Texhnolyze

In the dark underground city of Lux, people live in fear and despair under the rule of various criminal factions. Almost secluded from the surface, the gangs' only interaction with the outer world is their mining operation of "raffia," which is the raison d'être of the city.

Available only in Lux, this rare substance is the basis of "texhnolyze" transplants that permit humans to replace parts of their body with cybernetic prostheses. The latter have the particularity not to trigger an immune response in their hosts and the "Class" has the privilege to conduct research on them. This elusive organization, also in charge of the raffia production, delegates its executive authority to a group called Organo led by Keigo Oonishi—a self-righteous man with texhnolyzed legs who is rumored to hear the "voice of the city."

The fragile balance of powers in Lux is disturbed when a mysterious visitor named Kazuho Yoshii begins committing a series of crimes that puts the gangs at each other's throats. In the midst of the chaos, new actors emerge: Ichise, an ex-boxer mutilated by Organo and recently texhnolyzed by Eriko "Doc" Kamata; and Ran, a young florist who can see the future. While Lux steadily plunges into insanity, both Ichise and Ran find themselves involved in the greatest crisis the city has ever faced.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ichise Main

Haga, Satoshi Japanese

Ran Main

Itou, Shizuka Japanese

Yoshii, Kazuho Supporting

Inoue, Takashi Japanese

Oonishi, Keigo Supporting

Tsuchida, Hiroshi Japanese

Kamata, Eriko Supporting

Niki, Shizumi Japanese

Shinji Supporting

Kitade, Shinya Japanese

Tooyama, Haruhiko Supporting

Hoshi, Mitsuaki Japanese

Kano Supporting

Tanaka, Kajirou Japanese

Haru Supporting

Okada, Mitsutoshi Japanese

Sakimura, Tatsuya Supporting

Tonosaki, Akihiko Japanese

Ueda, Yasuyuki Producer

Endou, Takuji Producer, Episode Director

Hamasaki, Hiroshi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Yoshida, Tomohiro Sound Director

Reviews

Jul 2, 2024

HaotianRT

Recommended

Texhnolyze is a "show not tell" type of story. You aren't bombarded by exposition, or cumbersome dialouge that only exists to fill the watcher in and set up the plot. This gives the story a real and human feel that sets it apart. It can be easy to miss things if you aren't willing to engage with the story, but if you're attentive enough or willing to rewatch it then you'll get more and more out of it.


The most common criticism of the show is its extremely slow pacing. I sat down expecting to have to drag myself over walls of exposition and set ... up for the story to pick up... but this never happened. Sure the first 4 or 5 episodes are clearly building to something greater, but to call that "painfully slow" pacing seems silly. The first episode alone is filled with Information, action, and powerful imagery. The pacing feels organic. When the cogs first start turning they take a while to break off the rust, but once they do everything buzzes to life. You get warmed up and acquainted with the world before the narrative picks up aggressively. Then it fizzles out in a final solemn puff of smoke.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Apr 6, 2024

itzswxzy

Mixed Feelings

By Far The Hardest Anime to Ever Complete for me.

Out of 100, 200, 300 animes I ever tried/watched. Texhnoloze might be the hardest and longest it ever took me while only being less than 2 seasons worth of episodes (22).

Major reasons for that could be how it is in fact hard to watch with how subtle the narrative is and how it drowns you with utter silence (literally the first episode there was no dialogue till 12 mins in) and lot of dark tone background imagery and music. The reason why pointing this out is important to me is because by far is this ... not my first encounter with psychological thrillers yet alone my first experience with the creators work. I seen Serial Experiments Lain, Haibane Remnai, Pretty much every Satoshi Kon work, Evangelion, Devilman Crybaby, ghost in the Shell, and Ergo proxy (surprisingly is the closest in comparison to Texhnoloze when Ergo Proxy is by a different person.) none of which came close to how long it took me to get through this show.

By all means Texhnoloze is not bad at all, in fact it’s one of the more Unique animes out there, and lot of the times “unique” isn’t always a good or bad thing, really depends on execution however with Texhnoloze it doesn’t really seem to be an issue here for me as you come to understand why the story seems so pessimistic and despairing. Really tying it to its themes of Theseus Paradox, Dehumanization, nihilism, and existentialism (that being in its more hopeful elements that are near the ending tho).

Even though it took me about 2-3 months to finish this 22 episode show, I really do not feel that negative about it and in fact rated it 9.2-9.3/10, it really does what it’s supposed to as a post apocalyptic world and it’s psychological element regarding the human condition and human evolution and limit of existence, the narrative itself has a hard to grasp plotline because the storytelling is very much on the “show don’t tell” side where it is subtle and leaves lot of interpretation towards the audience rather than spoom feeding every detailed event which I like about this show. The biggest pros of the show is it’s show dont tell storytelling and themes/concepts and the biggest con of the show is it’s lack of entertainment and bleakness but again it’s a more justified issue.

Give it a watch if you want.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jul 25, 2024

elgorreado666

Not Recommended

I first watched Tehnolyze almost 5 years ago and I thought it was a masterpiece, so I gave it a 10 and had it on my favorites for a very long time.

Many rewatches later, I still hold appreciation for the show; there'll never be another "Texhnolyze". It's very unique in many ways, and the slow (but necessary) pacing helps filter out the casual audience, which only helps to make the people who like it feel as though as they've been "chosen".

Texhnolyze stands in a very strange middle ground between edgy teenage ramble and an actual mature adult show. The main problem it has is that ... it has nothing to take away from it, for some this might mean it's pretentious, but I'd actually say it's "messed up".

The show makes so much emphasis on "death" being the solution/punishment that it's no different from, once again, edgy teenage ramble. What even should the audience take away from this? "If you succumb to nihilism, you're better off dead" is a messed up idea from a messed up author who lives in a messed up suicidal society in the name of Japan.

Once you've grown up, and been exposed to death enough times, you'll come to realize that there's no heaven, nothing to romanticize death about. You merely just stop functioning, lose consciousness, you'll never realize your own death.

Even if that makes humans sound like machines, we're not machines at all, so the idea of "destroying the machine" once it serves no purpose is as messed up as it sounds. Death is never a solution, and it should be avoided as much as possible.

And let me question as well this idea of "eternal life" equals succumbing to nihilism. There's no rule that says it should be like that, but in Texhnolyze, that's just the way it is.

There's nothing else for me to criticize about this show, I don't really dislike anything about it other than it having nothing to take away from it; the animation, OST, characters, story and voice acting are all good, it has some nice western art references here and there, and it's share bit of symbolism. But who knows, maybe I'm stupid, maybe there's actually more to take away from this show, but I just couldn't get anything from it.

If you liked the show, but you didn't find the themes compelling like me, I recommend checking out "Casshern Sins". Despite it being nowhere near as subtle as Texhnolyze, it directly challenges it's themes.

Final score: 5/10. Scoring it any lower would be underrating it, but scoring it any higher would make it look as if I was recommending it, and I'd never recommend this to anybody.

Still, I'll just leave it unscored in my list, since my deep appreciation for the show prevents me from giving it a low score. I've just grown tired of it, but I'll never forget the time I used to like it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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	Poll: Texhnolyze Episode 21 Discussion ( 1 2 ) loghneckbeard - Apr 28, 2010	58 replies	by owonism »» Jul 23, 2:45 AM
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	Poll: Texhnolyze Episode 16 Discussion ( 1 2 ) tofei - Feb 12, 2011	50 replies	by SubstanceAnime »» Jul 1, 5:46 AM

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