Synduality: Noir

Darling in the Coffin.

Synduality: Noir is a futuristic sci-fi anime where the mechs are small and chunky and also require an R2-D2 shaped like anime waifu’s or a butler or even a black guy, in order to function properly. Drifters use these mechs to scavenge a post-apocalyptic setting for treasure and resources to bring back to their human colonies called Nests whilst fighting off weird alien bug things called Enders.

There's not much about Synduality: Noir’s premise that you can point to as original. In fact, now that the season is complete I can say that it's honestly a bit derivative. However, that doesn't change ... the fact that Studio 8bit did a fantastic job of making the look alive and colourful for a post-apocalyptic setting. The animation is solid and CGI mechs and alien bug creatures look surprisingly good thanks to the combat choreography along with dynamic camera angles and 8bit’s fantastic sound design. I love how each mech has been decked out to reflect the personal tastes of the Drifter, it’s very fun. The drifters and their androids called Magus are also fun. The author of Bunny Girl Senpai manages to squeeze a lot of personality and charm out of a semi-large cast of characters who all have their own things going on and with not a lot of screen time thanks to his efficient screenplay.

Unfortunately, efficient screenplay writing doesn't mean constantly being good. Synduality:Noir has constant problems with pacing and tone. This is usually the fault of protagonist Kanata who can flip from likeable and funny to dense, indecisive and annoying at the drop of a hat. He can be made more bearable with Noir whose kuudere personality compliments him, but whenever he's by himself or with any other character I find him eye-rolling at times.
The story is a bit all over the place. Sometimes it's focused and interesting, other times there's an inappropriate pool episode, in the apocalypse setting. The show also has its own Team Rocket who blasts off after every appearance and were introduced as scary android traffickers… There were some episodes where I genuinely asked out loud “What's the point of this story?”
The show also tends to lean on that sci-fi writing trope “What if androids had feelings like people too?” and I don’t need to explain to you how vapid and overplayed that trope is.

I have mixed feelings about Synduality: Noir. I did enjoy most of it. When it's good it's good but I’m not sure I'm invested enough to recommend it. Despite the highs of the show, it has a lot of baggage holding it back.

6/10 It's Okay.

I'm gonna come out and say it. This is just discount Xenoblade Chronicles 2 with a sluggish, meandering setup and a smorgasbord of tropes and character archetypes from some of the more illustrious mecha franchises crudely mashed together. I'm hard-pressed to believe that this show's story and setting was drafted by Hajime Kamoshida of Aobuta fame.

That said, the aesthetics and character designs are quite easy on the eyes. But the character themselves do not get a passing grade, unfortunately. Starting off with Kanata: he's just a run-of-the-mill "got something to prove" main character who stumbles upon a macguffin that conveniently pertains to something his ... deceased parents were looking into. While I do appreciate his egalitarian outlook on humans and Magus, I can't help but feel disappointed over the lack of any other discerning quirks or traits to make him stand out.

Next up is the eponymous meek Magus, Noir. As mentioned already, I love her design. Despite being featured in the title, she gets sidelined heavily in 60% of the episodes, which is a shame. Had they focused less on Drifter antics and more on the mystery surrounding her origins, it would've handily elevated this show's quality a few levels. Her status as the series' macguffin coupled with the reveal in the final episode, more manufactured drama and hot-potatoing incoming in the second cour.

Okay, since this is dragging on. Here's a lightning round for the rest of the roster.

Tokio - Kamina without any of the charisma

Mouton - Tokio's devoted sidekick

Ellie and Angie - The quintessential pinning childhood friend and her bridesmaid

Micheal and Bob - Some mild comic relief, I guess?

Kurokamen and Schnee - An amalgamation of the blandest parts of every Char clone and his lady-in-waiting

Ciel - The badly written woman on the fence (Props to Nagisa Aoyama on the voice work and singing though. If you're a fan of J-pop like me, then Genwaku Desire and You & (A)I will catch your fancy)

Claudia and Flamme - The two extremes (Of? That's for me to know, and you to find out)

Alba Kuze and Ada - "Look guys! We made a mixed media project!"

