There is one important respect in which the main story needs the science fiction story. Something similar to the first story could have been written without including the SF elements, but I don’t think it would really have worked. This led me to wonder if the science fiction story could have been eliminated entirely. It is not particularly original and not as thrilling as it wants to be. The science fiction story is definitely the lesser of the two. The coming of age story is very well done (though very sentimental) and gets most of the screen time. The two stories even look different: the first has a bright, cheerful hand-drawn appearance the second is dark, with the rather soulless look that comes from over-reliance on computer-generated images.

A science fiction adventure about fighting monsters with the help of an unusual type of mecha.

A coming of age story about twin girls living on a farm in Hokkaido.

About half-way through this series it occurred to me that I was watching two loosely-connected but very different stories:

Figure 17 ep 1