Oh my, this is a rare occurrence: quite a lot of series suffer from an underdeveloped villain, out there to destroy the world for a weak or shallow reason. This isn’t the case for Please Save my Earth, though. Heck, the major villain is actually the best-developed character of the entire series!
Please Save my Earth is one of those rare six-episode OVAs that prefers to focus on the story and the major villain, instead of the usual characters. The setting is also a memorable one, with a few similarities to Fantastic Children, and it makes sure that the villain has a good reason for his grudges.
Unfortunately, the good guys do have their problems. Don’t get me wrong, they’re deep, they’re developed, but unfortunately they haven’t been fleshed out well enough. Please Save my Earth seems to be another manga-adaptation, and in the end six episodes turned to be too small for this story. At times, the characters also keep angsting while it would have been better to see more of their sides. Especially the background story: it has so much potential, but we hardly see anything of it.
Still, for an OVA, this is definitely an above-average one. It starts out really annoying, but soon a twist will make you see that this is more than just an ordinary high-school drama. The animation may be a bit dated (this is fifteen years old), the music has been composed by Yoko Kanno in her early days, and it shines. Combine this with deep characters and you have quite a good way to spend three hours.
I’ve been wanting to see this for a long time, but the English release is quite hard to find. And you’re right about the manga adaptation; indeed, the manga’s 21 volumes long, all of which is necessary to the story. (I’d encourage you to check it out if you’re the manga reading type; it’s my very favorite series ^_^)
I’ve watched the first episode of this and read the first few volumes of the manga. It was nice to follow as an adaption of the manga because I knew what was supposed to happen, but I’m not sure how well that’ll work once I get past the material I’m familiar with from the manga.
Wow, I saw this one a long time ago, early in my fandom. I remember it had great music but seemed half-baked, with an incomplete story at best. Can’t remember much else, unfortunately, as I only saw it once.
Haha I remember this anime, I had rented it when I was little but I do not remember anything about it other than it creeped me out and that the small shounen-ai bits were a little embarassing to watch when I was watching it with my parents.
Heh, I can understand the low ratings, I first read the manga first and when I found out that there’s anime version I was excited to watch this but meh, at over 20 volumes long they could have at least made it into a 20 plus episodes. 🙁
I remember finding this anime on accident. I was searching for some anime online, and this one kept coming up and eventually I got so curious I watched it. I was not displeased.
I so wish PSME had gotten the full series animated. I’ve yet to actually read the manga, but it’s on my list. Definitely. The anime was so intriguing, and the sixth episode brought up so many interesting things that I wanted to see more of (at least I think it did, it’s been a few months since I watched it).
I loved the animation, though. This type of old, almost dirty looking anime looks great in my eyes.