 Being from Northern Ireland, having Solty Rei's series Bad Guys be called the RUC raises a certain wry smile. If you don't get the reference - I assume it's unintended - read this. Back in the world of Solty Rei, meanwhile, our eponymous heroine (who has more than a few things in common with a certain Mahoro) is coming to terms with her lack of memory & making a new start at life...
Meet Roy Revenant, a bounty hunter working for Maverick Hunters, an agency run by Miranda Maverick and her daughter, Kasha. Roy's just brought in one Dale Boyd, a low-grade criminal, but it's not long before Dale's partner comes looking for payback. Just as Roy seems to be on the losing end of the battle, the fight is interrupted when what appears to be a young girl falls on Walker, damaging his Resemble. She's a girl with no memory - and she's not about the leave Roy alone...
As much as for their reputation of putting style ahead of substance, GONZO are known for creating one "miss" for every "hit" they produce - and Solty Rei, sadly, is usually classed as one of the misses. The opening episodes leave you feeling that it's a series without much of a story, although there's a half-way decent cast carrying it. Our "hero" is Roy, a bounty hunter and a man who keeps his emotions hidden - after the death or disappearance of his wife and daughter in the Blast Fall (exactly what happened to them is initially uncertain), he's got a whole lot of pain and heartbreak that he should really deal with, but that he just keeps bottled up inside him. The result is something of a grumpy old man, and someone who's not instantly likeable.
His boss, Miranda, is a far more flighty type. She's also lost her husband, and feels something of a responsibility towards Roy as he and her husband used to be good friends - so she lets him away with things that other employees may not be so lucky about. Her daughter, Kasha, is the real driving force behind the Maverick Hunters - she may be young, but she's street-smart, determined, and always ready to speak her mind.
Into this cosy situation comes Solty, who appears to be a young girl but hides a rather unique nature beneath her cute and innocent exterior. Solty doesn't actually get her name until the tail end of episode two, when Roy finally accepts responsibility for her. He's the first person to show Solty any kindness, so she latches on to him like nothing else, and a lot of first two episodes is devoted to showing how Roy comes to accept her as a replacement for his lost daughter.
Which brings us to Solty Rei's unique vocabulary, which is used a lot but rarely explained. Resemble, Blast Fall, Aurora Wave, RUC - all terms you'll hear within the first five minutes, but what makes Solty a Resemble? She's fully made of mechanical body parts - usually used to replace lost limbs or similar, but here we have the first example of a being that's entirely artificial - something that shouldn't be possible. We know the Blast Fall was caused by the Aurora Wave, but where did it come from, and how are the two connected? Who are RUC - some sort of police service, company, or both? These are all things that seem to play a fairly central role in the series, but while the explanations to all these things do eventually come, it takes a while to get there, which can be a little frustrating at times.
It also takes a while for the underlying story to really kick in. The early episodes are essentially stand-alone, with a little moral play in each one that develops and makes a point before moving on to the next, and that's about it. It's not until the mid-point of the series that you begin to feel the show is really going to go somewhere, and up until then things are left feeling a little lack-lustre - the show looks good (you don't expect anything less from GONZO) but it's lacking in atmosphere and any sense that something's happening.
Episode 13 begins the process of turning that around, though, with a twist in the tale that leaves Roy's new life in tatters again, as the daughter he though was lost is found & then torn away from him again in the space of one episode. While there's a good bit of foreshadowing to the events of that episode, I hadn't expected the revelations made in it, and the frankly heartbreaking suddenness with which certain events happen. All this gives us an excuse to see another side of Roy, though, so it serves a useful story purpose. Miranda had touched in the past on how Roy reacted to Rita's initial disappearance, and the way he withdrew into himself and became almost a recluse. Working for her over the years had drawn him back out and made a normal person of him again, but here events push him right back into that little personal prison - and bring to the fore a side of his personality that is far less likeable than even his 'normal' gruff personality.
In all this, Solty herself is pushed very much to the fringes of events, wanting to help Roy, to somehow cheer him up, but lacking any way of doing that. Given that I've found her a rather uninteresting character right from the start, that's hardly a bad thing - events on this volume have allowed stronger characters to come to the fore, and they're doing a perfectly good job of carrying the series without her - but given that the show's named after her I'd expect her to make a return to the spotlight before too long.
It's also worth paying attention to the sub-plots here, especially Integra and what she's being put through by the RUC and her commander, who seems more and more dubious the more you see of him. They're clearly up to something, but what? All will eventually be revealed.
Before then, though, the series makes what I consider to be a fatal mistake. There's one rule that I wish anime would hold to, although far too often it doesn't:
The dead should stay dead. Once death is established, or presented as a certainty, no character shall be mysteriously resurrected - especially if the plan is for them to make a 180-degree shift in personality.
Episode 13 killed a character in heartbreaking circumstances; episode 17 sees her back from the dead and very much active, and frankly, I felt cheated. To add to that, the character involved has gone from being someone who would fight & steal to help give the city's unregistered a chance of a decent life, to someone who will turn them in to the authorities in a second, and despite her playing a key part in how events in the final arc of the series play out, I'm not happy with her return. Many black marks have been awarded.
The final arc itself is a future-of-the-world battle between Solty and her friends on one hand, and RUC chief Ashley and his modified minions on the other. What's revealed about the show's setting in this arc has certain shades of Trigun to it (and Ashley's every bit as unhinged as Knives, despite his far more polite attitude to others), but Solty Rei is by far the lesser series in story terms. The arc sees most of the show's loose ends tied up, but Solty herself is the noticeable exception, and several key questions are left unanswered, despite being they mysteries of the show that I really wanted to see answered.
To add insult to injury, the show then commits another cardinal sin by carrying on after the main story is done with. GONZO were one of the first companies to shift from the usual 26-episode '2-cour' season to 24 episodes, and that's the number you expect from them now in any series. Here, the story ends within the 24, as you'd expect - only for a double-length flashback filler episode to appear at the end to mess things up a little. Why is this a bad thing? Mainly, we've said goodbye to the characters already, Solty in particular, at the end of episode 24. Also, going back in time in the way this episode does takes us back in the development of the characters, to how they were before they grew and developed - and there's a mental clashing of gears as you try and get back to how they were then. On rare occasions, this sort of episode works - the Mahoromatic Summer Special would be my favourite example - but most of the time it just doesn't feel right, and that's the category that Solty Rei's 'bonus' episode falls into. Personally, I would have liked it to have been slotted into the proper place in the show's timeline, but then there's that group of fandom that would get all worked up about the running order. Sometimes, you just can't win.
Time for a verdict, though. Over the course of its run, Solty Rei has been a series that has had its ups and downs, and overall it comes out at the end as simply okay - there's enough about it to make it worthwhile, but I'd class it more as a rental than one to rush out and buy. The final arc ties off the series well enough, but sticks to that overall 'okay' theme. Decent enough, but could definitely have been better.
For full episode summaries and screenshots, check the reviews of the individual releases:
» Volume 1
» Volume 2
» Volume 3
» Volume 4
» Volume 5
» Volume 6
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