Dennou Coil

In the near future, augmented reality has become a key part of daily life. A gentle middle school girl named Yuuko "Yasako" Okonogi and her family have just moved to Daikoku City despite rumors of people disappearing. There, her grandmother, nicknamed "Mega-baa," runs a shop called Megasia that specializes in illegal tools which interact with parts of the virtual world.

Mega-baa also hosts an unofficial detective agency called "Coil," a group of children around Yasako's age who find and handle corruption of the virtual world. Yasako gets involved with the group when Fumie Hashimoto, a playful member of Coil, helps rescue her cyberdog Densuke after getting trapped in virtual space while chasing a mysterious virus. Also investigating these corruptions and viruses is an abrasive hacker named Yuuko Amasawa, who the others take to calling Isako.

Can Coil discover the truths behind the mysterious viruses and corruption, and if they can, at what cost?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Amasawa, Yuuko Main

Kuwashima, Houko Japanese

Okonogi, Yuuko Main

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Harakawa, Kenichi Main

Park, Romi Japanese

Hashimoto, Fumie Main

Kojima, Sachiko Japanese

Sawaguchi, Daichi Main

Saitou, Rie Japanese

Densuke Supporting

Asou, Tomohisa Japanese

Oyaji Supporting

Yada, Kouji Japanese

Sacchi Supporting

Megabaa Supporting

Suzuki, Reiko Japanese

Mojos Supporting

Maruyama, Masao Producer

Watanabe, Shigeru Producer

Matsumoto, Hisako Producer

Mitsugi, Sanae Producer

Reviews

Jun 26, 2024

Curlybrace101

Recommended

"But actually, what is real? Does being able to touch things make them real? If something can't be touched, does that mean it isn't real? What things are really, truly here? What things are actually here for sure?"

Technology has, historically, always belonged to the young generation. When a new breakout in technology is made, it's the kids that find themselves most savvy with it, as well as have it influence their daily lives in every way imaginable. For millennials it was the computer, for generation z it was the smartphone, and for generation alpha...

Well, we don't know yet. But for the fictional gen alpha of ... Dennou Coil, it's Dennou technology---AR technology that lays the cyberspace over the real world and blurs the lines between what is real and what is not.

And that is why Dennou Coil makes for the perfect coming of age story.

A big part of being a child is relying on the technology that is part of every day life, having never lived without it, and the plot of Dennou Coil is all about how closely interwoven AR technology is in the lives of these children. It affects everything they do, from their school work to their after-school play. The main plot is about these child characters uncovering the mysteries of the digital world, but whenever they have downtime, they are experiencing things such as school clubs and summer festivals and going through hormonal changes. Dennou Coil very accurately captures what it is like to be on the cusp of your teenage years, figuring yourself and your relationships with others out.

But Dennou Coil is more than that, still. Most importantly, Dennou Coil is a story about grief. The main characters are all followed by death, and it is only through overcoming that grief that the story reaches its happy ending. Futhermore, it digs deep into grief in wondering what truly it is okay to grieve. As the opening quote says, Dennou Coil calls into question what can truly be considered "real" in the wake of technology intermingling with our daily lives, and as such, what we should feel about it.

Dennou Coil so accurately grasps what it is like to be a child since the advance of technology, and winds in with it a harrowingly real representation of grief that makes it both a charming and thoughtful watch overall.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Apr 27, 2025

whiteflame55

Mixed Feelings

I'm of two very distinct minds on this one.

On the one hand, I love the concept of this series. There are some really cool concepts at play and it makes for an interesting and mostly engaging world. The more we learn about the cyberworld as portrayed here, including how it's accessed through the glasses, the various errors that pop up and resulting obsolete spaces, and in particular the variety of illegals on display, the more interesting this gets. This series is at its absolute best in its first few episodes and roughly in the middle of the series when it just delves into these concepts ... without relating them to some wider ranging story, and if the whole series had been nothing but that, this would have been a great ride that I'm sure I couldn't help but recommend, particularly with this nice visual presentation and some great animation of its cyber world.

