Title: Cagaster of an Insect Cage: Complete Collection
Director: Koichi Chigira
Studio: Studio Kai
U. S. Distributor: Sentai Filmworks, Section 23
U. S. Release Date: March 31st, 2021
Format: Blu-ray / 12 Episodes / 300 Minutes
Genre: Horror, Drama, Action, Adventure
Age Rating: TV MA
Overall Personal Rating: B-
Synopsis:
The nightmare that wiped out two thirds of the human race thirty years ago wasn’t caused by germs. It was bugs on an entirely different kind of scale: bizarre insects that mutate their victims into half-human creatures that rapidly evolve into rampaging giant monsters!
Yet, as unstoppable as the monstrous insects seemed, humanity is as hard to kill as cockroaches, and exterminators like Kidou now spend their lives stalking and killing the creatures called Cagasters. As the brief still-partially human phase is the best time to strike, however, exterminators soon learn to distance themselves, socially and emotionally, from normal people. But when Kidou finds himself suddenly tasked with returning a young survivor to her mother, he starts to realize that his emotions and humanity may not be buried as deeply as he believed!
Commentary:
I was unimpressed with the first few minutes of the Netflix original series created by a Gonzo offshoot studio. The low budget Computer Graphics (CG) left me wanting to turn it off and watch something else. The high distress that Ilie show in the first two episodes gave me flashback of Shinji in EVA, where I wanted to plug my ears and just watch. Now I have a delima, bad CG and a whinny Ilie made it hard for me to watch and then there was relief. Ilie became a solid character and the story took over. It has been some time since I found a post-apocalyptic series that had something that I found interesting, but Cagaster of an Insect Cage gave me a reason to keep watching.
Overall Rating: B-
With story being so well written I have to say that by the time I reached the end of the series I was fully engaged. I liked Kidou and felt as though Ilie had managed to become a well rounded character. The plot and overall story is strong, it is just too bad that Netflix paid for such poor CG.
As much as I like the story I just can’t go above a B- for the series. No matter how well a series is written if the animation is lacking it will be hard to maintain viewership.
If you are looking for a solid post-apocalyptic series and don’t care about bad CG, then you really need to check Cagaster of an Insect Cage out.
