Texhnolyze

To call Texhnolyze one of the most predictable stories is an understatement. The only expectation it defied was the exepctation to be worthwhile. Other than that, this is your typical artsy anime. It beats you over the head with how artsy it is, using techniques that distinguishes it from mainstream anime. None of these techniques distinguishes it from the many ‘artistic’ stories out there. It often looks like an immature, more angsty little brother of Blade Runner or Eraserhead.

Is there a more redundant way to inform your audience that your story is serious by having grey colours and serious characters? Nolan used the same technique ... in Inception and made a complete fool of himself. He was so focused on being serious that hsi dreams looked like Michael Bay directed them.

The anime doesn’t follow an idea of its own. The directors behind it watched a bunch of art house films, noticed the lack of dialogue in Blade Runner and decided that this is the reason it got the acclaim.

Being serious isn’t going to make me take your story seriously. Halfway through the series and all the characters still act the same. They all present the same variation of the stoic, apathetic characters. Some are less stoic than others, but that’s like saying there’s a major difference between New York Hardcore and Beatdown Hardcore. They more similar than they are different.

After 20 episodes, the 100th shot of Ichise’s indifferent, emotionless face is hilarious. It reeks of trying too hard. Is the life of people in harsh environments like this? Did the Jews in the Holocaust or the fighters in Sudan had time to just stare off into the distant with a stoic face?

Think of any photograph of a war-torned or poverty-stricked place. Do the people have the privilege of being stoic? No. These photographs are harrowing because they’re full of pain and suffering. These are people who want life and struggle to survive, to find some kind of joy in it. Stories from Holocaust survivors are full of these moments. They’re not stoic but swinging from one extreme painful moment to a small relief of happiness.

The only place that actually is monotonous is your office job and suburban job. Texhnolyze is full of angst, the kind your suburuban dad gets after 20 years in the same job. It’s your boring monotonous pessimism you hear from a teenager when every day is exactly the same.

Actually, comparing this to teen angst is a compliment. Teen angst is an existensial storm of ups and downs, like that Nine Inch Nails album. It can be silly but it’s exciting. Texhnolyze is macho angst. It’s the same thing that fuels Game of Thrones and Cormac McCarthy novels. The old macho fantasy of men in suits not expressing emotions is a big hit now and is often confused with depth. The only surprise is that Texhnolyze doesn’t have graphic sexual abuse (Although we do get a sexy doctor).

You cannot horrify the audience by constantly showing suffering. Humans adapt. When feel something too much we get used to it and our perspective changes. Texhnolyze has the same emotional tone throughout the series.

Bleakness and grimdarkness cannot be leading tones. They’re too narrow. You can use them in certain scenes but unless you’re doing something especially unusual there’s nothing there. You need to contrast it with something. People don’t suffer because they don’t have something. People suffer because they don’t have something that they want.

There are plenty of tragic and dark works out there, but they’re effective because they’re aware suffering doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You don’t have to show a moment of joy. Just showing it can exist in your world is enough. I only have to skim over Serial Experiments Lain to find a shot of girls laughing in bright colors. This is enough to inform me that in the world of Lain, people can be happy.

Some moments have potential to offer contrast, but the mood suffocates it. A sex scene is in dark colors and full of dread. We see a party, but there breaks Hal’s heart. It is a flat line, which means it’s both shallow and dead.

If Texhnolyze found a unique way to express the grimdark cliche, I would have forgiven it. If it would have gone full retard in the Techno-Industrial depart it would be a little fun. While the soundtrack is nice, the scenery never reminded me of Front Line Assembly. The decay gets more focus than the mechanical nature. The focus is on the mood, rather on something that will create the mood. This is no City of Rapture.

The most radical switch from this mood is the action scenes. The anime joins BTOOOM! and Deadman Wonderland by bathing in blood and faces distorting in pain. The show already established a cold, stoic tone. When these scenes kick in, the violence isn’t harrowing. The scenes don’t reveal any pain because we were already beaten the head with pain before. So all they do is take the suffering one step further, showing it more explicitly. Someone should’ve told them that what makes pictures from the Holocaust or Unit 731 harrowing is because we know these are real people. The people in Texhnolyze aren’t real.

