Season 1 |
Episode Guide
Little Bo Peep
Anchovy & Black Lizard
From the Abyss
As A Heartless Sword
From The Far East
Awakening
Iliaster
Princess in the Insect Cage
Insects’ Feast
Up
To You…
Finally, For You
Cagaster Of An Insect Cage could be one of the better animes of the year. There’s a really dark, emotional story at the heart of this one, propped up by some impressive action and a story with a couple of well-placed twists along the way to keep things interesting. Unfortunately this CGI-hybrid anime slips up quite spectacularly with its art style, oftentimes looking stunningly beautiful and then jarringly amateurish in the next scene. It’s especially damning because these moments strike just as the story is starting to take off and take you completely out of the moment.
The show opens with a healthy dose of exposition explaining the world we’re diving head-first into. In the year 2125, humans have been infected with an illness known as Cagaster, which turn them into monstrous insects. With normal weapons ineffective and specialist exterminators called in to do the dirty work, humanity stands on the brink of disaster but for one man – insect-hunter Kidou.
Early on he’s tasked with bringing a young girl called Ilie back to her mother whilst navigating across the insect-infested world outside. As the episodes tick by, the truth about Ilie’s parentage comes to light and with it, something far more darker and sinister than first meets the eye. All of this builds up to the final act which sees an epic fight between our main antagonist Cagaster Acht and Kidou himself, back-dropped by a ragtag group of humans fighting for survival against enemy forces. This spills over to a suitable ending, where things are resolved in a pretty satisfying manner and keep this as a self-contained 12 episode anime.
The story itself is essentially a mish-mash of many different influences, some that work and some that don’t. There’s a little bit of Attack On Titan, a little bit of Tokyo Ghoul and a whole dollop of Netflix’s Godzilla films squeezed together to form this hybrid of ideas. The problem is Cagaster Of An Insect Cage takes these elements but fails to inject the same charisma, charm and energy the former two mentioned (Ghoul and Titan) have in abundance. Therein lies the biggest problem with this anime.
Characters move like animatronic puppets, with stiff animations for the cel-shaded character models. Colours are muted, some characters are shown with no nose, others with a large chin and even more with different shaped eyes. The result is something that feels like its been thrown together by two or three different art teams. That’s before mentioning the incredulous laziness with some scenes that fail to even render a black line around creatures. The below pictures are a great example of this and are a pretty eye-opening examination of how poor some of these scenes actually are.
No black lines around the sheep and their bells are just floating awkwardly on their necks.
Ilie’s hair (left) has definition and thin lines but Kidou’s (right) is a single shade.
The background (on the right) blends into the hair, making it difficult to tell where one ends and another begins
While the above pictures may seem like nitpicking, it’s more frustration than anything else because Cagaster has potential. The musical score is great, the action scenes are exciting and the final, climactic fight is genuinely very good indeed and has some serious emotional weight behind it. Ilie’s origin is surprising and certainly makes for some great episodes as this is unraveled and to top it off, the ending is pretty good too. Unfortunately the animation and art style constantly undermines the storytelling and it’s hard to look past it.
Cagaster Of An Insect Cage is not the worst anime of the year (despite our damning assessment of the art style) but it’s certainly far from the best. There are so many anime titles out there and the recent Winter 2020 line-up features some really gorgeous hand-drawn offerings. If you can take to the CGI animation and it doesn’t put you off the story there’s a real wild ride here but much like our antagonist Acht, the jarring styles and ideas feel strewn together to form a grotesque hybrid that’s not very easy on the eye.
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Verdict - 4/10
4/10
The Story is a very good one, actually on par with many classic anime. The animation however is the lazy person CGI trash that so many production houses are pumping out today. It would be a welcome change to see a return to the animation style used in the 80s, or even better the fully hand drawn anime from before the 80s, where meticulous attention to small details were drawn into each cell of animation.
All that aside “Cagaster” is a good story that is worthy of an Anime fan’s time and attention.
FYI: for anyone saying it would be nice to see a second season there really is no need. The writers told the story explaining everything concerning Lilly and Kito in the existing season. They explained the how and why of the cagaster outbreaks and why Lilly was raised the way she was. To make another season would require the creation of new villains and have someone else figure out how to create another cagaster queen. The story has reached a conclusion and has no need to continue.
Say what you want, it’s just your opinion, it doesn’t represent anyone. I love the show, it’s one of the best anime I’ve seen, it deserves a second season.
I just can’t figure out why Netflix seems to heavily favor these 3D-CGI Hybrids animes. There’s soooo hard to get into. Movements are robotic, people look like boxes with sharp angles, its terrible. While the story line and action in this anime was actually quite good…the art style was on par with Berserk in terms of awfulness. I dont know Netflixs business practices, so I’m unsure if they have a hand behind choosing art studio that does each anime, if they do…they need to seriously upgrade their choice of studio to one that doesn’t pump out CGI trash.
I cant find a song for a first episod, when Kodov fight in night. Pls help 🙁
I actually liked it quite a bit. Sure, some art scenes were quite slacked but I feel like the people just never noticed it. To be honest, the only scene that I noticed the strange quality was the sheep scene which was shown for only a fragment of the episode anyways. I definitely agree with you but I think there’s a bit more positive things you can say about it as well!