Robotics;Notes

It has always been the aspiration of the Central Tanegashima High School Robotics Research Club to complete the GunPro1, a fully functioning giant robot. For years, the members of the club have contributed to its progress and it is now Akiho Senomiya's goal to finally make the dream of all the past club members become a reality. However, things are not as easy as they seem as the club lacks the funding for such a huge endeavor. Aside from that, the only other club member, Kaito Yashio, shows no interest in assisting his childhood friend and instead indulges in playing mecha-fighting games on his "PokeCom."

As Kaito is in the middle of wasting his days, he receives an indecipherable message and hears a voice that seems to be drowned out by the noise of static. He searches for the source, only to realize that it came from Airi Yukifune, an AI which only exists within the augmented reality system accessible via the PokeCom. Robotic;Notes follows the story of Kaito as he discovers a peculiar report in Airi's database, one that would have disastrous consequences in the future.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Furugoori, Kona Main

Nazuka, Kaori Japanese

Senomiya, Akiho Main

Nanjou, Yoshino Japanese

Yashio, Kaito Main

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Yukifune, Airi Main

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Hidaka, Subaru Main

Hosoya, Yoshimasa Japanese

Daitoku, Junna Main

Tokui, Sora Japanese

Tennouji, Nae Supporting

Yamamoto, Ayano Japanese

Irei, Mizuka Supporting

Honda, Takako Japanese

Kimijima, Kou Supporting

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Senomiya, Misaki Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Wada, Jouji Producer

Kimura, Makoto Producer

Katsumata, Hideo Producer

Reviews

May 17, 2013

pleochroic

Recommended

my main impression: whoever came up with the original concept as well as the script writers for this anime need a really good editor, who can wrangle their ideas into something that actually hangs together structurally and makes sense. because there were plenty of ideas here, quite possibly too many, and the result is a hodgepodge of giant plot holes held together by spit and enthusiasm.

i can't remember the last time i watched an anime that was so meticulously produced, so overall pretty, so well animated and orchestrated, and found it such an unholy mess on the inside, which ultimately left me unfulfilled.

story: ... there are two main stories here; one consists of a high school's robotics club trying to put together a giant robot, the other is pretty much at the other end of the spectrum: saving the world from mysterious villainy. the first part is decently executed (love the battle bots!), but it soon takes a back seat to the second one, which is sadly not executed well at all. i liked the twist, which i did not see coming, but i didn't like the hurried exposition explaining it all. the pacing of this story is all over the map; IMO 22 episodes are enough time to handle it much better.

animation/art: production IG, need i say more? it's beautiful. so much detail, and characters even change their clothes and hair styles several times! backgrounds showcase tanegashima (an island off the south coast of kyuushuu), where japan's actual space facilities are located -- i want to go!. smooth animation, good cinematography. i have no complaints here; it is a joy to watch.

sound: my reviews tend to lack good notes on sound because, while i know good music when i hear it, i don't have a knowledgeable vocabulary to convey its nuances. i like the BGM here, i also like the OP and ED songs (i'm becoming a fan of itou kanako; a strong, non-cutesy female voice). the voice talent is decent -- shinichiro miki is wasted as sawada, morikawa toshiyuki does a fair but kinda bland job voicing kimijima (for which he probably should not be blamed), and nazuka kaori steals the show with her interpretation of fraukoujiro.

characters: great visual design, sub-par personalities.
1. senomiya akiho, super-enthusiastic president of the robotics club with a serious inferiority complex about her older sister misaki who first had the idea of building a giant robot for the famous anime "gunvarrel" 9 years ago.
2. yashio kaito, whose sole interest at the start is playing a giant-robot battle game, at which he excels. otherwise he doesn't seem to care about anything, doesn't want to do anything, and basically just lays around, only moving when aki drags him around.
3. daitoku junna, a moe blob with a fear of robots (she has reason).
4. hidaka subaru, megane guy with delusions of bishounen/liberace grandeur, heavily into robots, serious to a fault
5. fraukoujiro / furugoori kano, shut-in, geek, gamer, genius programmer, fujoshi, equal-opportunity lecher
6. yukifune airi, AI interface

that doesn't sound so bad, you say? well, it's not bad bad, but it's just... there isn't enough character development here. we get a bare bones skeleton for most of them, and while we might find out a secret or two, we don't really get to know these people, and they feel almost generic (except that their character design is very good). except furugoori, who is quite a unique character, albeit bordering on caricature.

aki and kaito both drive the show; everybody else feels like an extra. aki bulldozes ahead on the robot-building side, while kaito investigates the odd occurrences that start with an alleged ghost. he becomes a little more interesting as time goes on, but i had a hard time warming up to him because he is just not innately curious (unlike me, *wry grin*), and keeps dragging his feet, almost lackadaisically stumbling across serious secrets, and showing little intellectual curiosity. he frustrated me a lot until fairly late in the anime when he grows a pair. his saving grace all along is that he does care about those he considers his friends, and he will act to help them, often quietly behind the scenes. i am happy to say what little romance this anime involves is actually well done, no typical stupidity involved.

