Solty Rei

Information of Anime

Ten years old, an incident caused Blast Fall created natural disasters.  The city was trashed & a lot of people either went missing or died.  A new city was built on top of the destroyed city to start again.  People who lost parts of their body were saved by a technology that allows them to replace those parts.  People with this technology are called Resembles.

Roy Revant was a former police officer of the RUC Security Bureau who lost his wife & daughter Rita in the Blast Fall.  However, it isn't confirmed that Rita is dead & Roy starts working as a hunter in order to find her.  A resemble who was on the run from the RUC saves Roy during his mission.  Because she had nowhere to go, she sticks to him & Roy doesn't like it.  However, he takes her in as an adopted daughter & names her Solty Revant.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I have seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

A good amount of the beginning of the show is about the relationship between Solty & Roy.  Although he didn't like her following him around, Roy accepts her & becomes attached to her as time passes.  We learned that Solty is a full Resemble, meaning she's has no real body parts & is virtually an android.  Over time, they come across a group of thieves, Larry, Andy, & Rose Anderson.  Their purpose is to help unregistered citizens living in the old city as they are unregistered themselves.  Impressed by Solty's ability, Rose begins to live with Roy & Solty on her own will to get Solty to become a thief.

Because of this intrusion, Roy wants Rose out of his apartment & her not getting Solty to become a thief.  Over time, they begin to accept each other as Roy learns about her past.  In agreement, Larry & Andy helps Roy obtain information on finding his daughter while he takes Rose into his apartment.  Later on the series, Roy finally finds his daughter.

Because of Rose's background & actions, Larry, Andy & Roy come to a conclusion that Rose is Roy's daughter, Rita.  She was actually adopted by the Andersons & lost her memory from the Blast Fall.  Plus, the clothing she was wearing when she first entered the Anderson's home is the same as what Rita was wearing.  Also, the tune she hums is dead evidence that she is Roy's daughter.  However, they are all facts that point to Rose being Roy's daughter & it's not 100% confirmed yet.  Hearing this, Rose refuses to accept it because it was too sudden & Roy has a hard time getting close to her.  After Rose listens to her feelings, she accepts being Roy's daughter, but will still be Rose Anderson.  Roy accepts this & whatever she chooses to live as is fine as along she is alive.  However, tragedy hits as they talk about this at the wrong place when Roy tries to stop Yoto's friend from creating a disaster.  As a result, Rose is crushed to death.

After Rose's death, Roy goes back to the way he was 12 years old as he seals himself from the outside world.  Solty tries to cheer him up, but his words of calling her a "mechanical doll" causes her to run away from home & finds herself in a remote place.  During this time, Solty thinks about where she belongs with a man named Josef's help & Roy thinks about what he should now do.  As the two finally realize that they need each other, we see a shocking moment as Rose, who was suppose to be dead, join RUC as a Proceed.  Because of her presence, the senior executive chief, Ashley Dirks who had an interest in Rose, feels there is no longer a need for his old Proceeds as they are old.  As a result, he kills Silvia Ban & frames Celica, Integra, & Axela for it.

With the evidence destroyed & fake video footage of them killing Siliva, Celica, Integra, & Axela go on the run as wanted criminals with Celica dying.  Solty brings Axela & Integra in after Roy, Andy, & Larry learn Rose is alive & with RUC.  Josef, who can't watch Ashley's actions any long, joins in the fight by sending some luggage to Roy's place & joins him.  The group runs away into the city below for safety after being discovered in helping the RUC fugitives.  Here, Josef tells them about the past on how the Blast Fall occurred & how people immigrated into this planet.  He also tells them about Eunomia, the system that helps make the planet livable for humans by providing air & water.  Also, it helps make Resemble parts work which is why Ashley plans to destroy it & free humans from it.  With this, a battle between the group & RUC occurs as Roy & company tries to stop Ashley from destroying Eunomia.  Later on, Rose changes sides in stopping Ashley.  After awhile, we learn about Ashley's past & his motive in destroying Eunomia.  He wanted to find a way to breakthrough the Blast Fall barrier & return to space.  In the end, Ashley gets defeated by Roy & Softy passes on a message to Ashley that she received from Illumina, a girl that Ashley loved for 200 years.  It doesn't end here as another computer system in space named Helen wants to destroy the city from above.

Surprises don't stop as Josef reveals that Softy (aka Dirk) is one of three computer systems that help manage the planet.  Softy decides to go to space to stop Helen from destroying the planet & this concerns Roy as he now sees her as one of his daughters.  We learn that Softy was originally sent to the planet to see why Eunomia went berserk.  With the emotions she had from her stay on the planet, Softy defeats Helen & fails to come back as years passes. During the credit roll, we see what the cast are doing after five years from Helen's destruction.  After the credits, we move on to many years later as Roy goes into space to bring a badly damaged Softy back home.

My Personal Review

Solty Rei is a pretty good series.  In fact, it kind of caught me in surprise.  It's got a very nice mixture of action, drama & comedy.  However, it's quite violent & gruesome for some people.  There is a lot of blood involved & spoken dialogue that retells some disturbing acts.  Also, it can be quite tragic.

Animation

The character designs aren't too great in my view.  But they are still good.  Roy's got that tough guy look, but he looks pretty old with his greying hair.  Seeing him 10 years ago, he looks too young to age what he is now.  Solty really has that innocent child look & fit her well.  Her clothing is a bit weird though.  The characters do have some style, but it's not too eye catching.

The colours are pretty bright on the characters & dull on the backgrounds.  However, the tones aren't very sharp.  This is actually good since you can see some aging on the buildings, especially in the old city.

The backgrounds are pretty good, but not too much detail is given.  It has just the right amount to make it more realistic than animated.

The animation movements are pretty good & are smooth.  However, when you get the far distance view & see a lot of people walking & the cars driving down the roads, it looks fake.  Looking at it, you can tell it's fully CG rendered.  The people walk too slow & they look like they are floating instead.  Even the cars give off this feeling as well as the rolling of the tires doesn't look right with the driving speed.

Sound

There are some fuzzes here & there, but it's not too bad.  The sounds here are more to the realistic side & really give you the impression that you are in the scene.

The seiyuus aren't too bad.  Solty's voice got a little annoying at times due to her high pitched voice.  I think the seiyuu tried a bit too hard to make her cute.  Rose is annoying to a good extent.  It really fits her character of being acting all high class & mighty.

The music here isn't too bad.  It creates the tense moods well & doesn't overpower the sound effects or character voices.  It's got a combine of rock, ballad, & jazz.

Story

The story is quite well planned out.  I was surprised who's Roy's daughter was.  I totally thought it was someone else & didn't see it coming.  However, the show's surprises started to become predictable & lessen the questioning thoughts a bit.  However, it's level of tension is high & really leaves you on a cliffhanger.  Also, it really hits the spot & feel sad for the characters.

The ending of the show is quite good & touching.

Overall Conclusion

Solty Rei is a pretty rare anime show that comes very so often.  Personally, I would recommend this to people wanting action & a storyline with twists.

Solty Rei gets a strong 9.5/10.  It's a very nice show with a lot of intense action & a good amount of humour.  The storyline has really drawn me in as the show progresses.  I'll definitely watch this until the end.

Last updated on January 16, 2008