There’s a revealing interview with the creators. They said these action scenes were a response to the Shounen Jump style violence, where characters walk away bleeding. The creators wanted to express ‘pain’. If they had any understanding of action films, they would have known they are not about pain. Action anime is about aestheticized violence, about making violence look really cool.

Asking what the creators wanted to communicate, they said they don’t have any idea. They admit things changed as they series went along and that’s it. He hoped that the viewer would feel some kind of empathy or that they will think ‘this might mean this’. Does that sound like a work which involved deep thought?

I did not want the creator to analyze his own work. Still, I expected them to have some kind of direction. Lynch saying he sees absurditiy and weirdness all around him is enough to give you some idea what his films try to express.

If Texhnolyze was a mess of ideas it would still be amusing. If it jumped off from one idea to the next it would at least be there. Not knowing what it’s about, instead, makes for an anime that never builds towards anything. The tone never changes, since they never know what it was about in the beginning so they had no foundation to build upon. It ends with a big battle and an antagonist who’s a rip-off on Fallout‘s The Master only without the charisma, humor and the depth.

I engaged in a long debate with hopes of finding value. While the person raised a lot of valid points and there is something here about the nature of existence and ‘being human’, it’s not conveyed. I engaged in that debate while watching the last episodes. They’re an improvement and the above-ground is a great idea, but the stoic mood and boring violence overpowered any depth there could have been. You don’t cover depth and ideas with a boring story. Your cover needs to serve the ideas, not obscure them.

Some also told me the characters are not the point, but if this is about humanity they must be the point. You cannot have a story about human nature or existence without characters. Existence and stories don’t exist outside of characters. You can have a story without many things. You can have a story that’s just an inner monologue, but without characters the only thing you can write about is asteroids hitting planets and blowing shit up. That’s just a Michael Bay story without women.

Perhaps I’m an idiot. Perhaps there is something deeper beneath the 100 shots of apathetic and ultra macho faces. Perhaps everyone just jumps on the bandwagon of grimdark and think that if the anime has a serious tone, then we must take it seriously. I’ve experienced plenty of strange and ‘artistic’ stories. Most of them were weird enough to be interesting for a while even if they failed. Texhnolyze is a predictably artsy anime that can’t escape its trap. Even if it says something about existence or optimism, in the end it wants too much to be serious and everything is dead.

Additional content: Style and substance aren't the same, but they're linked together. Texhnolyze does have interesting ideas and ambitions, yes. It does end on a slightly more positive note, which makes in unique in the reality of grimdark stories.

However, the style of the show prevents all of these ideas to surface. There are different personalities, but they are more similar than they are different in their toughness and stoicness. The series tries too hard to set atmosphere, spending too much time on it than other 'atmospheric' works like Mushishi or SEL. Moreover, the atmosphere is incredibly generic. Mushishi has the mysterious, indifferent nature thing going on. SEL has the digital-paranoia going on (Even if it's not very original, it's at least specific). Texhnolyze sometimes points to an Industrial-Apocalyptic decay thing, but most of the time it's just really grim and dark. Lux isn't defined by a specific aesthetic but just a general tone of Really Bad Life.

Texhnolyze is actually my type of anime. I love cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic stories, the theme of technology and progress and weird narratives. I'm a pessimist, so I'm all for dealing with life's harshest realities. Texhnolyze was boring because it wasn't challenging or weird or exciting enough. If Texhnolyze was truly bizarre, I would've forgiven its flaws. Instead, I just felt like I've seen it all before.

1.5 stoic faces out of 5

Positive: Good looking male lead and a beautiful ending song by Gackt

Negative: Coma inducing

I just put this anime in my to watch list and decided to take a look at the first episode because I can't sleep. I thought I'll watch maybe two episodes and hopefully go to sleep but after watching one episode i have to say that the only thing really keeping me awake is that I want to write this review with this anime fresh on the brain.