That about covers the notable characters. As for the plot, all it does is lay by the wayside while the cast just gets up to the most harebrained shenanigans we've already seen in hundreds of other anime. Simply put, the first cour was 70% filler and 25% plot. The build up for Kanata's coming-of-age moment shouldn't have deserved more than two-three episodes let alone an entire cour. The world building is also lacking. But there's an argument to be made here. One could say that they intended to explore the setting alongside the plot, but I've already expounded the problem with that in my aforementioned point.

Ultimately, this show ends up being a listless mixed media project with a release order that does it no favours. The fact that they led with a sequel for a yet-to-be-released game and yet had the audacity to skip over establishing the setting is a very poor choice. Releasing the game first and having it do the heavy-lifting for establishing the status quo would have helped immensely, but alas it was not meant to be. The game has been delayed indefinitely as of this writing, and its release coinciding with the second cour is highly unlikely. Here's hoping the second cour gives us some answers in lieu of the game.

All in all, this was a very disappointing affair, and the series is sorely undeserving of a weekly watch schedule. The best way to watch this show is to wait till all the episodes are out and binge it over a lazy weekend or two. This way, the lingering dissatisfaction and confusion won't overstay their welcome.

Nothing of note happens in this show. The mix of CG and "traditional" animation is awkward and unappealing. Unnecessary musical performances by an idol-like figure are positioned within episodes at random - this seems to be a marketing stunt if I had to wager a guess.

The partners that accompany each mech pilot are slaves. They might be "robots", but they have zero distinguishing features from their human counterparts except that they are required by some sort of hardware-bound contract to obey their owner's command. Things get even more strange when it is suggested that humans can have sex with these contract-bound characters.

The titular character "Noir" ... is the main character's co-pilot. An amnesiac, she is about as literal of a blank slate as possible and does nothing for the majority of the show's run despite the story being centered on her. The few moments where she actually takes center stage can be amusing at times given her ignorance and rote delivery, but the majority of her behavior is informed by what she sees happening right in front of her, which involves repeating lines said by other characters or inappropriately parroting something out of context.

A good amount of time is spent worldbuilding but very little of it is utilized in a meaningful way. It is hard to say when the show really "starts" because it so frequently seems to be going somewhere only to wrap up the story and pivot back to neutral, thus making the worldbuilding largely filler because none of it plays a role in the story at large.

The show is largely inoffensive. You can watch it while eating lunch or checking email without worrying about something important happening; you will not "miss" an important story beat because none exist.

Can someone tell me: has the Mecha genre really grown over the past few years? And no, I'm talking about everything else other than those affiliated with the Gundam franchise. In my mind, certainly not.

Mixed-media projects are always a big gamble for companies, especially when they're new ones looking to stamp their reputation from the get-go. One recent example that I can think of was of Square Enix's Deep Insanity project, which was collaborated with Ubisoft, and look at how that turned out: the anime was a douche of an embarassing flop back in Fall 2021; the manga adaptation, which had its own standalone timeline ... and finished its Nirvana serialisation in March of this year; not to mention that the PC and mobage Asylum game was released around the same time and ended service last October. It's safe to say that Square Enix risked it all on Deep Insanity, and for all intents and purposes, the project was yet another abject failure that failed to catch on in Japan.

The reason why I'm referencing Deep Insanity, is because of Bandai Namco's newest mixed-media project, dubbed Synduality. It honestly gave me the exact same bad vibes of companies committing to the same tried-and-true but oversaturated market of both AniManga and mobage, and overestimating their competition. As an example, take CyGames for one, their Uma Musume and Princess Connect a.k.a PriConne mobages that has now become mixed-media projects, have been very successful in Japan for a few years now. Most certainly, Bandai Namco is no stranger to this huge and illusive market as well, and this Synduality project of theirs, which has already spawned manga and LN adaptations in the form of Synduality: Ellie, until now, is mostly just mute on the newsfront. With the game console version of Synduality: Echo of Adam, soon to be released on major consoles (except the Switch) and PC, is Bandai Namco ready to gun for yet another success, or another failure...only time will tell.

