Grey's field commander, a man that saved his life many times, is lost in the African sector.

In the introduction to the Viz Media English adaptation, Harlan Ellison compared Grey to his own type of hard-edged speculative fiction.

Where the manga stays on a downward spiral of tragedy, a few choices in the anime adaptation provide some hope to Grey and his companions.

He felt it was "incredibly rushed, relying on a combination of quick flashbacks and bland dialogue to do the sort of narrative and dramatic heavy lifting that a better show would have conveyed visually".

He praised the film with its "thought provoking ideas—ideas with roots in the revolutionary ideas of a teenager, but with the understanding of the world that only an adult can bring" but admittedly, it "has too many flaws to be recommended wholeheartedly".