The anime started out okay, just showing the male lead looking at himself in the mirror, no big deal, wiping blood off the mirror, okay, ... woman comes in, whispers something to him, whatever, other random scenes of food cooking on a burner, okay, man putting food in mouth, alrighty, woman is looking up, then down, then up, then shots of hands and hanging hair, then she is straddling him, okay they are doing it, she digs finger in his eye, okay thats odd, he knocks her off, good move, more random shots of stuff, then male lead lays in the sewers and looks at money, more shots of stuff, girls shows up in a mask, looks at guy.....

17 minutes later, we get some dialogue.

Seriously, was this anime made by freaking turtles? Was it written by those slow a$$ trees on Lord of the Rings? Everything in this anime is soooooooo sllllllloooooowwwww. Turning a head in slow motion, an eye moving slowly, woman getting knocked off in slow motion, male emo lead looking at cash slowly, girl stares at man for a looooonnnnngggggg time.

About 10 minutes in I kept looking at the timer on the screen because it felt like I was watching a full length film. I found my eyes closing, which was the only reason I didn't switch it off. Then out of nowhere they try to add some action scenes but it consisted of gunshot sound effects and crumbling pipes here and there and loads of heavy breathing, as if the character's heavy breathing alone is supposed to tell you how dire the situation is. I knew right away that I wasn't going to watch another episode of this garbage. Then when I come here I see a recommendation to watch LAIN if you like this anime, then it all made sense! This is just pretentious, uninteresting emo trash like lain.

I gave it a 2, one for having some eye candy and one for the ending song, I've heard this song a long time ago and was never able to find it and because of this anime I was able to find it again. :D

Style - It is fairly well animated, but the action is often seen from awkward angles which makes it confusing and frustrating. The character design is also not particularly aesthetically pleasing. 2 out of 3.

Character - The characters are terrible, and I have good reason to believe that the director never intended for the audience to like or relate to any of them. Ichise doesn't know any emotion other than rage, and ends up killing everyone and then dying a lonely death. Oonishi is an idiot who doesn't even understand the organization that he supposedly leads, and ends up getting betrayed. Ran practically never ... says anything; the only thing we know about her is that she can see the future and she doesn't like it. Doc is another idiot who doesn't understand anything and ends up committing suicide. 0 out of 4 for utterly unlikable and completely forgettable characters.

Story - The story is utterly awful, in the worst sense of the word. Texhnolyze would have you believe that in the future, mankind gets divided into 2 parts - the normal and sane people live in the surface world, and the violent criminals live in the underground. The normal people end up dying out because....nobody has any children. NOBODY. The mind boggles at how completely stupid and idiotic this is. Also, suddenly SHAPES from nowhere, kill everyone, and then randomly grow roots and die. Completely nonsensical. 0 out of 3 for making absolutely zero sense.

Overall 2 out of 10 for having a mediocre style, terribad characters and a completely nonsensical plot.

So one day I get a call from a friend of mine, lordzeru, and he tells me about this trippy first episode of this anime called Texhnolyze. I asked what makes it trippy. He says no one says a word, its very quiet. Usually in an anime trippy and unusual are a good thing and ultimately lead to good mind fuck. This is not the case with Texhnolyze.

From the get go there is like no audio. There is no music except the shitty opening, and I don't even think any words were said the first episode. The whole series keeps about the same pace. ... That is why the sound has a 1, there is no sound. No music, and little talking, especially from the main character, Ichise, who we nicknamed, "Fists" because he threw more punches than he spoke words. If I were to compare Fists character to anything it'd be a stray dog with the brain of a pile of rocks and the emotions of a tree stump.

The setting of this story is some underground city called Lux which is controlled by several gangs fighting for power until some guy named Yoshi, who we nicknamed, "Mustache", comes in from the surface and just , fucks shit up. Mustache is the only characters I actually took a liking to simply because he pulled this series along and made shit happen. Meanwhile Fists ends up getting am arm and leg cut off by one of the gangs known as, "Organo". Fists is then taken in by horny female doctor called.....Doc, can't get anymore original than that. Anyways, Doc sets him up with some new prosthetic limbs, or Texhnolyzed limbs, as they call them. Fists then being the dumb stray dog he is then runs away from Doc and spends the rest of the series wandering around punching people. All except the little red-haired girl in a mask named Ran who follows him around and talks as little as he does.

