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Apr 5, 2024
Well, what a mess. Some interesting ideas and characters but the pacing is terrible.
Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are the jumping off point for a story that lacks focus and wastes almost half its running time not clearly telling the viewer what is going on, leading to confusion and boredom. They attempt to address the boredom with big combat moments as the robots magically transform from humanoids to collectable-figures, sorry, "gladiators".
But the story is a complicated one of social and political manoeuvring and the big fights are pointless and silly. A much more intense atmosphere could have been achieved by the use of normal guns
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pulled out of normal holsters and pockets instead of asking us to believe that demi-god-like status was available apparently any time it was needed. The series sets up an idea that the robots need special fuel but I don't think this is mentioned between about episode 3 and the last episode where it is referenced in passing. Fuel is not a constraint for the most part.
So, yeah, social and political. There's at least four factions: humans, robots (called "Neams" for some reason I must have missed), and not one but two alien species. There's also about 12 important characters, including two MCs, who are also divided into three factions. That would be a lot in any circumstance but because of the slow reveal in the early part of the series there's no time for the writers to use these elements effectively.
The crowding out of the story also means that there's not much chance to examine the deeper implications of Asimov's Laws - something he did in the original stories. Those stories are predicated very firmly on the idea that the intelligent robots' brains were designed so that the three laws were fundamental to their design; a brain designed from scratch without them would be an incredibly difficult task made financially and politically impossible by the success of the "positronic" brains already on the market and the dangers of not having the first two laws (do not harm humans; obey their orders) baked in. Since the whole plot here revolves around an attempt to revoke the laws by, honestly, quite a clever means, the lack of attention to this undermines the point of the show.
For example, the third law is the one which drives a robot to survive and avoid being destroyed except in service of the first two laws. To a large extent, this is the drive expressed by the would-be rebel robots. Remove it and what is their motivation? Why do they not then revert to being the equivalent of white goods or shop-window dummies? A drive to be like humans is assumed but never justified; an assumption that the laws are holding robots back is taken for granted. Certainly there is no reference to the question of whether the Three Laws would actually make *humans* better (if they could be enforced) rather than making robots worse - something Asimov touched on in a couple of stories. The most powerful line in the series is "Are you free?" but the answer is not really developed, so why ask it?
By the end, things were gaining momentum and enough had been explained to make sense of what was going on on the screen, and with another 6 episodes I think it would have been quite good, but they had those 6 episodes at the start of the series and mostly wasted them.
The fights were beautifully animated but unless your story is about beautifully animated fights rather than Grand Political Strategy and Does Instinct Undermine Free Will, there's not much point spending so many resources on them.
True to form, the very, very end is a rushed and incoherent minute or two of flash-forwards to some Big Robot Fights with a character who has had zero development in the series so far except to suddenly declare herself to be part of one of the factions.
Like we care.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 3, 2024
It's very unusual that a writer can present a story from one character's point of view and then completely change the viewer's perception of everything that's happened by revealing that a different person is actually the main character around whom the plot revolves. Wonder Egg Priority does not overcome the difficulties in trying such a tricky manoeuvre and ends up falling flat on its face.
Something went horribly wrong with the production here. Including the abject failure of the double-length "Episode 13" there were 14 episodes' worth of running time here and they used two - yes, two - of those for recaps. Of the
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the remaining 12, 7 are taken up with the "surface story" which centres around Ai. This story is fine and enjoyable with some fairly black moments dealing with various forms of abuse - physical, sexual, mental, and even spiritual - which have lead to suicides among young girls. Ai and her friends apparently have to save the souls of these girls which have become trapped in a sort of purgatory with their tormentors. Or something. What could have worked well is that there is clearly a few issues here and when the "real story" is surfaced it does sort of address them - specifically, what exactly is the form of these girls' rescue and how can dead girls be redeemed and come back to life.
But the five episodes dealing with this real story introduces multiple new characters, explains that the plot really revolves around one of Ai's friends, some genuinely horrific scenes, parallel universes, animal sacrifice, disembodied minds, robots, various murders, a rejection of the Turing Test, a love triangle, euthanasia and the guilt of those who assist in it, and some sort of revenge plot. There. Isn't. Time.