This then brings me to the anime adaptation of the project, dubbed Synduality: Noir. Based on a story draft by the well-loved author Hajime Kamoshida of Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo and Seishun Buta Yarou Series fame, Noir is set in a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi world where you have your usual mechs and monsters roaming around for survival and community. Please read the synopsis, which will give you the full story setting and its potential for world-building capabilities, of which there are many.

The issue with Noir, lies with the cast of characters. Spearheaded by series composer Takashi Aoshima, his line of past works is quite the detractor to whatever Noir has got planned out for itself, and it's sad to say that many of the tropes from past shows that he's worked on are brought out here. Simply put, the MC Kanata is the literal opposite of a "brains and brawn" guy. Being an engineer to the mechs (which are called Coffins), he's a rather hardworking young man who repairs and fixes Coffins for his people in his hometown of the Rock Town "Nest" settlement. He has good friends like Tokio, who, apart from being the womaniser, is a skilled mecha adventurer (who are dubbed Drifters) with his Magus of butler Mouton to power his Coffin; as well as the childhood friend of Ellie with her Magus of Ange, who has a never-ending crush on Kanata and is always afraid to pluck her courage and tell him of her true feelings. That whole "childhood friend" trope is made worse when Kanata picks up what seems to be a dead, inoperable, but beautiful white-haired Magus, only to find out that, as mysterious as she comes, she awakes with seemingly a blank state and can only acknowledge Kanata has her master. But just as this magus, which Kanata eventually gave her the name of Noir, can power the Coffins as normal, she is a rather special breed of Magus, dubbed Type Zero, which she was a prototype for all of the Maguses that come after her. There is no doubt that Noir acts as the supply to Kanata's demand of wishing to be a full-fledged Drifter; the tale of coincidences lavishes a destiny on which both of them will help to resolve the long-standing issue of humans and monsters, dubbed "Enders".

For the most part, Kanata is the same as any dense MC who knows nothing of love and romance, which, given his interactions first with Ellie and then Noir, pits each other in a pseudo-love triangle of sorts, where really, Noir is just the Kuudere character who needs understanding of what's going on in order to aid Kanata to the best of her abilities. Add in the various characters outside of his friendship bubble with Tokio and Ellie, with mysterious characters come either to thwart their progress or progress the story's plot, and Hajime Kamoshida's story expands to new levels that add more flavour of interest to the worldbuilding, which just so happens to be the only plus point that I can give to the anime overall, that sadly, the main characters being on screen for the majority of the time. dwindles the show's quality.

Studio 8bit is no stranger to adapting a variety of works, including action and fantasy. The closest resemblance that I can give is, funnily enough, this: yet another failed Bandai Namco IP — the ill-fated Zenoncard card game that combines AI elements with its long-running Carddass TCG franchise, which was active from 2019 to 2021. Ah, I remember the memories of watching the ONA, which was nothing more than an advertisement for the now-defunct card game. Under the directorial duties of in-house director Yuusuke Yamamoto, 8bit's production has seen better days, and they still hold up to the punch of delivering quality action scenes that are nice to watch with the surrealism effect. And that is also a plus point in my book.

On the music side, STEREO DIVE FOUNDATION's OP is just as techno-laded as their previous Anisongs, but as much as it seems to be a good fit here, the song is just decent and nothing noteworthy. That said, ARCANA PROJECT has once again delivered a great song in the form of the ED song, and I have loved their tunes since Mononogatari's Season 1 OP, which is a 2-for-2 favourite strike right to my eardrums.

So, why the low score? It's no doubt that Hajime Kamoshida's story plot is the only scoring point for which Synduality: Noir gets it right, but everything else felt stiff, unpolished, and unrefined, with the biggest sin going to the underdeveloped characters, which I am ready to write off Kanata and Co. at any moment. It's a good thing that this show, originally planned to be a 2-cour series, is now split-cour with Part 2 airing next Winter, so any hopes of this show turning into Dust of the Enders, remain to be seen.

For now, it's a mediocre start, and I hope that Part 2 can deliver on the potential lost here.