In the end, this series left me with a pure sense of emptiness, and by that I mean a complete void of emotion, something I'd never felt before, and that's the only reason I don't consider this anime a complete waste of time.

Seeing how many 10/10 this one is getting I felt a need to barge in.

When I was first watching SEL, I thought something like “Damn, this one’s sure weird. It will probably be either really good or totally awful.” Well, when I was watching Texhnolyze, I thought the same thing, and I was right both times! The only difference is that SEL ended up being a 10/10 and Texhnolyze – a 1/10.

So as a word of warning to any Lainbros out there since this is getting recommended – DO NOT watch. I was also deluded by the shills, otherwise, I wouldn’t have watched Texhnolyze ... again after dropping it 4 years ago. It has literally zero good things about it. It looks really bad. The soundtrack starts playing once in a blue moon. The story is rather predictable. You would think that because the dialogue is scarce it would be more meaningful. Nope. The characters are boring, and Ichise is definitely the most awfully written character I ever had to look at.

I think that dark, psychological, and violent themes can be a recipe for true masterpieces when done right. This is not the case here.
I hope this review helps someone to avoid this anime.

Texhnolyze is a dark and brooding anime series that left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, it's a bold and unconventional attempt at storytelling, but on the other, its bleakness and slow pacing can make it a daunting experience for many viewers.

The positive aspect of Texhnolyze is its unique and unapologetically dark narrative. The series doesn't hold back in its exploration of dystopian themes, human suffering, and the consequences of technological advancement. It pushes the boundaries of traditional storytelling, making it an intellectually stimulating journey for those who appreciate unconventional narratives.

However, the show's relentless bleakness and the sheer weight of its oppressive atmosphere can ... be a major turn-off. The characters are often one-dimensional, with very little emotional depth or development. While this might be intentional to convey the hopelessness of the setting, it can be challenging to connect with or invest in the characters' fates. The slow pacing and cryptic storytelling also make Texhnolyze difficult to follow at times, leaving viewers bewildered and disconnected from the narrative.

In conclusion, Texhnolyze is a polarizing series that offers a unique and thought-provoking experience for those willing to delve into its darkness. However, its grim tone, one-dimensional characters, and often confusing narrative can make it a frustrating and even alienating watch for many. If you're a fan of unconventional and emotionally taxing storytelling, Texhnolyze might be worth a try, but for others, it could be a daunting and unsatisfying journey.

My wife and I both strongly disliked, and were bored to tears by, Serial Experiments Lain so we were both quite hesitant going into Texhnolyze, as it's from the same character designer, Yoshitoshi ABe. Nonetheless, we are both big on giving things an honest chance and having an open mind so we gave it a watch. Neither of us enjoyed this anime, and here's why-

Art-

The art style and the way the anime is directed is remarkably similar to Serial Experiments Lain, which to us is a negative thing. This anime is now 15+ years old, so it's not fair to compare it graphically to something ... more modern, but this anime did not age well graphically. It's not particularly pretty, it looks clearly dated and some of the character models are pretty rough. Also, a key character in this anime looks far too similar to Lain herself, which we thought was weird and lame.

Sound-

The sound as a whole was also mediocre at best. The voice acting is extremely average at best and has absolutely zero standout performances.

The music was well below average. I hardly noticed it throughout and there are no songs whatsoever that remotely stand out to me or that stick in my memory just days after completing this anime, nevermind weeks or months down the road.

Character/Story-

As usual from Yoshitoshi ABe, many of the characters in this anime are super cliche and stereotyped, one dimensional and in many cases simply very weird. I'm convinced this man has never interacted with a woman in his entire life because almost every female character in every anime I've seen from this man is about as stereotypical, cliche, cookie-cutter, one dimensional and unrealistic as they come.

