Reviews

Apr 14, 2019
Mixed Feelings
It is the year 2050. Automatas are now part of human's daily lives. Derrida's father happens to be the creator and now he follows in his footsteps developing them at Rebuild. However, he and his friend Nathan discovers a fatal bug in the latest "DZ" models that could allow them to go out-of-control. Not only that, rumours were the models were going to be militarised which was all the more reason they had to fix the bug first.

Not long later, Derrida finds both Nathan and himself targetted by Rebuild. As he desperately runs away from his assailants, he finds himself falling into an underground laboratory and put into cryostatis. When he wakes up he finds something he had given up research on had happened to him - time leaping. He was now 10 years into the future which was now ravaged by an ongoing war, over-run by rogue DZ models. Now Derrida must find Nathan's daughter Mage so that he can retrieve the key he had entrusted to her, needed to run the patch on the automatas.

This is actually the Geek Toys' debut title. Looking at Director Takuya Satou's profile you might expect something good to come out of this show considering he was the co-director of Steins;gate, scenario writer for Fate/Stay Night (2006) but, unfortunately this original story is nothing special.

World setting is passable as a futuristic city with automated robots and vehicles serving humans. It's nothing original really although the building designs look quite good. Sci-fi background art by Kusanagi Studio looks pretty good and the 3D blends in pretty well but the animation's really stiff. This is especially true of the characters who look roughly designed. Most of the time it looks like they can only animate one thing at a time or if there is animation, it looks like it's been cloned and set on a loop.

The story's very cliche and the pacing's also awfully rushed so you don't really get to know the characters well enough to empathise with them. It feels like they come up with very cliche ideas, decide to try them and then don't know what to do with them afterwards. Sci-fi isn't setup as good as say Steins;gate ironically because instead of using real world hypothesises and expanding on them, this show just makes things up like "Trout Theory" that are vaguely explained. Time leaps (or "time rides" as they're called here) happen randomly and are unexplained with your familiar protagonist desparately trying to change history failing time and time again (pun intended). It even tries to add in a bit of mystery and magic too with random mist and a "mystery girl" appearing which just becomes tiring to watch because it doesn't add much to the show. Every time the sequence happens it feels more like the team ran out of ideas and thought, "Lets do use that scene again to pad out the story."

Good points? Besides the good background art I guess it's one of those rare shows with no fan service scenes. The supporting cast stands out more than the protagonists. Mayuka is probably the only character you can empathise with being a good girl character similar to Kanna from Miss Kobayashi. Oh, and maybe Graham the AI car.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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