Coppelion

コッペリオン(Coppelion) is a manga series, with an anime adaptation, about a group of genetically engineered girls who are sent into Tokyo a few years after a nuclear accident occurred that caused all of it to be uninhabitable. What is their purpose there? Supposedly to evacuate the last few survivors but, really, it’s an action series.

The anime is how I discovered Coppelion and, honestly, I liked it a lot. That said, Coppelion is quite flawed…so let’s get into it.
The way Coppelion presents itself is a bit of an issue. The initial impression it gives to viewers is that the series is focused on rescuing survivors from irradiated Tokyo…but, instead, it’s an action series first. The rescues are secondary to the action. Everything else in the anime actually mostly fits together as far as I remember.
This presentation problem is a result of how it was adapted from the manga…that is, strangely. Coppelion compresses events and leaves some valuable information out…like what Coppelion means or why they have pale skin. Further, the more ridiculous elements of Coppelion are less surprising in the manga than in the anime. I think this is because the anime prioritized the atmosphere, which is why the action later on just seems to come out of nowhere. Though it is oddly faithful to the manga.
The anti-nuclear messaging is not as frustrating here as in the manga, though it has the potential to spread some myths. Like, the nuclear waste stuff they talked about is something I found particularly suspect.
Now for my disconnected notes. The sound effects apparently suck, though I don’t remember specifics. I liked the Main character, Ibara, because she looks generic on the surface, but has a few quirks that make her stand out. I didn’t write down what those were though…but I suspect it has to do with her backstory, which reflects into her present-day character. She is honestly the heart of the series.

Example of the tinting.

The aesthetics of the anime are kinda quirky. The image is tinted certain colors and, at first, I thought this was based on how radioactive the given area was…like The Matrix. So a very radioactive area would be tinted green and if it’s not radioactive at all, it would be tinted very blue. But it seems this wasn’t the case and it was semi-random, sometimes based on the surrounding environment.
Also, the radiation aesthetic is played with a lot in the series. The opening features static because, y’know, radiation.
To end if off, Coppelion has a trait that I like a lot in my stories: it knows when to be serious and when to be comedic. In fact…I think Coppelion is closest to my actual writing style in terms of this kind of balance.

My notes note that the manga is an improvement over the anime, though I don’t remember the specifics because I didn’t write them down. Besides the aforementioned problem of presenting itself as a series about rescuing people, the manga also goes hard into that anti-nuclear messaging, which is puzzling because it’s clear the author did a lot of research into the subject. Now, I’m not gonna say I’m an expert, but I will say that I was present when my middle school was visited by an engineer from a nuclear power plant, so let’s just say I find a lot of what’s written here suspect.
However, and this is more important, there is an actual theme in here that is very nice, besides the anti-nuclear messaging. That theme is generational divide, which I’ll talk about in detail a bit later.

The central theme of Coppelion, despite nuclear-stuff, is the generational divide between parents and children. There’s a heavy emphasis on the fact the Coppelion are the children being forced to carry the burden of their parents (humans)…in this case, it’s the fact Coppelion are genetically engineered to be resistant to radiation…so they’re being chucked into an irradiated wasteland to do work.
The older generation, in turn, regrets the damage they’ve done to the environment and the newer generation…but, there isn’t much they can do.
Though, interestingly, the older generation does redeem itself in the end.
There’s also an adjacent theme, inheritance, which is the question of what and how much is inherited from the previous generation.^A)

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