Infinite Ryvius

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Year: 1999-2000

Length: 26 episodes

Studio: Sunrise

Genres: Hard SF, melodrama

Analysis
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Infinite Ryvius fascinates me.

Its creators set themselves a few major challenges:


 * Can we tell a story with a very large cast of characters?
 * Can we make a "hard SF" anime with teenage protagonists?
 * Can the "submarine chase" approach to conflict work as a series?

The staff created a perfect setting for that challenge: a few hundred years in the future, 500 teenagers live and learn on a space station that amounts to a Vo Tech for space workers. A terrorist event kills all the adults and forces the trainees to evacuate to a military research ship that was hidden in the middle of the station. They then must attempt to get to civilization.

So: all your instructors are dead, and you have to work a completely unfamiliar ship and keep everyone fed and relatively happy.

The Cast
Infinite Ryvius has several dozen named, main characters. This is kept manageable using a surprisingly effective technique of division.

The series begins by focusing on a group of half a dozen friends, all of them "small fry" on the station. We're then introduced to the top class of seniors; once the instructors die, this class becomes responsible for managing the other 490 students. Later, a coup is staged by a new gang of teens.

Hisashi Hirai's character designs help tremendously. Much as some folks hate his later designs post Gundam SEED, the designs here are less flashy and highly distinctive. When I look at the cast, while I can't remember every name, I easily remember who's who.

The Setting
Infinite Ryvius establishes a hard SF setting, but its characters are teenagers thrown into an extreme situation.

This works surprisingly well. The characters have to deal with a situation that feels real. They aren't developing superpowers; their food is rationed. It's these prosaic concerns--well, along with the very real possibility of death--that drives them.

The large cast helps. One girl, Faina, is a member of a New Age-ish religion that teaches detachment. I was fascinated to watch the catalytic action as other characters reacted to her viewpoint. Several other characters served as similar catalysts for other characters. Heck, a lot of these teenagers just don't like each other.

And all this is set in an unforgiving environment. If the ship is hit and a deck is damaged, teenagers die.

Which has lead some to label Infinite Ryvius as "Lord of the Flies in space." I disagree. Lord of the Flies is about the complete disintegration of civilization once the trappings of civilization are removed. In Ryvius, the characters all work very hard to maintain civilization. Indeed, life aboard the Ryvius takes a fascist turn at one point in a desperate attempt to keep things ordered.

Das Boot In Space
Meanwhile, various military spaceships are sent out to stop the Ryvius. This leads to various tense battle sequences, but they are far more similar to submarine warfare than the exciting military fights in Gundam or Macross.

Because, frankly, that's more realistic. There's no point in getting close to an enemy when you can launch missiles from miles away. This is complicated by the Geduld (a sea of plasma that erupted from the sun and forms a dense cloud throughout the solar plane), but the overall style of combat remains: enclosed spaceships pummeling each other at distance.

This also works surprisingly well. Because the series generally focuses on issues of claustrophobic crowding and tense interpersonal conflicts, taking the same approach to spaceship combat feels natural.

Overall, I'm stunned that Ryvius accomplishes as much as it does. We're lucky to have an anime that does one thing differently; Ryvius does several, and does them well.