Anime — RD Sennou Chosashitsu

RD Sennou Chosashitsu aka Real Drive aka Healthy Drive is this year's Shirow/Production IG title, a return to the more familiar territory of a near future (2061 CE) cyber-enhanced future. Masamichi Haru, a diver working on an artificial island (the precursor to Appleseed's Olympus, perhaps?) in the very near future falls into a coma for 50 years as the result of some strange phenomenon caused by the construction work. Awakening an old man, he is assigned a highschool girl, Minamo Aoi, as a go-fer. And for the first two episodes, it looks like the recurrence of this phenomenon will be the plot.

The next two-thirds of the series is then simple episodes as Haru returns to diving in the virtual world of the MetaReal, he and Minamo stop striking sparks off one another, and generally the series becomes more like Aria than a typical Shirow cyber-future.

And then in the last half-dozen or so episodes, the plot resumes, bursts into eco-wibble (admittedly not a surprise for Shirow, being there even from the days of Dominion Tank Police), and then resolves the story with not one but two happy couples.

Overall : mostly harmless, the girls are easy on the eyes (no anime noodles or overdone superstructure), and the setting is definitely one of the few anime settings where I'd like to go and live.