Vandread throws a man into a war he doesn't understand between people he's been taught to hate, then refuses to let him, or you, look away from how stupid that division actually is. The comedy hits because it's never punching down; it's punching at the absurdity of a society so broken it needs to blow itself apart before it can fix anything. By the end you're watching two sides figure out they were always fighting the same enemy, and that realization lands harder than any mecha battle could.

Hibiki Tokai is a third-class laborer on Taraak, stuck on an assembly line building war mecha while his coworkers mock him and his dream of building his own machine goes nowhere. Humanity has colonized the Milky Way, and in one star system men and women live on separate planets, Taraak and Mejere, locked in a bitter war that has them viewing each other as different species. Fed up, Hibiki tries to steal a robot, but the attempt fails and leaves him stranded aboard the battleship Vanguard. When female pirates from Mejere capture the ship, the male crew opens fire on it in desperation, tearing open a giant wormhole that swallows the Vanguard and the pirate vessels alike. Flung far from home, men and women must learn to cooperate if they hope to return. Action, comedy and romance mix in this sci-fi mecha adventure.