The "main character" in this anime, and I use quotes because it strongly felt to me like Onishi was the real main character, is one of the worst leads I've ever seen. He hardly talks or has any personality whatsoever, he has a poorly animated fat face and basically the only thing he does throughout the show- and he does this over and over again- is get angry and start hitting things. He's got a much less cool "Hulk mad! Hulk SMASH!" thing going on.

The story overall didn't do it for us either. Any negative adjective you can apply to the story of Serial Experiments Lain is applicable here as well. Gruelingly slow? Absolutely. Convoluted? Yes. Hard to follow? Definitely. Super weird? Often. Outright boring? For sure. The pace as a whole is just punishingly slow and the overall story could have been told in 15 ish episodes, tops, but it drags for a very long and drawn out 22.

To say one positive thing, the latter part of the show was better than the former and it had a few cliffhangers and a building mystery I was somewhat intrigued by, but it took wayyyyy too long to get there and the characters were so underdeveloped and lame that I simply didn't care about any of them by the time we hit that point. It was very much too little too late.

Enjoyment-

For both my wife and myself watching this just felt like a huge slog damn near from start to finish and we only opted to finish it at all because we absolutely hate dropping things and we see things through to the end for better or worse. We both fell asleep during this anime on more than one occasion and watching it just felt super tedious. The ending of the show was decent but by that point we were completely uninvested and just praying for it to be over as soon as possible. Neither of us enjoyed watching this at all. It wasn't our single least favorite anime of all time, but it's definitely very low on our list and not something either of us ever want to watch again.

Overall-

If you read this review up to this point you know my overall experience with this anime was largely negative. Just like Serial Experiments Lain it was very very slow, weird and convoluted and worst of all simply outright boring. It's big on symbolism and non-verbal story telling and if you liked Lain there is a good chance you'll like this. I strongly disliked Lain and this anime is very similar to it, so, thumbs down and definitely not recommended as far as I'm concerned...

+Story concept is original and not something you've seen a dozen times before

-GRUELINGLY slow
-BORING
-Very underdeveloped, cookie cutter, one dimensional characters
-Graphically dated/hasn't aged well


OBJECTIVE RATING- 4
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 4

Texhnolyze is a 2003 Madhouse original anime. Yes, Madhouse. The studio that can make anime as amazing as Monster, Death Parade and Rainbow and then turn around and make utter rubbish like Highschool of the Dead, X-men and the Final Fantasy OVA. Only time and viewing will reveal where this one lands.

Story:

We open with a young fighter named Ichise. the gang that runs the fight decides to get rid of him after he gets violent and he's left without an arm and leg. Fortunately for him, he meets an automail mechanic... I mean, a texhnolyze doctor, who gives him mechanical limbs. And then it's ... off to a dozen episodes of him trying to find a purpose while members of different gangs scowl menacingly at each other.

Therein lies one of the major flaws with the series. It's painfully slow. And not in the "take time to develop characters or explore fun scenarios" way. No, it just features a lot of really slow scenes where we watch a character stand with an expression of dull surprise while taking in some new information. It's like every character in this processes information at the speed of old dial up Internet, and someone keeps picking up the phone.

Another element that contributes to the general slowness of the series is that it has a bunch of scenes that move at a crawl because there's some faux artistic symbol in them and the director really wants you to notice. It actually reminds me of that absolutely horrendous Tarsem film, The Cell. Both because that film does that a lot as well and because both this series and that film are really obvious about what they're going for in those scenes and they just fancy themselves far more clever than they actually are. I have bad news for both of you, the really obvious colour symbolism in All's Quiet on the Western Front is vastly superior to anything you have to offer. Subtler too.

Now, this is painfully slow and almost as full of itself as David Cage but it's not as bad as The Cell or anything by David Cage. Once it gets going, it has the occasional moment that's almost interesting and it does basically keep your attention. Which isn't much, especially when you factor in how long the build up to that point is, but it's better than The Cell or Cage could manage.