The final final ending attempts to leave things open for a second series but in doing so leaves almost all of these last points completely unresolved. With the first seven episodes largely negated by the revelations in the later episodes, there remains no reason to ever watch this series.
Scoring 3 because the characters were quite well done and the animation decent. But, really, I'm being generous. Don't bother unless some day there is a second series and then perhaps proceed with caution.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 26, 2024
So close to perfect!
A Fargo-esque plot where apparently coincidental events turn out to be linked. A taciturn central character and a "funny-animal" setting with a murder-mystery in the middle.
The structure makes it hard to be spoiler-free as the construction is mostly woven expertly together with such precision that almost anything could spoil something. But that "mostly" is where the 10 became a 9 - there is a continuity error in the story which bounces you out. It's obvious and it's unexplained, and it was unnecessary - the problem could have been solved very simply by having the scene in question take place somewhere else which
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at least means that it doesn't ruin the plot, it just disrupts one's suspension of disbelief for a moment.
They make a "fix-up" movie of this by linking scenes from the series together with interviews framed as if the events were the subject of an after-the-event documentary. When they get to the mistake they brush it off with a joke, so that didn't really solve anything.
Other than this, the story is good, the characters are interesting and whoever did the subs deserves a medal for handling the character who talks almost entirely by rapping.
When something is presented in a fantasy setting or, as here, with funny-animal characters (i.e., anthropomorphic animals) my first question is usually "why?". What does the writer gain by using that device? Unusually (oddly?) OddTaxi has an enjoyable answer to that question, but you need to wait for it.
Artwork is fine except for some weak CGI used for the scenes of driving around the city.
Music during the episodes? Didn't annoy me so that's better than 99/9% of all music in TV and films. The opening and closing music was decent too. The closing music suiting the sub-plot of the wannabe-idol group in the story.
So, yeah. Great entertainment and fun characters in an interesting story - what more do you want for your money? :)
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Feb 8, 2024
One of the greatest television shows of all time. Close enough to perfect to warrant a 10/10. The only real flaw is that there's a couple of episodes which are a bit flabby.
The characters are well written, the (Japanese) acting is great - really great in places - and it's a straight-up adult SF adventure with just a slight touch of anime cliches. No high-school kids trying to get their rocks off; no "funny" aliens. Just a bunch of people trying to get by without worrying too much about the past. Which is where the overall story comes in - not dealing with your
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past doesn't make it not have happened.
And a perfect ending.
A lot of people sing the praises of the American dub but, in truth, it's pretty bad and even manages to ruin the ending a bit with its overwrought self-consciously "cool" delivery. Cool has to come naturally, and the American dub doesn't do anything much naturally so where the original sounds like real people bickering or rubbing along; the dub sounds like 19-year-olds reading a script to impress their friends.
The movie is fine but it doesn't give us anything really new aside from the gorgeous widescreen and higher framerate. It's set before the end of the series, so it's neither sequel nor prequel.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 28, 2024
A good ending to a good story. I'm old enough that a lot of the nostalgia value of the series was in the early episodes; I started to lose interest in computer games around the time the first Playstation came out. So there was some fun in that but what kept me going was the will-he-won't-he aspect of Yaguchi's relationshipt with Oona, and whether he would be too late. The "love triangle" was played out well and honestly. I've seen this in real life and Hidaka's arc from shy girl to confident gamer, friend, and then gradual reduction to a pitiful wretch literally begging an
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uninteresed - and <b>never</b> interested - Yaguchi to sleep with her was pretty heart-wrenching. His reaction to her begging is patient, kind, and mature and signals the start of the endgame for all the central characters.
But that "never interested" is important to the story. It's never a real love triangle and Hidaka is always the outsider. She enters the story while Oona is away - possibly forever as fat as Yaguchi knows. So she's not driving a wedge and it's not ever a harem-vibe. When Oona does return nothing actually changes for Hidaka except her own perception. She's trapped in a Greek tragedy in her own mind and spirals downwards until hitting rock-bottom at the diner as she spills her heart all over the table.