i can't talk about the villain(s) without spoilering, but that's probably my biggest disappointment -- we get no good villain. there is no proper motivation for the villainous intent, and frankly, most fights between good and evil just bore me; i prefer conflict between good-yet-flawed characters, dilemmas that make me think. don't get that here. oh, and i could have done without the parrot ex machina intervention at the convenient moment; i actually laughed -- not what i should feel moved to do in a life-or-death situation

so where the heck did the monopoles come from? is that ever explained and i just missed it?

in short, i enjoyed watching it, but the pay-off didn't materialize, and the 7 is primarily there because the production is so good, and i average all values to get my overall score. i don't think that i would recommend it to my friends.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 25, 2013

KatayokuTsuneki

Mixed Feelings

I was really looking forward to an anime adaptation of Robotics;Notes, the third visual novel written by Hayashi Naotaka-shi for the collaboration of 5pb. and Nitroplus, because previous two series came from it were really neat with ChäoS;HEAd being a rather promising start and Steins;Gate being just stellar. So no wonder I have a lot of things to tell now.

Robotics;Notes begins with our protagonists, Yashio Kaito and Senomiya Akiho, the only members of school’s robotics club, trying to save the said club from shutting down. And that’s a huge step down from Steins;Gate in terms of a story. I mean, Steins;Gate had university students as ... main characters who invent and mess up with crazy gadgets, and all Robotics;Notes has to offer is yet another clichéd story about saving a school club. Ouch. But to be fair, one can still pull out a good plot from that, and Robotics;Notes has an interesting start despite me being biased against its premise.

The plot of the series starts off with Yashio and Senomiya entering some sort of Japanese Robot Wars tournament. It’s a great hook for the series and it made me change my initial opinion of the show. I’m pretty sure that the idea of crushing and smashing enemy robots with your own one is appealing to every geek, who is interested in technology. We are all children when it comes to this. If you liked playing around with screwdrivers and other instruments, disassembling stuff and building simple mechanisms when you were small, then you understand the overall feeling that Robotics;Notes is trying to show you — the technology is awesome, and through it you can make miracles come true like a bloody mage.

The first half of Robotics;Notes serves mainly as an introduction of the characters, just like in Steins;Gate.
Yashio is a good male protagonist to me. He has a lazy attitude but essentially is a nice and caring fellow who just doesn’t want to show it off. Sometimes he lacks character because of that but I think that’s fine in general.
Senomiya Akiho is a cheerful, merry girl. She is really important for this story because she is the key to the mood Robotics;Notes is trying to pull you in. Senomiya absolutely loves robots and never stops talking about how classy they are. Actually, it’s a double-edged sword, because, depending on a viewer, she can either be irritating or having a certain appeal to her.
Of all other characters I want to mention Furugōri Kona, resident computer fairy. I mentioned in my Steins;Gate review that I liked how Hashida Itaru was a pretty nice depiction of a geek. Furugōri is exact opposite, a walking stereotype: a shut-in, a fujoshi and speaks in slang full of memes. The thing is, she is probably my favourite character here, maybe because of her over-the-top behaviour and facial expressions or maybe because she has a certain drama to herself. Nevertheless, I think Furugōri’s antics are the funniest part of the series.

So, yeah… Enough praising here. You’ve probably seen my rating and are now wondering why it is so low after all I said. Well, both Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes have a good first half, but while Steins;Gate in its second half becomes one of the best anime series I’ve ever seen, Robotics;Notes follows the wrong way and starts to fall apart.

The plot becomes bloody nonsensical. A lot of threads are left forgotten and unresolved, and I think that I should put part of the blame for this on the blokes who wrote script for the series because it feels like they did a bad job in condensing several routes of the visual novel into one big story. But there are things I can’t see any excuse for. Some events of the past that the characters constantly mentioned in a vague way are never fully explained. What a tease. Other big events happened during the course of the series just don’t get enough attention in my eyes. Major things going in Tokyo? Yep, it looks totally important because all description I get is about thirty seconds of footage and a couple of posts in bland name Twitter. The world is in turmoil? Casually mentioned in the news and that’s it. I just can’t sense the scale they want me to feel. It’s like spending all day wasting time in your house, watching the telly and so on, and then some fellow suddenly shows up and tells you that boom, you saved the world by doing nothing. That is wonderful but just doesn’t feel like a major accomplishment, does it?

Most of the characters lost their appeal to me in the second half because they just stopped being relevant to the main plot. It’s just like they are written in for the sake of one single scene or for the pure purpose of exposition. The antagonist is also meh because he lacks any motivation or traits that could have made him a memorable villain. Just what is he going to do after he succeeds? Why is his plan so overly complex and relying heavily on rather small and obscure details? I guess I’ll never know.

