(12 episodes)
What’s it about ?
The most cheerful post-apocalyptic series you’ll ever watch.
Characters
Our unnamed protagonist lives in a small rural village as a mediator to the fairies, on behalf of the UN. This basically makes her in charge of the female population here, mostly by virtue of having a clue and not being afraid of abusing her authority.
She lives with her grampa, a scientist also studying the fairies. And he’s very obviously calling the shots in the village, for about the same reasons.
The locals seem to suffer from a severe case of the stupids, and are barely able to function anymore. It’s funny until starvation because of their own incompetence becomes a plot point.
Fortunately there’s the fairies… and whoever’s running the mysterious FairyCo that’s been dropping free (awful-tasting) food recently.
Production Values
Well, that’s a good way to make a post-apocalyptic setting very creepy indeed : over-saturated bright colours everywhere, and the more pink the better. And that’s before the headless chicken start showing up, or the action moves to the utterly absurd FairyCo factory.
Overall Impression
Warning : this show doesn’t bother to explain anything about its setting : why has humanity declined ? Is this village typical of the world ? What state is the UN in ? (Our protagonists don’t seem to have access to any technology or outside help.) What’s with the fairies ? Indeed, it seems to revel in the explosive decompression of throwing the viewer into this strange land, even spending a lot of time on pointing out that our heroine just had her hair cut for undisclosed reasons and not being comfortable with it : is there any significance to it ?
Fortunately, we have a strongly-defined central character to latch onto, with enough shrewdness and cynicism to compensate for the braindead villagers. What prevents her from being obnoxious is that she doesn’t really get away with it, thanks to her grandfather’s vigilance.
But what really sets this series apart is the sharp contrast between the sugar-coated presentation and the very black humour at its core (the bleeding bread scene in particular has perfect comedic timing). There’s also a strong sense that it knows exactly where it’s going and the haphazard pacing is deliberate.
Somehow, this looks like one of the most original and refreshing shows of the summer. (Yes, more than that one with the talking yeast.) Very worth checking out.