Characters:

Part of the issue is that the characters in this are really bland. They aren't obnoxious. They aren't completely one note. But they are very under-written, trope characters. Ichise is the hero with anger issues and a traumatic past. Ran is basically Cassandra from the Iliad except people actually believe her visions and just don't bother trying to do anything about them. Oonishi is the mobster who has a code of honour. We've seen these characters and we've seen them with vastly superior execution.

The biggest problem with them is that a lot of the interpersonal relationships really lack any kind of real connection. Take Ichise's interest in Ran. His interest in getting close to and protecting her doesn't have any coherent motivation and basically comes down to "he saw her flowers when he was in a tight spot a couple times." Ichise's loyalty to Oonishi really comes out of nowhere and never really makes sense. It's like the writers needed the pair of them to be together for the story to work, but they couldn't be asked to give strong character reasons or to develop their relationship.

Art:

I'm not a fan of the character designs in general in this. I think they just look boring. The series also has that sort of dingy, muted look with a lot of shadows and not much in terms of vibrant, bright colours. Which is just a boring aesthetic. In terms of animation, the series just moves too slowly to have smooth, good looking animation. It's not a bad looking anime, but it's very drab and not interesting to look at.

Sound:

The acting is questionable. They got Itou Shizuka. She's been very good in some other anime. The big problem with the acting is that the characters do very little emoting. So, everyone basically uses the exact tone you'd use when reading off the items you need for a recipe so you can add them to your grocery list. The closest you get to emotion in this are Ichise's grunts. And even those sound less emotive and more like he's having a stroke. The music is very lacklustre and forgettable.

Ho-yay:

One of the guys Ichise meets has gay sex to improve his position. So, there are some powerful gay men in this series and they're all shady. But don't worry, it's not a homophobic thing. Every powerful character in this is shady to some degree.

Areas of Improvement:

1. Speed things up. We don't need every obvious revelation to be accompanied by five minutes of Oonishi or whoever just standing there looking grim. Sure, it gives me time to get up, grab a snack and not miss anything but it would be better if it just flowed well.

2. Build up some strong character dynamics. Because giving the characters the relationship they need to advance the plot without putting any effort into it, is just lazy writing.

3. Give it some colour. Yes, we get it, your dystopian world isn't a nice place. That doesn't mean absolutely everything needs to look drab.

Final Thoughts:

Texhnolyze isn't a bad anime. It's slow as hell. Its characters have nothing compelling about them. Its world is dull. And it thinks it's far more clever than it actually is but it isn't bad. It's not good by any means. I wouldn't even give it high enough praise to call it mediocre. That's why I'm giving it a 4/10.

Texhnolyze presents a slow and dark journey through a dystopian world. The first episode sets a tone of bleakness and confusion, alienating most viewers with its sparse dialogue, slow pacing, and dated animation (only available in 480p). However, the following episode has much more dialogue and the pacing does eventually gain momentum several episodes later.

One surprising aspect of Texhnolyze is its influences from Western culture. Drawing inspiration from sources such as Christianity, the Bible, Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, and Edward Hopper's paintings. Additionally, parallels with Ghost in the Shell are evident, as both explore the darker implications of technological advancement and share similar aesthetics.

Still, even though ... Texhnolyze is reasonably well-written, I can't recommend this anime. It's the slowest anime I've ever seen even when it does pick up momentum, and I never cared for any of the characters. With people mentioning how depressing this anime can get. I was expecting to feel the same way I did with the End of Evangelion. Yet, I never felt any despair or emotional connection at all.

Some fans of Texhnolyze claim that criticizing the slow pacing of the anime isn't a valid criticism. However, if the slow pacing of a show takes away the engagement of the viewer, then it is a valid criticism, which this show does. Compare Texhnolyze to similar anime, Serial Experiments Lain and Angel's Egg, and it's much longer and has horrible video quality in comparison. My criticism is not based on "I think this anime is slow because I find it personally boring." Rather Texhnolyze is legitimately too slow narratively. There's a reason it never got a true Blu-ray release or is widely available.

