For a series that sells itself as ‘the only anime to be set in Venezuela’, ‘Jinki:Extend’ is remarkably lacking in Venezuelan local colour. Sure, there are a couple of info dumps about table mountains and some jungle sound effects. But when thirteen-year old heroine Aoba Tsuzuki is kidnapped and escapes into the great outside, it’s not made clear to us that she’s not in Kansas – or Japan – any more. This muddled beginning (did I mention the grainy shots at the opening showing two unnamed girl robot pilots trying to destroy one another?) sets the pattern for the ensuing five episodes.

Aoba, a geeky model-maker, has been living with her grandmother. On grandma’s death, she is abducted and finds herself in Venezuela at the secret base of ‘Angel’, an organisation developing the Moribito robot. Aoba stows away on the Moribito and soon finds herself involved in a deadly battle with a machine called an ancient Jinki. Cue a reunion with her estranged mother Shizuka who coldly tells her that she has brought her to the base so that she can access the money Aoba has inherited. As Aoba flees, her mother muses, “Your hate for me will make you stronger…that hatred will change you into a killing machine.”

The story then fluctuates between Aoba and her struggle to become a Jinki pilot and another girl, Aoka, shown in sepia-tinted sequences dominated by fighting Jinki. Both are ‘Cognates’, born with special abilities that will enable them to pilot the Jinkis. It seems that the conflicts of the earlier timeline (involving Aoba's mother Shizuka) have yet to be resolved in the present and wide-eyed Aoba is the one being groomed to be at the heart of the battle. There are hints of an enemy, the Hachi Shojin, and glimpses of a council attended by men in sinister animal masks. But, like Aoba, the viewers are kept in the dark and too few hints are given to make the plot truly involving.

The most realistic sequences are where the unfit Aoba has to train really hard to become fit enough to pilot a Jinki; unfortunately, these sequences drag, almost as if we are being forced to undergo the training with her.

And why have handsome Jinki pilot Ryohei dress up in drag to abduct Aoba, screaming in a falsetto voice, ‘I’m your mother’? This incident and many others show that attention-grabbing scenes without coherent motivation behind them do not add up to a satisfactory piece of drama.

I genuinely wanted to understand what was happening with the plot but after five episodes, I was forced to conclude that too much information was being withheld to make me interested in following Aoba’s story further. ‘Jinki:Extend’ only has thirteen episodes in total, so much lost ground will have to be made up in the remaining eight episodes

Visually, ‘Jinki:Extend’ is a rather strange blend (some might say mish-mash) of soft, fuzzy character designs (especially for the girls) that sit rather oddly with the strong, clean lines of the Jinki mechas and even more oddly against the backgrounds of the Venezuelan jungle and table mountains. Kenji Kawai's music, however, is one of the best aspects of the anime, being attractively written and scored, and always enhancing the dramatic action..

The extras include Venezuela location notes, a glossary of terms, and an interview with the two main Japanese voice actors: Fumiko Orikasa (Aoba) and Takuma Takewaka (Ryohei) and Sound Director Kazuhiro Wakabayashi. Watching this was instructive in many ways, because Wakabayashi explains that the series will make sense once viewed to the end. He even suggests that the viewer will want to return to the beginning afterward and watch it again to catch the points that they have missed. ADV also include a handy Character Relationship Chart – but several faces are in silhouette (no spoilers here!).

In Summary

A distinctly underwhelming girls and mechas series.