LogFAQs > #980247281

I finished the first anime in my project to watch one from 100 different seasons. Spring 1998 clear, 99 to go!

Lost Universe was decent. It's about a group of zany characters bopping around on a spaceship doing odd jobs. There's Kane, a guy with a lightsaber who always wears a cape (he even has a cape on his bulky spacesuit, which got a laugh out of me). Canal, the ships sentient AI that exists as a hologram. And, my favorite, Millie, the girl who claims to be the best in the universe at everything even though she can't cook a meal without exploding the kitchen. The three of them had a fun dynamic where they got on each others nerves a lot of the time, but they always pulled together when it counted.

Roughly half the anime was mostly stand-alone episodes about their various odd jobs. One time they participated in a beauty contest while being hunted by an assassin. Another time they had to go into a malfunctioning facility as it sunk into a gas giant. My favorite episode was the one where, for wacky sci-fi reasons, they lost access to the ships only bathroom and things became increasingly uncomfortable. That episode was legitimately amazing, at one point Kane took Canal's prized houseplant hostage to try and convince her to let him pee in the corner (which, since she's literally the spaceship, she obviously didn't want him to do). Just the visual of him holding a lightsaber to the stem of a houseplant had me laughing uproariously.

Sadly, the other half of the anime was a super-serious plot about ancient spaceships and evil conspiracies. I didn't like that part of the show nearly as much. For one thing, these goofy characters just didn't work as well in a dramatic story. For another thing, it felt like they kept repeating certain plot points over and over. It wasn't bad, but it definitely dragged my opinion of the overall anime down. An entire show full of episodes like the silly bathroom one would've been amazing. Instead, Lost Universe was merely fine. I'm still glad I watched it, though.

I guess the author of this also did another similar series called Slayers. From everything I've read, the anime for that is supposed to be way better than Lost Universe. Given the hints of greatness this anime had, I'm going to have to watch Slayers someday and see if that's true!