Sakugan | First Impressions: The Best Father-Daughter Duo.

---

Far in the future, the human beings were pushed into the deep underground world called Labyrinth and they are living shoulder-to-shoulder. The Labyrinth has several colonies with severe settings such as one having an insanely high temperature, while another is full of gold and silver. Among those, in a colony of Pinyin, resides a curious nine-year-old girl named Memempu and her father Gagumber. As “workers” aiming for survival, they live with the lowest profession of riding a working robot to dig ore.

One day, Memempu pestered Gagumber, a cave examiner who makes maps of the internal part of Labyrinth, to go travel together with her to find her mother. As a “marker,” Gagumber holds the most dangerous yet attractive profession. One step outside the colony is already deemed to be a dangerous area and meeting a huge mysterious creature that loiters the cave, one’s chance of living will be cut down to five percent. Since it is a dangerous racket to explore the unknown world, the map they hold is valuable and can be sold at a high price. However, is the price for their curiosity higher? What could be the cruel truth that is hidden among them? What awaits at the end of the test? In this travel story between a father and a daughter surrounds adventure with family love.

Sakugan is an adventure anime that has a lot of potential. Weirdly enough, it may only just be me and where I look, but it doesn’t look like Sakugan is attracting the attention I think it deserves. It could be one of those cases where Sakugan will be one of those underrated sleeper anime stars as one of the season’s gems. This is something I’m all for because based on what I’ve seen over the past four episodes, I think Sakugan will turn out to be a great anime.

Something that immediately stood out to me was the father-daughter duo in Memenpu and Gagumber. Since Sakugan is an anime where the people live underground, shoulder to shoulder with everyone. You expect everyone to know everyone. So the connection between Memenpu and Gagumber is something that stands out because while they’re a father and daughter duo, it honestly feels like they’re brother and sister. They are often at odds with each other and are complete polar opposites in terms of personality that it makes for proper entertainment. You don’t often see a solid father-daughter duo like Memenpu and Gagumber. You also don’t expect to have a pair like them star as the anime’s main protagonists. As it is something I don’t typically see too often, it was one of the many factors that drew me to Sakugan.

Something else I loved about the episodes I’ve seen so far was that there is always something happening. To me, it didn’t feel like something was missing each episode. I think this goes hand-in-hand with the point I made earlier about the characters. When there isn’t much happening on screen, there is always something happening with our characters. Since Memenpu and Gagumber are always at odds with one another, just hearing and watching the two bicker, yell and tease each other every step of the way is very entertaining. Because of this, it gives the impression that Sakugan is going to be a very fast-paced anime. This is something I don’t mind because I think adventure anime should be fast-paced.

Knowing that this anime is all about the adventures that Memenpu and Gagumber will go on together is nice. I don’t remember the last good adventure anime I’ve watched. I don’t want to jinx it, but I think Sakugan can be an excellent adventure anime. We have characters that I think work exceptionally well together, we have an objective, so we know what the end result should be. We have an antagonist in these Monsters that seem to be chasing after Memenpu and Gagumber for whatever reason (something I’m sure will be addressed later in the anime); we have an art direction that I really like, along with an OP and ED that I also enjoy listening to. Oh! We also cannot forget, the first episode of Sakugan was absolute god-tier, it was definitely one of the better first episodes I’ve seen this season. Of course, this has been a biased ‘first impressions’ post by yours truly. Once I find an anime I think I will like, I’ll always double down on it, and Sakugan is one of those anime.