Trava: Fist Planet

I have no idea how could this Piece of Art be possibly underrated like this. It undermines my faith in the Anime Community and breakes my heart. But, oh-well, whatever.

To make it clear. This is a story of two dorks saving a princess.
And this story has all charm of "Jay and Silent Bob" comedies, it has almost Quentin Tarantino's dialogues and it has... well, really dope animation, but WHO CARES. The main characters at the most part of their screen time just chilling and smoking and talking anyway. While some serious science-fictional sh*t is going around. Hilarious!

These kind of stories will always have a ... special place in my heart. Rephrasing George Denis Patrick Carlin: "The Universe is fine. People are f**ked".

Not as good as the poster would suggest, and nowhere close to its sequel Redline, but Trava: Fist Planet is pretty good, and very goofy. I love just how strange the sci-fi world in Redline was, and we get to see even more of it here, even if it isn't nearly as entertaining. I'm not normally a fan of this very "Adult Swim"-esque risque and racy sci-fi world, but for some reason Redline, and Trava by extension, work very well for me.

I feel like I'd have enjoyed this way more, except that this only had Hungarian subtitles, and the English ones refused to load. Some ... of these characters were real big mumblers, I'll tell ya that. Very hard to understand mumbling. Speak up!

I watched this completely blind with no knowledge of Redline or really anything about it. This anime frustrates me because while alot of aspects aren't that great, it is *just* slightly away from being 'so bad it's good', ending up in this weird void between 'What the hell did I just watch?' and 'What the hell was the point?'

I really struggled to find any cohesive story or plot while watching, it's a complete mess of criss-crossing plotlines that just don't go anywhere or feel at all compelling. I can acknowledge that OVAs often have to cut back plot but this one just spews lore at ... you like a machine gun, with most of it only ever being explained at the end. Alot of it is cliche at best, and at the end there doesn't feel like any sort of resolution because nothing's been established properly. It feels like an attempt to imitate the style of FLCL or Project A-Ko, but without understanding why those work.

The audio just isn't anything really. I can't a single piece of music after watching and the voice actors seem to either emote in an apathetic mumble or while screaming at the top of their lungs which just makes them annoying. Characters also seem to cut eachother off constantly which while funny a few times, just completely breaks the flow of conversations making them feel awkward.

The only real reason I carried on was the animation, which really is superb though not surprising considered it's Madhouse. All of the environments are hand-drawn which makes them look retro but still very detailed. The smoothness of movement transitions is really strong and clearly alot of work went into them. While I appreciated the dramatic use of foreshortening and strange character designs, in alot of cuts they just end up looking awkward or hard to interpret. The princess character's pelvis in particular just makes her look aesthetically unappealing when viewed at any angle other than straight-on.