The Third: The Girl With the Blue Eye originally developed from a light novel series dating back to 1999. The anime was originally released in 2006. The show however does feel a bit older than it really is, like a hybrid of a 1990’s environment and setting with an early 2000’s style. The show bounces between the genres of action and sci-fi, but retains a strong and poetic slice-of-life feel.
The series follows a character named Honoka as she travels a post-apocalyptic desert world in a sand tank, fulfilling job requests and helping people. She is an outcast of her own people, who are called The Third. They are a world governing body and a special race of humans with a red eye in the middle of their foreheads. Their goal is to prevent the world from being nearly destroyed again in another great war, so they restrict humans from having any advanced technology.
Even though Honoka is similar to The Third, she lives on earth traveling the deserts for work as a freelancer and nomad. My favorite part of the series is the poetic moments. Often, Honoka’s thoughts are shared by a narrator, but this doesn’t take away from the show like most series of this style. These moments add meaning and depth to the social moments and even more to the action scenes which begin to conflict with the audiences emotions in the same way it affects Honoka’s.
Honestly, this show is not for everyone. If you mainly like deep stories and a carefully crafted plot, you will love this show. It monopolizes on character development and painstakingly reveals the environment of the story. If you like shows like Eureka Seven, Barakamon, or similar shows, you will like The Third: The Girl With the Blue Eye.
My only complaint with the show is that it is a little slow at first. That only last a few episodes, but it does make the show work. Also, I normally prefer subtitles only, but the dub is very good and I like it as much as the subbed version.
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The Third is a show that reads almost exactly like a Roleplay I’d craft for my best friend. All machines are alive, the morally ambiguous bishounen, The overly perky and martial main character, Bogey…The similarities were so bizarre it became a running gag between us. It’s also one of our favorite shows that we’ve watched jointly.
Ironically, while we saw the first DVD for it in 2005-2006….we didn’t get to actually watch the show until 2012. My friend lost the second DVD for it, forcing me to eventually buy the compilation of the entire show for Christmas and go, “Hey, you know that thing we never did because we lost the thing? Well I have ALLLL of it now.”
She got the reference instantly. It is one of our fondest moments. :}
I love this show. Though, I must confess that most of my favorite moments occur when Honoka has her pistol or katana in hand–not when she’s quoting Donna Myfree. But, The Third does a great job at balancing the character depth and worldbuilding with action. I can’t really think of another show like it, though Eureka 7, which you noted above, might come the closest.