An unexplained natural disaster brings down the World Wide Web all around the Earth. Panic ensues! So far, the cause is unknown to humanity, but not to us: a robot lady with an indifferent expression has engineered it from space. Cue the opening, after which we hear of riots and chaos abroad. In Okinawa, though, life mostly goes on as usual. Teenagers, of course, are in despair about the lack of social media, and adults are worried about what this might entail for tourism, but that seems to be the worst of it. Enter Akira, a 13-year-old who goes out to do his daily karate training, even if his athletic older sister Haruka makes fun of him or, when that doesn’t work, tells him that he’s trying too hard and may hurt his development. Akira feels he has to get stronger, though. After all, unlike his sister, he doesn’t have the Engine, the alien superpower that lets her materialize a giant robot out of thin air. Haruka was fortunate enough to inherit that power from her father, who was an alien exile of a dead world, destroyed by an evil AI. He died trying to save Earth from suffering the same fate. She apparently tends to be a bit flippant when using this power, though, so her mum has forbidden its use under pain of grounding. Nevertheless, some circumstances merit an exception. An American war jet about to crash is one of them. An attack by a skeleton-like robot with blazing eyes, alerted by the rescue of the airplane, is surely another. But when the fight starts to look tough for Haruka, Akira discovers that he cannot just stand aside…

“It looks video-gamey, ” I muttered to myself two minutes in, “and the dialogue is clunky.” Besides, the four girls at the opening reminded me suspiciously of a harem. All in all, I went in fully expecting to dislike this one, but I’m happy to say I ultimately found Vertex Force to be an enjoyable, if humble, example of the mecha genre. I enjoyed the fights, I liked the atmosphere, and I was intrigued by the story. Indeed, the 3D sometimes steers into the uncanny valley, and the dialogue gets a bit stilted occasionally, but I found both Akira and Haruka to be quite compelling, and I appreciated the depiction of their brother-sister loving rivalry. I liked that they shared the protagonism too; I appreciate multiple perspectives, and stories with a sibling bond at the center are automatically more interesting to me. It doesn’t hurt that they live in Okinawa, where my wife spent her high school years. Their origin story draws from concepts I like to see explored in fiction: Superman! The Incredibles! Here we go! Besides, the other character designs are intriguing, the music is good, and the colors are vibrant. The fight was appropriately tense, and though the defects I pointed out never went away, I ended up having a pleasant watch nevertheless. I’ll watch at least another episode, I think.

Vertex Force can be streamed on Crunchyroll.