We seem to be watching Lidenfilms display their upward mobility. There’s long been a hierarchy among specialist TV anime studios, and while you’d get some disagreement on the exact membership, it generally includes the likes of KyoAni, Bones, and Production I.G./Wit. They’re the studios production committees with a lot of pazoozas (like ones for big WSJ properties) turn to when it’s time to cash in adapt. But slowly but surely, Liden has been infiltrating the group. They’re getting bigger and bigger titles, and more frequently delivering very strong production values. A couple of years ago I don’t think anyone would have argued they should be in that elite category – now I think you can make a pretty good case.

That’s not to say that the anime these posh houses put out are always great – far, far from it. But there’s a certain template you see with those studios – big names involved (often the same ones), famous composer on music, lots of eye candy instead of substance – for their mediocre anime. And Bye Bye, Earth for all the world reminds me of a throwaway show from I.G. (who specialize in them) or even Bones. It’s based on an almost 25 year-old novel by Ubukata Tow. It’s adapted by Yoshino Hiroyuki (the king of this sort of series), and features music by Kevin Penkin. It looks and sounds great, but there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of “there” there.

What we have here is the story of a teenager named Belle who seems to be the only pure human in a world of hybrids, who look on her with undisguised revulsion. She acts as a sort of hitwoman for her master, a “nomad” named Sian. She has no idea why she’s the only one of her kind, or who her real family is. She was drawn to a sword in a church, tried to steal it, and was eventually taken in by the gruff but kindly Sian, who taught her its use. This world seems to be cursed with “flowers”, who drop from the sky and require a nomad to come along and eliminate them with tearful regret.

This first episode appears to be mainly prequel, as it finds Belle striking down Sian (at his insistence) as a means of accepting a curse and going on a journey of trials. The purpose? To prepare her to pass an exam to become a nomad herself. Just why Belle has to (seemingly) kill Sian in order to do this isn’t clear, but if indeed the actual body of the plot is the journey aspect, it’s entirely possible that the rest of the series will be very different from the first episode. That first episode was okay, but came off as really generic. As such, change would in my mind be a good thing.

Ubukata is no Tolstoy even in anime terms, but he’s certainly capable of coming up with interesting material. I gotta say, though, the vibe from the premiere suggests that’s unlikely here. It does indeed look and sound great – Penkin is the master of this sort of score, and the backgrounds have an almost Shinkai look to them at times. Maybe doing this sort of Guilty Crown-esque trifle is, in its way, a rite of passage for Lidenfilms – a statement that they are becoming one of the big boys in the industry, for better or worse.