And another thing. As I mentioned before, what defined Robotics;Notes and made it likeable to me in the first place is the sense of awe it gave to technology and constructing stuff. I loved that message, but then the creators completely screwed it up with inconsistency and technobabble. Sure, there is a lot of technobabble in ChäoS;HEAd and in Steins;Gate, but at least it is believable to some extent. And here we have magnetic monopoles — red glowing thingies that just fall from the sky for unexplained reason. There is a friendly neighbourhood PhD in physics, whom I went to the same school with. When I told her about this concept, well… I’ll never forget those cold eyes of a person with murderous intent so strong it can make you die of fear. No, seriously, you cannot write a love letter to science with plot devices like monopoles that come out from bloody nowhere. It sort of undermines the whole message that technology can make miracles in good hands and save the world in hopeless situations because it turns out that to create technology you need a really miraculous event to happen first. Ridiculous.

Robotics;Notes is major disappointment for me. Akin to ChäoS;HEAd and Steins;Gate, it was rather promising in the beginning, with Robot Wars, urban legends and augmented reality quest bits, but unlike those two, its story had too much build-up leading out to literally nothing, so it just collapsed by its own weight.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 22, 2013

AidanAK47

Not Recommended

Robotics;Notes, the latest work of Naotaka Hayashi who is also the writer for Steins;Gate and Chaos;Head. If you didn't know that just by seeing the colon in each of the titles then the four lines of pointless philosophy he puts under the titles is bound to tip you off. As someone who has read both his first two works and watched the animes, I can say I have a fairly good grasp of his writing style. Don't worry about any fanboyish interfering with this review. As you can tell, I don't have a high opinion of him.

Robotics;Notes is about robots...or that what it's ... supposed to be about. Wouldn't be the first of this guys works to have false advertising. The first half of the show involves Aki gathering the members of the robotics club and slice of life antics. This is a common thing in this mans works. A section of the story which is held up mostly by the characters and slice of life. It's slow and sadly unlike Steins;Gate the characters are not interesting enough to carry the show. So our only incentive to watch on deals with the mystery of Kimijima Reports. Unfortunately his mystery is slow moving and the significance of these reports only becomes apparent in the second half of the series.
Speaking of which, the second half could be considered the crash and burn point. If you pay attention you begin to notice that the story in it's efforts to become more dramatic has instead become sillier. Plot holes rear their heads and you come to the conclusion that despite the impression of the first episodes, this show isn't going for something remotely realistic. We enter into a series of character arcs which are not related to the main plot and anything that takes place here is forgotten and discarded. However when the final episodes come and our main plot returns. This is the point were the writers main weakness comes up and exposes itself. You see the writer has a problem with jumping the shark. He can create a setting with the potential to be something great but he also has the talent of reducing it to garbage if left unchecked. With Chaos;Head he turned an intriguing murder mystery into a shounen battle anime. With Steins;Gate he polluted it with developments which created plot holes. The result wasn't garbage but he was getting close by the end. (You people better be thankful to White fox for adapting the visual novel cleverly into anime and removing the flaws in the original materiel. For example, in the visual novel black holes can not only compress matter, but also data.) But Robotics;Notes takes the cake. I am sure I am not alone in saying that the revelations in those episodes were stupid beyond belief. And my friends if your sense of disbelief isn't shot to shreds, placed in a trashcan and set on fire by this point then a mind numbingly bad deus ex machina involving a parrot is sure to finish the job. In the end we are left with a barrel of plot holes, story developments which make no sense, characters we have long since stopped caring about and a ending which in one of the characters terms, lacks IMPACT0!

Animation is to the degrees I have come to expect from Production IG lately. While not visually stunning they still are above the standards of decent animation. Sound is fairly decent with two openings of J-pop. The second one I am actually fond of. The BGM manages to highlight scenes and do it's job. Not outstanding but I can't complain.

The characters of Robotic;Notes consist of a optimistic mecha anime fan main heroine called Aki, the gamer Kai who's currently only interested in playing a robot fighting game called Kill Ballad, an overly eccentric computer genius called Frau, a virtual weather girl program called Airi, galactic bishounen wannabe straight man glasses guy and some girl who's only traits are karate and being cute...apparently. I would like to give more info on those last two but that's all I got. Many of these grow tiresome after their one note gimmick loses amusement. The saving grace is Frau. Frau is a depiction of the girl genius which isn't common and her lack of social etiquette and quirkiness make her rather lovable. It's a pity that after her episode arc she is pushed into a support role and her screen time is drastically reduced.

Overall Robotics;Notes is not something I would recommend to others. Specifically if they are looking for something on the same level as Steins;Gate, avoid it like the plague. Really it's just a good example of how going too far for dramatic effect can come back to bite you in the ass. If you plan to watch it no matter what I say I give you this piece of advice. Keep your expectations rock bottom, no matter how promising something looks.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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