem to gel as much as they should, you can connect with Misaki but we simply don’t know enough about the rest of the cast to really care what happens to them. Things do improve though and I’m interested to see if they can continue this onto the next volume, if it does then this show might be able to redeem itself.

On the other hand if you just love Bazooka Boobs then Divergence Eve is your nirvana.