On the other hand... well, that isn't what happened. There's a lot more at play as we learn about kids dying and becoming comatose as well as the separation of cyberbodies from physical bodies. I'm a fan of a good mystery told well, but I can't say this one quite worked for me. The series does a great job setting up the mystery through a variety of characters and as a part of building out its world, and even though I wasn't invested in that mystery in the first half of the season (largely due to this series' obsession with keeping many of its most central and knowledgeable players as mystery boxes), I appreciated the slow build-up of information. And as the first few episodes of the second half started, I was getting more invested, particularly as Isako's character got filled out.

Cut to the last roughly 5-6 episodes and that slow drip of information turned into a deluge. Suddenly, we were getting incredibly detailed and specific information along with a lot of technical jargon specific to this world, and as someone who likes his jargon and was taking copious notes to keep up, this just confounded me. I couldn't keep up with much of the information dropped in episodes 22 and 23 in particular, and given that the series only had a few episodes to tie it back together and provide a meaningful conclusion to its many mysteries, this put the series as a whole in a precarious position.

I'll give the series credit: it kind of sticks the landing with a pretty satisfying conclusion between its main characters... assuming you're fully bought into their journeys. That being said, I don't think it works overall. The bonds between its most central characters in particular don't feel that well established despite their spending so much of the series together because far too much of it is spent with them at odds. I'm not sure I can fully explain why many of the characters just didn't click with me, though I think a lot of that has to do with just how little we knew about them for so long. You can have characters be a mystery for much of the series and have them work, but they still need to have something to grab onto and, aside from a couple of side characters I really enjoyed, I can't say that happened here. It doesn't help that the series can't help throwing more characters and lore into the mix even as it goes into its penultimate episode, which distracts from its efforts to wrap things up succinctly.

Still, I didn't dislike this experience, I just wish it had either been more consistent with its delivery of information if it wanted to focus on this mystery. If we had known more about Isako, Nekome and Takeru in particular before those later episodes, it would have been easier to connect to their motivations and generate interest in the mysteries surrounding them. There was plenty to dig into, but by the end, my head was spinning with way too much information.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 24, 2008

thefunkhunter

Not Recommended

Denno Coil in my opinion is not a good anime and I cannot recommend the series so therefore it gets a very low 4 rating.

The story borrows heavily from full metal alchemists and the collection of kirabugs to open up to the "otherside" is completely unoriginal.

The art is great in the way it combines cg and cartoon seamlessly however, the colors are not vibrant and the drawings are a bit 2d looking and plain.

Sound is nothing special voice acting is average and the soundtrack is poor despite a great opening theme song.

Characterization has some depth and it tries to be complex, however, one of ... the main characters is the dog, densuke. He is a great character but unfortunately is hardly in the tv-series, he plays a major part later on, but the tv series would of been much better if he played a bigger role throughout.

Overall, I found the series to drag throughout its slow pace and uneventful tv series. The final 3 episiodes are good and emotional, but the characterization is so undercooked that the impact is significantly less impactful than it should have been. I would recommend the final 3 episodes, but the rest of the series was a bore.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	What exactly is the augmented reality game supposed to be about? clevername03 - Jul 29	1 replies	by tothebirds »» Jul 30, 7:45 PM
	Poll: Denno Coil Episode 16 Discussion Sukotsutsu - Sep 23, 2007	37 replies	by AoButa16 »» Jun 19, 7:24 AM
	Poll: Denno Coil Episode 14 Discussion ashura - Sep 20, 2007	29 replies	by nhkam »» May 14, 9:05 PM
	Poll: Denno Coil Episode 7 Discussion Siing - Jul 12, 2007	32 replies	by Feli_Esmeralder »» Dec 18, 2024 5:15 AM
	Poll: Denno Coil Episode 26 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Zel - Dec 8, 2007	140 replies	by OneMoreFinal »» Sep 17, 2024 4:52 PM