Suisei no Gargantia: Meguru Kouro, Haruka

I am really glad this series got a continuation in the form of two 53 minute OVAs. The OVAs continue to build the story of the original series as Ledo, now an archeologist unearths treasures from the ocean trying to understand his ancient civilization more. I must say it is a bit different from the original series but its not a bad thing. Overall I liked it and recommend you watch it if you were a fan of the original series. I find myself very interested in the overall mecha tech in this series and I hope the series gets a continuation in the future ... to elaborate more. I wouldn't even mind if we got to see more space warfare with Ledo confronting and stopping the war between humanity and the hideauze. I hope to see Chamber again in some form as well!

"Far beyond the voyage" is a two episode OVA series for Suisei no Gargantia that expands on the worldbuilding of the original series. You could think of it as a movie that is split into two episodes. It doesn't explore the already known cast any further or go into detail about the Galactic Alliance or Hideauze, but does expand upon the waterworld very nicely.

We get to have a glimpse of the daily life inside Gargantia once more and will see what Ledo is doing after the events of the series. Some clues about the history of the Earth before the colonists left it are revealed. ... Meanwhile, we get a flashback about an incident in Gargantia when Chamber was around.

The actual story starts only after these events. It has something to do with the new character, but I won't spoil the details. This storyline is ittedly quite generic, but during its course it allows the viewers to know more about the Earth outside of just the Gargantia. Unfortunately however, it doesn't focus on it too much and only narrates it in a superficial way. But this is still a great thing because the main series never did that and left it only for speculation.

The battles are not many and they don't have the same tension as the main series. Depending on which aspect of the series you liked, it is possible that some may be disappointed with the OVAs. So I say watch it with low expectations.

The animation is gorgeous as always but a slight dip in quality is noticeable in the way the waves are animated during some scenes. The soundtrack is great, calming most of the time. These have always been strong points in the show and this OVA is no exception. The OP and the ED fit the overall atmosphere well.

Overall I enjoyed this more than I expected. Most of the side characters stay shallow, but the interesting world makes up for it. Recommended for the fans and anyone who is interested in seeing more of the world of Suisei no Gargantia.

Spoiler warning, I guess.

I tried… so hard to care about this two-part OVA, and ended up playing solitaire for half of episode 1. Lima isn’t interesting, and the way her story ends is… so very bad. The mini stories in episode 1 aren’t interesting. The stakes at the end of episode 1 were slightly exciting, I guess? Pinion negging Lukkage and Bellows has never been interesting and it’s not interesting here. The one interesting part was actually seeing more types of ships in the Gargantia fleet to confirm that it is a fleet in the military sense, as well. And then the plot took some ... extra stupid pills, which even put the main series to shame.

Land is apparently an actual thing, and with multiple countries, no less! To me it’s not so much a plot hole as it’s really the only way a lot of things make sense. Like is it randomly added here? Yeah. But does it actually make the main series less stupid? Yeah. It doesn’t fix most things with the main series plot because the story is still bad in other ways and it sounds like what this new plot thing would fix is not how things work, so… This series is just bad all around, really.

Anyway, there’s a beach episode. …Woo. /sarcasm. I guess you can expect it on a show that’s mostly on the water, but still. In a series that is already quite boring, this really doesn’t help.

On the spectrum of OVAs, I think this one’s budget was really low. A lot of the animation is downright ugly. Not to mention how bad the writing is. But hey, you get a lot of Ledo and Amy hugging, I guess. So on the balance, it’s only… mostly bad.

I do not understand why precisely one commander on the Gargantia is a woman. We don’t even see female underlings outside Lukkage and Bellows’ bikini/short shorts-clad henchpeople. Even Lima appears to be the only woman on her crew. At least Vacation Island has at least one woman in charge, I guess.

Overall… if you’ve gotten this far, I guess it’s worth watching for completion’s sake? There’s nothing new about the music that I noticed - it’s just reused from the main series. Otherwise, skip this. Watch literally anything else. “Macross Frontier” and “Promare” are great for mechs and stupid and drama and good music and fights. Heck, if you want a swimming show, watch “Free!”. Don't waste your time here.