In the far future, advanced organic life has mostly vanished from Earth after an asteroid strike. The surface is inhabited by humanoid gems, consisting of around twenty female gems and their male master, Sensei, who live together in a palace on an island. They are often attacked by Lunarians, an unknown humanoid species from the Moon that often arrives on a floating black platform. The green-haired gem Phos is too fragile to fight, so Sensei orders her to write an encyclopedia. When Phos loses her legs in a fight with the Lunarians, but doctor Rutile repairs it and gives Phos new legs. During winter hybernation, Phos also loses her arms, while Antarcticite dies from Lunarians. Phos is given new arms made out of gold, but thus her personality changes and she becomes stronger. She decides to help the poisonous Cinnabar get a new assignment, since she is unhappy to be working only at night.
"Land of the Lustrous" is the darnedest thing: it only covers the first season of the manga and is thus left incomplete and unfinished, yet it hints at far greater potentials through its philosophical existantialist contemplation about the purpose of life and finding a new role in the world, reminiscent of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" just set in the far future with humanoid gems. One of the most bizarre and peculiar stories ever set in an anime, "Land of the Lustrous" has a sympathetic main protagonist, the green-haired Phos who undergoes a fascinating character arc from a weak, insecure personality to a tough, mature and more focused new character. It is freaky how often Phos' body breaks apart (she holds a gem on a cliff via her notebook, but both of her hands break and fall down; during the Lunarian attack, she loses her both legs), yet since she is a mineral-based being they are able to replace her limbs with new ones, including giving her golden arms, thus giving her also a new superpower where she can use gold to increase ten-fold and even transform it into various shapes, from a shield, through a "gold elevator" up to creating a humanoid golden figure as a distraction from a monster in episode 11. Yet, as Phos gets new body parts, her personality changes, too, since new elements give her a new composition. There are some thought-provoking questions here, such as what makes a person's personality, and how much would it change if new donors would occupy more and more share of said person's body. However, the story needed a more focused point and narrative, instead of straying into too weird moments (a giant snail swalloving Phos in episode 2 or a giant beige-colored Lunarian with six arms emerging from a "portal" through the sky in episode 10) which are of questionable usefulness. The themes of transformation of a person through time and personal growth are intruiging, and yet the ending is so vague and abrupt that one wishes for a second season to "wrap it up", since in this edition the viewers will feel "cheated out" of a conclusion. Due to some connection of character traits with features of minerals (cinnabar is toxic when its mercury component is placed at room temperature; amethyst appears in twinning version, and is thus represented through twins here) it can be considered as 'fan service' for geologists.
Grade:++
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