Blue Gender

This is one of those few animes that got interesting concepts but the ending totally ruined the series and make it forgettable. Marathoned the series on December and i can see how Blue Gender got its reputation of grimdarkness and how it ties with Muvluv series. From what i know Ryosuke Takahashi served as the creative director for Blue Gender but he is not the main director in charge which is why i can see the outcome of the series. The story of the series basically about humanity fighting giant insect creature called Blue(basically mix of Radam and Starship troopers bug) to reclaim Earth as their home with some kill'em all and gore thrown here and there.

Blue Gender really strong lead heroine and protagonist with good potential as well as great Real Robot mecha concepts. I think that the concept of the main heroine regaining her humanity while the protagonist slowly losing his is an interesting one but Blue Gender didn't properly pull it off until the end to make any impact. Also another problem from the series, is that it kills way too many side characters for any good story development which at least have some of them survive until the end. The first half of the series is done quite well but from the second half, Blue Gender slowly decline and the ending probably drive the last nail to the coffin. The movie could have create a change but in the end it is even worse than the TV series.

As the header of this post implies, Muvluv does take plenty of inspiration from Blue Gender, mainly for the TSFs and BETAs. The Assault Rifle, Servo Arms and couple of bits from TSF are based on Armor Shrikes parts and you can see F-22's spiky kneecaps is a homage to Armor Shrikes in a way. While Blue doesn't have many similarities with BETA when it comes to appearance, the concept does. From the Hives and how BETA make humans as their raw material is likely inspired from Blue Gender, i think that Sadogashima Hive Spire is also inspired from this series as well. There is one Blue strains that is probably the inspiration for Ruitare or Destroyer class which i can't find the picture but it is shown in the early episodes. With this much similarities you can see how Blue Gender influence Muvluv and in a way you can say that Muvluv is the more commercially successful version of Blue Gender. Unfortunately from Alternative onwards, the series have been stagnating too much.

Blue Gender probably makes a good SRW material with gruntish mecha like Votoms and the OP theme definitely will make an awesome theme in SRW. I still wonder why there are no single plamo or two ever comes out from the series. If you like Muvluv, i think Blue Gender worth to have a watch to see one of the series source inspiration.