Series Review: Bye Bye, Earth part 1

This adaptation of the first novel by writer Tow Ubukata (Mardock Scramble, Le Chevalier d’Eon, Heroic Age, much of the Fafner franchise) was originally announced to be two cours, but not until episode 10 aired on 9/13 did anyone know that this meant two split cours, with the second half now due out sometime in 2025. Plenty enough is going on in its first half (which supposedly adapts about the first 40% of the lengthy novel) to warrant a look at just that much, however. In fact, the argument might be made that too much is going on here.

The story follows Belle, a young woman of indeterminate age; she appears to be in her early-to-mid-teens, but the fact that her actual age is unclear may, in fact, be a plot point. She exists an a world where she is “Featureless,” the only pure human; everyone else has some degree of animal features, and she is regarded with suspicion and/or as an extreme oddity because of that. After leaving her adoptive parents, she is taken in and trained by a Soloist (essentially, an adventurer) who is cursed to only be able to fight as part of training someone, and does odd monster-related jobs for him before eventually setting off in search of her origins. To do so she becomes a Soloist herself (which involves taking on her own curse: to not be able to cut living things) and seeks to become a nomad, which allows her to travel freely. Along the way she encounters a number of eccentric individuals, including the part-rabbit Kitty the All, a princess who is a master songstress, gender-changing merfolk, a king who is melded with a god, and a Soloist who causes everything he touches to wither. She also gets involved in a number of armed conflicts, all while seeking the meaning of her existence. She’s hardly the only one who wants to know how this “Girl of Reason” (whatever that means) will affect things, either.

Depending on one’s viewpoint, the series is either a triumph or a calamity of world-building. Ubukata clearly made a deliberate effort to craft a setting that is as different from fantasy norms as possible, and supposedly he’s on record as admitting that he overdid it in this regard. Some of the tweaks are fascinating; for instance, musical performance is a pervasive theme, but not quite in the standard way. Battles are plays where armies are Acts, units are Bands, specialists are Solists (i.e., soloists), generals are Conductors, strategists are composers, and a good chunk of the army is a marching band. Singing is used to supplement growing crops, manipulating weather, and building structures, but singing purely for entertainment is a foreign concept, and one major test literally involves being able to get a piano to make sound. Swords are “grown” and bonded to their wielders, so a sword being broken is calamitous and using another’s sword is anathema, and they carry both names and spells. Mermaids are gender-fluid in a literal sense and take on the opposite gender of whomever they become attached to (a lot of loaded meaning in that one which may or may not have been intended!), and death notices are delivered by creatures that are part-plant, part-raven.

The problem is that all of these details can be overwhelming in some cases and nonsensical in others, thus making the task of parsing what is really going on here difficult. For now, the story is most appreciable if one gives up on trying to figure out the bigger picture and just goes with the flow on the details. At essence, Belle is on a classic journey that combines coming-of-age and self-discovery themes, while another prominent character is fully on a self-discovery journey as he tries to understand what makes him different as well, albeit in entirely different (and, as is eventually revealed, diametrically contrasting) ways to Belle.

Things get muddled with any attempt to analyze the more complicated elements. Some of this is typical storytelling obfuscation, such as what significance the title “girl of reason” has in the story (titles seem to be very important and laden with meaning in this setting) and what the Divine Tree is really up to; the last episode throws out some fresh, disturbing implications on that. Other cases, however, leave the sense of just not understanding enough about this very unusual world yet, and while some of that may be deliberate information control on the part of Ubukata, clarification is greatly needed in other cases. And then there’s random little tidbits like flowers that sprout cute puppy heads for no apparent reason. This one may tilt too much into the “show, don’t tell” philosophy for its own good, so more exposition would actually be welcome.

While not the most personable of heroines, Belle is at least appealing enough as the protagonist struggling to overcome being the outsider. She can swing a big sword (which looks as heavy as she is!) in a fight but still come across as quite emotionally vulnerable and provide a grounded perspective on all of the relative weirdness in this setting. Over the second half of the first part, the Solist Adonis the Question gradually rises to become the most important supporting character, to the point that major plot developments late in this half are more about him than Belle. At this point, all the rest of the recurring characters seem peripheral to these two, but that’s fine since they are clearly meant to carry the weight of the story.

The technical production by LIDEN FILMS excels in both background and character designs, pairing those with an animation effort that isn’t top-rate but better than average; this is, overall, a good-looking show. Its greatest technical merit lies in the musical score by Kevin Penkin, which sometimes uses tense electronica numbers but also leans heavily into orchestral arrangements.

At the time of this writing, the English dub has been completed up through episode 8. Anchored by Megan Shipman (Anya in Spy x Family, Maple in BOFURI), it is a strong dub, with every role cast right and performed appropriately. It doesn’t seem to lose or gain any meaning in English, either – for better or worse.

The series can be a bit gimmicky in places – nearly all of the names etched into swords spell out something meaningful in English if spelled backwards, for instance – but it does seem to be trying to be bold and different for reasons beyond just being bold and different. (Although it definitely does do that, too, at times.) The seasons ends on something of a cliffhanger, one that promises a major change in status quo for an important character, and despite some flaws along the way, I have become invested enough in Belle’s story that I will be returning to see it through when its second part airs next year.