It’s time to look at another Light Novel adaption (as in series that was based on a light novel). This time let’s go for a rather weird concept with Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere. A series focused on characters and politics, to the point where there are entire episodes devoted to negotiations, which oddly did not get boring (I know… odd that, though maybe if our politicians had magic powers and giant robots more young people would be interested in it).

The setting is… odd to explain. Set so far into the future Man went into space except  for Japan. Then weird things happened, and everything but Japan became inhospitable. Everyone returned and beat Japan up and split it up into sections and named them after various countries (the uk is a floating island that is a mini British Isles for some reason) and are now recreating history in a hurried fashion to try to speed them back into space (takes a deep breath, yeah its odd). Now each region is basically run by an academy, Japan by the Musashi Ariadust Academy and England (yeah once again Scotland got lumped in.. but not completely ignored, we are mentioned and one character in season 2 is Scottish) by Oxford. And each of these academies have their own uniforms which for no explained reason all the female versions are basically form fitting shiny bodysuits… no they never explain that.

The first episode introduces us to the main cast, and it’s a large one, an entire year of students as they all try to catch their gym teacher as she runs to the other side of their giant flying ship which the city they live in is on. ( so much of this show is odd). We are then introduced to the chronically happy lead Tori Aoi who tells everyone he’s going to propose to his child hood sweet heart Horizon Ariadust, except, she died when they were young.

Each character has their own little story that you hear more of as the story goes on. Because of the attempts to recreate history many are named after famous figures in history but they don’t stick them to their genders… or species ( season 2 has a Moe half elf Shakespeare!) So for example my favourite character Honda Masazumi is a female character who dresses in men’s clothes and has no breasts, you learn that she had them removed as she was originally going to have a sex change operation to better fit the name. The wide variety of characters does mean that you will find one you like (THERE ARE LESBIAN WITCH ANGELS IN BODY SUITS! let that sink in).

Season one is in fact set over just 2 days, this means early on there is a fair bit of back and forth, as you see the events of day one from numerous people’s perspectives so redoing the early hours a few times. Day two however is much more linear and action focused, well after Masazumi has a negotiation battle with the series villain THE POPE! (really people if you aren’t finding all this nuts you must be one of the most amazing people in the world, and may I have a ride of your flying rainbow walrus?)

Of course all this means it’s fairly easy to get lost, episode one ends with giving you some exposition on the world but as you can see from my start that leaves A LOT of unanswered questions, mysteries begin to build up but as the series only had two seasons (and I’m only talking about season 1 here except for mentions of things in season 2 for this is weird purposes) they don’t get answered as well as characters and factions alluded to and never revealed. Although season 2 is better you can’t skip season 1 as you will be even more lost especially since it starts with their city ship under attack by Spain’s elite baseball team… ok I give up… robots transforming into dinosaurs and cars and even a planet is one thing… this just out weirded me there.

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