The concept of the series is loosely based upon Frances Hodgson Burnett's novels, most notably A Little Princess (1905), but also Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) and The Secret Garden (1911).
[3][4] In the distant future (c. 6000 AD), Humans have spread across the Galaxy and have split into two factions; the Galactic Union and the Deague, which are currently at war.
The Deague do not possess Strain technology, but instead utilize swarms of small automated attack fighters called Tumors.
In Episode 1, she despairs that her older brother Ralph, who is considered the best Reasoner in the Galactic Union, has been assigned a mission that will take him 130 lightyears away to the front lines; due to time dilation, even if he does survive, Sara will have died of old age long before he could ever return home.
The pilot takes out Sara, destroying her Strain and Mimic, then obliterates the Academy and kills all of her friends.
This doll, being human-like, seems to be a safe thing for her to connect with and she spends a lot of time talking to it and taking care of it (which, in turn makes her even stranger and more disliked by her crewmates).
In the same storeroom, Sara later meets childlike pilots Melchi and Carmichael, who are rebuilding a ruined Strain called Ram-Dass.
Due to the time-dilation effect of sub-lightspeed travel, the Union was able to send their best and brightest Strain pilots, including Ralph, to combat the aliens.
The collective memories of her race's mistreatment and suffering at the hands of the Union scientists is then psychically forced into Ralph's mind, causing him to a develop an uncontrollable and seemingly psychopathic determination and rage to retrieve the last Emilys, and to annihilate any humans that stand in his way.
Convinced by Ralph that the girls are valuable technological windfalls, a Deague ship, under the command of Captain Vivian Medlock, begins a campaign to acquire all of the dead and living samples of the Emilys.
The manga serialized in Dragon Age Magazine focuses on Lottie's background, stopping once Sara joins the team.
The gaps in the air dates are attributed to two two-week hiatuses for a tennis tournament in late December–January, and the early premiere of Rocket Girls.