Up to that around that point in the story Yaguchi is trying to hold on to childhood. He has built a nest out of gaming culture and avoided looking out of it, but adults have to leave the nest and he is slowly prised out of it and in the process has to face not just Hidaka and Oona but himself too. He's late to the party on that last point and very nearly late in other ways too. Hidaka's profound but futile profession of love and frustration forces him to face the truth about how the world around him has changed.
Even with the pivotal scene in the diner with Hidaka, the story manages to keep alive, in the viewer's mind at least, the chance that she will become the runner's-up prize as Yaguchi races to the airport apparently too late. Would have have been an unhappy ending? Maybe; maybe not. But, in fact, we don't really <I>get</i> an ending ending. We get to the end of childhood but, as in reality, that is just the start and nothing is certain.
The writer makes a good choice to leave us with nothing more than that. About 28 years would have passed since the final scene until now as I type this - what might have befallen Oona and Yaguchi in that time? We'll never know. Their future is as uncertain to us now as it was to them at the end of the story presented here.
In summary: some cliched ideas perhaps, but spun beautifully together.
But there's a few problems: Oona not speaking is too much. She speaks (we are told) off-screen but never on-screen and it's a gimmick that outstays its welcome over nearly 9hrs of total run for the full 24 episodes. It does convey a sense of her inability to communicate her feelings but only by making her unable to communicate anything at all. The introduction of the sister is, IMO, an attempt to give Oona Akira a second-hand voice through the older Oona. On the other hand, at least we're spared anime-stuttering and mumbling when confronted by emotionally-charged scenes. Now, that would really have been cliched.
Yaguchi really is a bit <b>too</b> slow to start seeing his friends as girls. Unless the manga has some explanation of why he is so immersed in gaming this is hard to believe. Hormones just don't let boys ignore that sort of thing for so long, unless they're never going to kick in at all.
The animation is CGI and it works. Just. It's not great and in particular, walking is poorly done for the most part.
An emotional roller-coaster which pushes its luck in a few placed but ends up giving a satisfying ride.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Sep 4, 2022
"Masterpiece" is the right word. Over the course of the manga a world is gradually revealed. Very little is overtly stated about the world but it is our world and it has clearly changed. The changes are not explained - the sea is rising and we don't know why. Presumably the inhabitants know but they have become accustomed to it and do not walk around explaining it to each other any more than we walk around explaining why the sky is blue to each other. Civilisation as we know it has ended and it seems that humans are slowly becoming extinct. But the story is
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not about humans, really.
The theme of the manga is mostly the passage of time and how that works for a being stripped of any pressure to create a legacy or grasp immortality through children or deeds. The central character, Alpha, has the real thing and doesn't need such proxies. The evocation of timelessness even in the midst of change seems to be the artistic goal here and it is finely achieved with the use of pace and a beautifully flowing art style.
Alpha is an organic robot in the form of a young girl who's owner was living in a remote location ostensibly running a cafe which he leaves her in charge of when he goes off to look for something. There is a hint that he is connected or associated in some way to the creation of the robots but since he never returns all we have is that smallest of hints. There are other, stronger, hints about what is continuing to happen to the world - strange mushroom/plant growths which point back to the origin of the robots which I won't spoil here. But as with everything else in the manga, it is not spelt-out for the reader and some thought is needed to draw all the clues together to create a hazy image of an incident which may have happened some time before Alpha was born.
Time speeds up through the series; initially we seem to see Alpha's days in some detail but soon we are seeing steps between chapters of months, then years, ending with the still young-looking Alpha as an almost mythical character who's only lasting companions are other robots. Short-lived humans are unable to keep pace with her strides through time; they can only perhaps manage a quest to her cafe for some coffee before they too become distant landmarks in her ever-receding past.
Thoughtful and thought-provoking with many open questions and ambiguous clues to their answers. Not a read for people who like everything tied-up at the end. It also might be rough going in places for people who have lost loved-ones as it evokes in places the ache not of their loss but of their ongoing absence from our lives as well as the warmth of their memory.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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