Please Save My Earth DVD

—by Michael Poirier

With one of the weirder premises I've seen in anime, and featuring the presence of the creepiest seven year-old ever captured on celluloid, I found viewing PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH to be a curious if not exceptionally enthralling experience. There are a hefty number of characters and strange plot elements thrown at the viewer in a harried and hurried fashion, all of which left me more than a little confused and dazed and wondering what in tarnation was going on onscreen.
Of course, I should have known what I was in for when I realized that the bonus features on this DVD include answers to "Frequently Asked Questions." My best guess at the plot is that sometime in the past seven alien scientists were observing the Earth and fretting over its environment from their botanical garden base of operations on the Moon. These were some very sensitive and romantically inclined scientists, however, and their complex interpersonal relationships only get further complicated when they are somehow reincarnated in the bodies of Japanese high school students (except for seven year-old Rin, more on him later).
Melodramatic to the extreme, PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH follows the course of these students rediscovering their past lives through mysterious dreams and reuniting with their former peers and lovers. They must reconcile the fact of how and why they died in the first place, while dealing with the trials and tribulations of contemporary high school life. There also seems to be some master plan to save the planet that involves renovating the Tokyo Tower.
I have to be honest though—I gave up after three episodes of this six episode DVD, even though the entire series was only six episodes. I'm hardly a connoisseur of shoujo manga (girl's comics) and PSME simply couldn't hold my attention very long. Not that every anime needs to have giant robots or ninja fighting, but there are also only so many scenes of slow motion embraces and lengthy animations of flowers covered in dew that one guy can take.
The one character who I couldn't help from watching though was the schizophrenic little Rin. Trapped in the youngest body but the most experienced of the scientists, he comes across as both goofy and obsessed, funny yet kind of scary. The way his moods shift so dramatically, and his occasionally violent manner of dealing with other people, creates a truly bizarre figure that I still can't decide is supposed to be tragic or laughable or just incredibly surreal.
Based on a popular and long-running manga by Hiwatari Saki, PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH also can't help but give the impression that things were lost when the original comic was squished down into these six episodes. It's not often that I've seen a show where the action moves so slowly yet so much plot information is forced into all-too-brief explanations.
On a production level, the animation is crisp if sparingly detailed, and it holds up fairly well after six years. I have no complaints about the DVD video or the sound, and the English voice actors brought an admirably restrained dignity to their roles. Besides the long-winded FAQ, other DVD extras include character bios and a non-credit version of the ending. Be prepared to do quite a bit of reading if you really want to try and figure out what's been compressed into these six episodes.
Decidedly earnest if somewhat overblown, PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH is surely an acquired taste. If you know that you don't appreciate shoujo anime and manga, avoid this DVD like snails avoid salt. However, if you don't mind doing your homework and enjoy this sort of sci-fi soap opera, this DVD might very well provide you with much more than 180 minutes of entertainment.

Released in North America by Pioneer Entertainment
DVD, 180 minutes
English Dubbed and Japanese with English subtitles: D-PS 001
$29.98
Available now in the USA
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