Brigadoon: Marin and Melan is a 2000 anime created and directed by Yoshitomo Yonetani about 13 year old Marin Asagi who after a parallel world called Brigadoon starts merging with our earth is protected by a robotalienlivingweapon named Melan Blue. Its hard to pin down a single genre for the series: its got comedy scifi elements Super Robotesque mecha fights romance slice of life moments and at about episode 10 it takes a complete heelturn becoming extremely emotionally heavy and violent with the series switching from a character bleeding out on the floor dying to a slapstick joke on a dime but it never takes away the impact of the heavy scenes. The silly cute ending song playing after a cliffhanger almost feels like its telling you to have hope and therell be a happy outcome by the end. There is occasional fan service that the series really couldve done without with 3 episodes in particular being quite heavy with it and while its meant to be a representation of purity than anything titillating theres a few scenes where Marin is nude which could make viewers uncomfortable. Brigadoon has an art direction employing a very stylised cute look: with lots of the human characters looking younger than they are and thickly applied bright rim highlights almost constantly on the characters which looks gorgeous in close up shots where the cast is drawn with weighted line work. The cute art makes the dark scenes hit you in the gut so much harder similar to Madoka Magica or Made in Abyss. The emotional core of Brigadoon almost entirely focuses on Marin and Melan and their relationship to each other being both a merit and detriment to the series. Marin and Melan are both amazing written characters and play off each other perfectly. Marin in particular goes through so much pain that it can be too much for some viewers to watch. Their relationship eventually develops from one of a bodyguard and the girl hes protecting to a romantic one and to many this element is unnecessary or uncomfortable with him being an older looking robot thats twice her height. While this is understandable its perhaps my favourite element of the series. Theyre equals who truly respect each other and their relationship a is pure yet intense one with the fan service in the series almost never touching it. Robot and Human romances are common in anime with it almost always being a human male and robot female who acts innocent and naive in social situations. Brigadoon subverts this with them both being naive to any kind of romance with Marin being 13 and Melan being implied to not be too much older mentally. Brigadoon falters however with developing many of its side characters. In particular lots of Marins adopted family seem more like joke characters and its hard to get attached to them even when the series wants you to and I truly wanted to see more of the GunSwordsmen to flesh out Melans backstory even more. Some elements regarding the final episodes that dont involve Marin and Melan are also quite confusing or random seeming and the final antagonists are underwhelming even if the final fight itself was engaging. Brigadoon: Marin and Melan is a very unique and beautiful series that ends up having a very niche audience by trying to appeal to as many demographics as possible. If you can stomach the elements of it I highly recommend this series I probably cried more than 5 times.