I'd only recommend this anime to people who like the Silent Hill-esque atmosphere. Or for those who like analyzing shows and feeling like geniuses for understanding the show's philosophy.

Honestly, it's a pretty average anime. Quite still, deliberately confusing, and with a soundtrack that bothers a lot at times. It's not funny, it's not emotionally involved, it's not rhythmic. The "photography" also leaves something to be desired.

It has a legion of fans because it's kind of "cult", but I guarantee that there's something better to watch if you're looking for something cult (like Boogiepop Phantom, for example). It's not worth the time spent, I'll be honest.

As a possible positive point, I can say that it has a relatively original story, but that it was developed in a very boring way. The main character ... is simply insufferable. Onishi is one of the few characters that has been developed acceptably.

I follow the opinion of other reviewers: perhaps it would be better if it were compiled into 12 episodes.

How to make a pretentious anime:
- Introduce a protagonist devoid of personality, rendered as a blank slate with minimal backstory, hollow existence and no purpose in life. Subject them to betrayal, physical mutilation, and an endless barrage of suffering. Make him emotionally numb and only humanize him when he's fueled by rage and desire for vengeance.
- Insert an outsider character whose actions instigate a catastrophic, bloody conflict between the city's three rival gang factions, but leave his motivations intentionally and frustratingly vague and unexplained to add an air of contrived mystery to their character.
- Never fully explain the story to the audience to create a ... pretense of intellectual depth through obfuscation and ambiguity. Don't be afraid to use this tactic whenever you notice that your story has fundamental shortcomings and lacks substantive content.
- Paint the cityscape in a bleak, lifeless and desolate palette. Portray the city's denizens as lifeless husks suffering from existential dread brought by living in a dystopian, desolated wasteland of a rapidly decaying city.
- Populate the denizens' everyday life with brutal and graphic scenes of violence and crime. Introduce constant conflict between the city's gangs happening in broad daylight to reinforce the oppressive dystopian atmosphere of the city. Show its inhabitants constantly living on edge, resigned to their grim fate.
- Employ as many unconventional avant-garde animation techniques and a disturbing, unsettling soundtrack in a transparent attempt to elevate the show's lacking narrative through artistic production values. Try to elicit an emotional response from your audience through contrived and insincere audiovisual manipulations that act as superficial substitutes for genuine storytelling and character development.
- Employ as much symbolism and abstract imagery as possible, even at the expense of coherent storytelling. Hammer the viewer with an incessant barrage of symbolic scenes to instigate a profound feeling of forced intellectualism. Make the audience feel like the show is deep and profound simply by making it absurdly incoherent and devoid of intended meaning.
- Make the characters deliver ponderously vague monologues on the nature of existence and the human condition. But don't actually offer any unique or insightful perspectives. Instead, regurgitate surface-level cliched existential thoughts that add little substance to the narrative and serve only to artificially inflate the anime's pretense of depth.

Yep. Here we go. That's Texhnolyze for you.
My final rating: 2/10

I was promised a good psychological anime with a raw depiction of humanity, and what I got was gore and poorly executed gang violence.

I have watched just about every psychological anime under the sun at this point, I love shows that make me think and question things like 'why are we here', 'what is morality', stuff like that. Texhnolyze ended up on just about every list I could find while looking for new recommendations that fit into that mindfuck kind of category, so I gave it a try. I can sort of see where those lists are coming from, but it really didn't get to ... that point at all until maybe the last 3 episodes. The pacing is terrible, and I was never really fully interested in the show. The animation was also lackluster in my opinion, not terrible for being an early 2000s anime, but there were multiple scenes that had so many added effects that just made them hard to watch. Texhnolyze had a lot of creative ideas in the production like a lack of dialogue and a mildly interesting plot, but the execution was poor in my eyes.

Blood and gore are part of psychological anime and I've come to accept that fact, but this one got borderline triggering to me at some points, so beware of that too.

Overall, I wouldn't say that it's the worst anime I've watched, but I was let down and wouldn't recommend it. It took me nearly 2 months of me telling myself that it will get better before I could finally finish the show.