Platonic Chain

This is a very weird anime looking back on it now

If you want a full blast of just Y2K right in your face, this is your show.

The graphics are definitely dated and you'll get a lot of your tells on the emotions of the characters off their VA rather than their animation but I thought it was charming that they looked like characters from a Nintendo DS game.

These are 3 minute shorts so they don't get to do much but even then, I thought they had a lot of intriguing ideas that could've been longer arcs in a different anime. Episodes 16, 18, and 19 ... in particular have a lot of meat on the bone to be developed into either characters in a different show or even full on shows themselves.

It's kind of surreal seeing this all-knowing powerful supercomputer being used by teen girls (and boys) for just... everyday mundane life and romance but, in a way, it's more fitting for how life has progressed from 2002 than if they treated it like a psychological thriller or something.

I've heard that this feels more like an advertisement for the Platonic Chain app if it ever actually existed more than anything and that does ring true to me. Combined with the Y2K girly pop EDs and it feels like a meta way to advertise the inevitable march of technological progress.

In a way, it's more horrifying than whatever something more fearmongering could cook up. We accept having our data harvested and put out there for anyone to see in exchange for daily conveniences. Platonic Chain ended up being one of the most accurate sci-fi anime ever made without even trying.

We only really get 3 recurring characters, Hitomi, Rica, and Kanae. I think, even with a combined run time of, like, an hour or two, you get a really good feeling for who these characters are. This doesn't tell a complete story per se, it's glimpses into the lives of 3 teenage girls using Platonic Chain.

I think surreal is the best word for this anime. The dated early 3D CG animation (which I think makes this show worth watching alone, from a technological curiosity standpoint), the almost universal acceptance of this technology which should be absolutely horrifying but is accurately treated as just this neat little trinket to play with, the at times ridiculously 2000s designs and fashion (to say nothing of the flip phones), characters will just come and go and never appear again even if they have nominally important roles in the story or are otherwise focal points of an episode.

It's a surreal anime and one that provides a good look into the time it was made.

For what it is, it's a very intriguing anime and I'd very much recommend it.

Platonic Chain is fascinating for several reasons. At its core, the story is about the mundane lives of several teen girls in Shibuya in a "slightly more advanced" version of the early 2000s. The whole story has a sense of oddness to it, since it has all of the makes of a tech-based dystopian horror, and yet the young characters go about their daily lives in stride. While the Platonic Chain tech in the show is new to the girls as well, they adapt to it quickly and incorporate it into their lives in a way that is very deeply human and very accurate to ... how we interact with new technology today.

As a watcher in 2024, I was struck by the horror of how everything in the show (made in 2002 mind you) and all of its dystopian elements are just...life in 2024. The most horrifying aspects of the show (and the parts that characters react the most to) are just...ever present in life now. The farther we get from 2002, the more accurate Platonic Chain is at depicting real life than it is at depicting.a dystopian future, because we already live in it. It's mundane for the characters in Platonic Chain, much like how constant surveillance is mundane for us too.

The rough early 2000s 3D animation is charming. It reminds me of older Playstation video games and all of their poorly-rendered glory. Character designs reflect how much care was put into designing characters that feel fully-fleshed out and can communicate aspects of character personality to viewers within the short minutes we have with them. A lot of love clerly went into rendering the main characters, and I think that's precious. It's a fantastic blast from the past visually and will make anyone with nostalgia for the y2k era smile.

Each episode of Platonic Chain is mostly eaten up by the OP and ED. The ED is always a live-action music video of a late 90s or early 2000s girl group song with cuts of the main characters interspersed. Seeing Baby VOX in an anime is a bit of trip for me, haha. I can see how it may annoy some viewers, but I found it contributed to the charming nature of the show. I LOVE watching early 2000s girl group music videos, so perhaps that's why I loved it so much...

I only mark this as mixed feelings because I recognize some will not appreciate it. But there is a specific audience that should enjoy this. Don't compare this anime to any other modern anime, because it's just comparing apples to oranges. This is a historical artifact and should be enjoyed as such. A lot of people will complain about the CGI art style, but given the hindsight of 20 years - it's awesome. I think it's perfect for this anime; lifeless, creepy CGI animation was this thing that was everywhere for a very short amount of time until everyone finally realized it was totally ugly ... and then it was really only relegated to those straight to dvd children's movies that were rip offs of disney IP. So I think it shows us exactly where this show was coming from in history, it situates you perfectly in the early 2000s. It reminds me of watching code lyoko as a kid. A time when I had no idea how terrible and cruel technology would become.

Platonic Chain is the writer's personal prediction for where technology could have gone in the future. The website "PlaChe" is like an all seeing eye, that invades the privacy of everyone using security cameras that are seemingly everywhere in shibuya. Using facial recognition technology, it can attempt to find your long lost lover or your estranged father for you. Each short episode is generally about a specific feature of PlaChe and how the main characters (cute Shibuya middle schoolers) use it. It's very entertaining to compare the technology of PlaChe to what is truly possible today, in 2023. You have this ability to basically stalk people and find their exact location, using security camera footage mainly. Information they did not give up willingly. Today, if you wanted to find someone, you would likely just find them using information they willingly put online. It would be harder to find someone's exact location, but for those who incessantly document their lives on social media, it's certainly possible. I don't have an exact thesis about this show yet, I'm not saying it's some type of groundbreaking commentary on technology and society. It's mainly just interesting to reflect on this time before everything went so wrong.