Houseki no Kuni (localized as "Land of the Lustrous") focuses on the conflict between beings made out of organic gemstone and the mysterious moon people who want to collect them for jewelry. The first episode has a lot of world-building, and it's delivered fairly smoothly, naturally and at a good pace. This is aided by the fact that the main character—Phos, the weakest of the gems—is at their essence another immature shounen MC... so they're hotheaded and unknowledgeable, and they need a lot of things explained to them.
The entire world appears to be agender or at least strongly androgynous which is pretty cool. The art style is going to be divisive. Everything looks like it was animated in Miku Miku Dance or something. It's all 3D with pretty good movement but super basic facial expressions and every character has the same body. The main visual differentiator between characters is, as is often the case in anime, hair color. Eyebrow position is another. Folks who are super comfortable with more traditional anime art styles might be turned off by the visuals, but after having watched as much as I have, anything "different" is almost automatically appealing. By the end of the first episode, the drama seems to be less about the particulars of the war against the moon people and more about the outcasts of the gem society finding their place in the world. It's kind of emo, but not in an overbearing way.
Personally, I don't care for the character of Phos, but I am interested in the world, and I'm also curious to see how the gender treatment holds up. One thing I noticed is that the gems refer to other gems as かれ, rough equivalent of "he." The official subs avoid "he," replacing it in every instance with the name of the character instead of a pronoun. Where the Japanese has an implied object, the official subs use singular they. Does Japanese not have a gender-neutral pronoun? Are the gems actually supposed to be dudes? I find these questions more gripping than, "will Phos complete their encyclopedia?" ... but I have my own biases and interests.
Recommend: Yes! It's super different and, while I doubt it's everyone's cup of tea, I think folks should at the least check it out.
The gems being genderless in subtitles is apparently an official decision from the mangaka. There’s a discussion of how this came about in quotes from the manga and then anime translators in an Anifem article, https://www.animefeminist.com/feature-land-lustrous-singular-politics-subtitles/ .
That was a very cool read, thanks!
I originally posted this on Facebook (it predates the opening of this blog), and got the following comment from a professor of Japanese: