Gather round, young children, as I tell you a post-apocalyptic tale where disaster and declining birth rates has caused humanity to fall and a new race of beings to rise. What is the name of this series you ask? Metro 2033? Nope.Mad Max? Nope. Adventure Time? You're getting closer but nope.
No, the name of this story is...
Humanity Has Declined
Studio: AIC A.S.T.A.
Director: Seiji Kishi
Original work by: Romeo Tanaka
Licensed by: Sentai Filmworks
Number of episodes: 12
Genre: Comedy
Story:
As stated above, Humanity Has Declined takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where some kind of disaster and declining birth-rates have put humanity on the decline (Get used to hearing the word "decline".) The beings who are replacing humanity are, well...
...Fairies.
fairies. It sets this up in two episode arcs, minus two independent episodes before the last arc, each of which is connected but self-contained on its own. The story in each arc varies anywhere from the main three characters investigating the origin of strange food that the fairies have brought to the village to the fairies making the heroine their queen to the heroine getting stuck in an Endless-Eight-esque time-loop caused by a fairy-made banana, among others.
One of the most interesting things about these arcs, however, is how they are presented out of chronological order with each arc in a different place in the time-line than its actual order. Each arc is contained enough that this jumping around the time-line does not cause too much confusion since the viewer's attention is not focused on the sequence. However, it does feel a bit weird at times like when an arc that has the characters already established finishes, and then the next episode heads to an arc where the characters first meet.
Characters:
One of the most notable aspects of all the characters is that they do not actually have real names. Since the heroine narrates the series, she usually refers to herself in the first person. The assistant is only known as "the assistant", and her grandfather is only referred to as Grandfather. Other characters have only nicknames such as the heroine's yaoi loving friend Y, the cat-girl-robot Pion (Or P-ko) and the overly-affectionate-to-the-heroine girl, Curly.
I honestly found myself really loving the heroine as a character. As I stated above she narrates the series, and we pretty much view everything from her point of view. As such we hear a lot of her commentary on the situations she finds herself in. This commentary can range from very witty to downright intelligent. As a character, she tends to have a cynical and grim outlook on life since she has observed the slow decline of humanity. (She mentions the series' title quite a lot.) She is usually the most sensible person in situations since her primary job is to be a mediator between the fairies and humans, but she also tries to find ways to make situations benefit herself, which often blows back into her face.
The fairies themselves tend to hold rather honest and innocent viewpoints and have a total disregard for human safety at times. They possess logic-defying magical powers that the heroine refers to as fairy technology. Supposedly, the more fairies you have near you, the more likely you are to survive an otherwise un-survivable situation. Unfortunately the fairies themselves are usually the source of these difficulties. The fairies flock towards the heroine as she is one of the few people who can still make sweets. The most notable thing about the fairies is that each one has a permanent smile. They are constantly smiling which leads to some... nightmare inducing scenes...
The main thing I'll knock Humanity Has Declined for is its uneven character development. Some side characters like Y, the assistant and Pion get a good solid amount of character development in their own episodes, but other characters such as the poor girl who takes care of orphans in the first arc and the woman doctor in the "Time-Management" episodes are introduced for only a short time before being more or less ignored. I suppose the primary focus of the series is the heroine, but it was still noticeable enough to bug me.
Animation:
I admit I have not watched many AIC series outside of Bamboo Blade and Pumpkin Scissors, so I cannot really judge this series in comparison to their other series. However, the animation is quite constant. I did not notice many drops with characters in the background having less general detail than characters in the foreground. While certainly not Bones' level of quality, it does a nice job of complementing the characters' actions and the comedy elements of the series.
Two of the things I absolutely loved about this series, however, are the amount of detail poured into the backgrounds and lighting. Each scene has copious amounts of bright and vibrant colors to it, and the painted brush stroke feel of its art makes each scene feel more like a page from a well-illustrated picture book than a scene from an anime.
It is not often I find myself commenting on how good a series' lighting is in anime, but Humanity Has Declined does it well. The lighting has a similar stylization to the artwork. The hexagon and circular plume of the light sources mixed with the well placing of shadows gives the series nice contrast to the abundance of color in the normal backgrounds.
Sound:
The soundtrack does a good enough job of not getting in the way of the visual design but ends up being forgettable at times. The opening song itself is alright, but the opening is only really memorable for how out there the visuals are. The closing, however, I found worked wonderfully. Both the song and visuals in the closing give off the same picture book-esque feeling you get from the series itself.
Currently, Sentai Filmworks has not released an official dubbing forHumanity Has Declined, so it is only currently available in subs. Though considering the mixed-bag quality of Sentai's dubs, this might not necessarily be a negative.
Personal Enjoyment:
To be frank, I enjoyed Humanity Has Declined quite a lot. Yes, it could have done with a little more character development for some of the minor characters, but the heroine herself is fully developed. Her commentary is always enjoyable, and she always feels like an intelligent character, even when stuff blows up in her face (which happens a lot). The music did a nice enough job of complementing the series itself that even though I felt it was forgettable at times, it worked. The background art work and lighting are some of the most pleasant I have seen in the last couple of years.
It is one of the few series I would call witty. While it is not the series that has made me laugh the hardest (see: Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu and Is This a Zombie? of The Dead), its humor felt genuinely clever to me.
Final Verdict:
After assigning scores to:
Story: 4.00
Characters: 4.00
Animation: 5.00
Sound: 3.75
And my Personal Enjoyment: 4.50
I have given Humanity Has Declined an assigned rating of:
4.25/5.00
Recommendation:
I'd suggest streaming the first two episodes before deciding since the first episode is a bit dry in the beginning. Once you get to the "Bread" scene you will know what you are in for. Otherwise, I can whole-heartedly give Humanity Has Declined a buy recommendation.
Humanity Has Declined is available for stream on Crunchyroll, Hulu andThe Anime Network for free and can be purchased off of Amazon,Crunchyroll's store, Rightstuf and anywhere else you can purchase anime dvds/blurays
Alternative anime to check out:
Angel Beats
Another anime directed by Seiji Kishi, Angel Beats does a wonderful job of mixing comedy with action, romance and tragedy. Angel Beats remains one of the few series that can make me laugh my butt off one moment and then bring me near to tears the next.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
On their surface, Humanity Has Declined and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya appear to have nothing in common. However, if you look at the structure of both, you find a lot of similar aspects to them. Both have out of order episodes and first person perspectives and narrations from the main character. Humanity Has Declined has an episode where the heroine becomes the god of the fairies and Haruhi pretty much is God... They both have time skip episodes...
Plus, it's freaking Haruhi Suzumiya so it should already be somewhere on your To Watch list anyways.
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