Divergence Eve

I’d like to start this review of Divergence Eve by getting something off my… er… by making a confession. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t comment on this aspect of Divergence Eve at all, but it’s impossible to ignore something this… big. To put it simply, the women of Divergence Eve are extraordinarily well-endowed; they all have breasts that look, depending on how the animators felt like drawing them, like they are between 30% and 50% of their total body mass. I’m exaggerating, but only slightly; the character design for Divergence Eve is absurd. The way that this anime shows off its characters’… physical attributes… is even worse. The more or less rare occasional nudity aside, the training uniforms that the characters wear consists of a bikini bottom, crop top, and boots slightly below the knee. Basically, Eve goes beyond mere fanservice. The fact that no living woman looks anything remotely like this occasionally confuses the animators, who have clear difficulty figuring out how to draw such ridiculous anatomy from time to time.

Moving on to the other elements of Divergence Eve, the anime is competent and worth watching. A fair number of sequences are CG, but they tend to stand out from the usual animated style; compare this to other animes, like Last Exile, where there are elements of CG but a strong effort is made for those elements to blend in. The plot follows Misaki Kureha , a cadet for Seraphim, an elite group of mech pilots (the mecha in question are referred to as “Rampart Armor” in the show). Misaki is, to put it frankly, really bad at her job. She doesn’t follow orders, she misappropriates carriers, misses targets with astonishing inaccuracy, and has nervous breakdowns that would put Shinji Ikari from NGE to shame (I actually wondered at one point if Misaki’s behavior was meant to be a subtle parody of Shinji; I’m still not sure). Fortunately for her, she can also flip out, transform, and kill things with superhuman skill, such as the “ghouls” that Seraphim is secretly fighting to protect the outpost of Watcher’s Nest. The ending of this series is especially disappointing. So little is truly resolved, it makes you wonder why various questions about Misaki, the ghouls, and Watcher’s Nest were raised in the first place. I can’t decide if the promo for the sequel, Misaki Chronicals, is merely good marketing or a way to say “OK, we know we’re not really done, we’re sorry, we’ll make it up to you”.

Just eliminating one of the earlier episodes of this series and expanding the ending a bit, cutting back on the over the top fanservice oriented character design, and spending a bit more time and money on the computer graphics would have probably placed Divergence in good company with the likes of Evangelion – a truly great anime series. Divergence Eve is sad not because of anything inherently sad about its plot, but because it could have been so much better. Divergence Eve had potential in its concept and plot that, if more fully explored and exploited, could have really made this series a classic. As-is, it’s worth at least a rental.