Basara genuinely believes music stops wars, and the show commits to that insanity hard enough that it almost works. Watching a guitarist charge enemy mecha while screaming about the power of song should be ridiculous; instead it becomes the most earnest argument for why art matters that mecha anime has ever made. By the time you realize the aliens are literally vulnerable to emotion, you've already accepted that a teenager with a guitar is more dangerous than a warship, and that acceptance changes how you think about what stories can do.

Thirty-five years after Lynn Minmay brought peace between the Zentradi and humanity, the colony ship City 7 flies through space in search of a habitable planet. Nekki Basara, guitarist and singer of the band Fire Bomber, lives in one of its less developed districts and writes songs out of a conviction that music holds real power. When an unknown alien race lays siege to the colony, its attacks do not aim to destroy. Instead they take something called spiritia, leaving victims blank and zombie-like. Whenever the fighting starts, Basara heads straight into the battle zone to sing, hoping both allies and enemies will listen and be moved. The mix of action, mecha, music, comedy and drama gives the story its shape.