Japanese animation (anime) - ぼくの地球を守って

Name: Please Save My Earth
Episodes: 6 OVA
Vintage: 1993
Style:

ぼくの地球を守って - Preview

Preview

Alice just got to Tokyo from the county side, and is suffocated by overpopulation, pollution and the stressful life. She was always attentive to nature and, for some reason, nature always somehow favored her. While dealing with her abusive little neighbor Rin, Alice ends up in a strange talk with her schoolmates Issei and Jinpachi: They claim to have the exact same dream ever since grade school, where they were aliens on a moon base with the role to monitor Earth's development. To much Alice's surprise, she ends up having the same dream as one of said moon base crew of 7.

Pacing

While most of the focus is at Alice and her schoolmates’ quest for the remaining crewmembers, there is a fair deal of focus between her and her neighbor Rin, who despite being 6 years younger, falls in love with her. While touching slightly on some environmentalist themes, Please Save my Earth ends up being more about romance, drama and sci-fi than anything else, and eventually the character interactions and their growth into how their situation affects their lives and relationships are the centerpiece of what could be called an epic adventure.

Conclusion

Unfortunately the title lacks playtime to further explain each character's unique past and motivation, and the last episode somehow rushes into the closure in such a way some viewers might not get it, and truth be told, some might get disappointed (read out essay). Yet, the end is very fitting to the title's proposal, and as long those deluded that Please Save my Earth is about strong aliens with EPS (mind power) fighting keep their hopes down and understand this is more an emotional title focusing on what's important and themes such as life and death, love and hate, one should be safe to enjoy this title to the fullest.

Before anything can be said about Please save my Earth, the resemblances with the later series Fantastic Children cannot be really a coincidence, and one wonders if Takashi Nakamura (author of Fantastic Children) had some of his ideas from this excellent manga/anime. Anyway, what is most interesting on this title is obviously how it ends.

While some people were expecting some super-sayajin fight among ESP'ers, the title delivers the total opposite closure: As Rin/Shion gets hurt by Haru/Shuukaido and Mikuro (the Earth ESP'er), he eventually realizes how futile and empty his hatred and revenge on his past (the moon base). Others characters also eventually reach the same conclusion, that although having memories of their past life is interesting, they are not bound by them: Issei is Issei, not Enju, and thus should not let her (Enju) feeling's in his new life as Issei - and so on. Alice is the first, if not right from start, to understand she does not have to do anything with the knowledge of her past life, but rather, she has to accept her new life. And that's what the end is all about: characters accepting their lives, accepting their new challenges, and moving on to new challenges. Sakura (Shusuran) convinces Issei (Enju) he should forget his love for Jinpachi (Gyokuran) since that's Enju's feelings, not Issei (meaning, it's her past life relationship).

Alice is not interested in the intrigues and issues from her past life and tries to convey that to her friends by denying she was Mokuren. While that's false, what she really wants them to understand is that she is another person, in another life - she is Alice, the earthling clumsy Alice, who - it seams - might eventually fall in love with Rin not because he is the reincarnation of her previous life - Shion - but simply because she did, because she learns how to love him in this life. And as Shion/Rin also reaches this enlightenment seeing how futile his struggle to destroy the memento of his suffering is (he is obsessed in sending the signal to the moon base to self destruct because somehow he believes that could erase the nine years he spent alone, in despair, after all other crewmembers died), he learns to appreciate his new life, this new chance to grow. He remembers of his old master and Kya, and how he left empty when they died - but by dying, they did not leave him, they were inside of him, in his memories, in his emotions. Also, it's possible that the real intent of Shion was actually to activate the moon base and attract human interest towards their technology, putting the earth in danger of a galactic war like their original planets, just as a even bigger revenge at his past life: destroying not only the base, but Earth itself, which brougth so much suffering for him at that life - and one more reason why he eventually quits this as he starts to like his new life. Likewise, his fellow crewmates just died before, and if Shuukaido was indeed somewhat malicious to cure only him from the unknown virus, leaving "alive" alone, knowing he would never break his promise with Mokuren to take on his own life, Shuukaido was only trying his best to keep his colleague alive.

Regardless of the end their past life had, they are now free, and thus, Rin quits his revenge, and peace falls among them. And for the best of for worse, they are human now, except they will eventually awaken for their spiritual powers, the same way as Alice shows the 4 dots, signs of God's blessing, at the end of the title. Earth might be experiencing a new evolution stage, or might be on the verge of destruction the same was as their planets where. Who's to tell? Some extra details are also quite interesting to remember: Shion, during the desperation moments at the moon base, got somewhat overflowed with anger and hate and hurt Mokuren, and blaimed Shukaido for all they were going thru. At the same time, Shukaido had a secret crush in Mokuren (which can be noted on some of his memories, and his password being the song Mokuren liked). Merging these together, Shukaido took the "one-person" vaccine oportunity to take revenge on Shukaido, under the pretense of this being the best option (though, somehow it was, so he did what was best AND he liked - call it irony). Eventually Shion notices this, and gains extra hatred towards Shukaido, specially noticing Shukaido's new appearance on Earth is the same as Shion's past life. Regarding appearances, likewise Shukaido choose a Shion look, Enju chose to be a man to try and be together with Gyokuren as a friend "forever". It also becomes somewhat clear that the Kirche-saches, which are the Sarjalin (God, though in their culture God is female) saints, are indeed close to angels. They can see past and future, they can even subtly change people's life in time-frame. The same way as Mokuren helped nature save Rin from his fall in the future, Alice sings to Shion in the past.

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