And that is even by my standards. I'm the kind of person who's sunk pretty deeply into speculative fiction. I'm no stranger to esoteric visuals or allegedly 'mind-bending' concepts about quantum realities or multiple timelines. But Noein blends so much of it so constantly that even having reached the end I'm not totally sure I know what was accomplished or why. The brilliant part of the show is that it doesn't actually matter how weird it is, or how many questions you have, because the writing keeps you invested in what's right in front of you; as long as you care about the characters and their struggles and whether they succeed or fail, the show's in a good place.
As such, I'd like to address this show in ascending order of strangeness and import (the two are fairly closely linked). That means starting with the sound. The music is forgettable and the SFX are... competent. The voice acting is also mostly good, but there I do have a quibble: there are points throughout the show where the script breaks down into moderately long stretches where the characters don't do much except call each other's names (particularly “Haruka!” with the occassional “Karasu” or “Yuu”) and... it's hard to make a conversation out of that material sound good and so there's not really any shame that the VAs don't exactly manage, but now and again there are moments where the cheesy nature of those lines isn't helped by the acting. Some of the characters also have trouble spending a LOT of their time with only a single inflection. I don't really mean Karasu's growl (that's just a particular characterization choice), but Haruka's timid whine and Yuu's somewhat nasal petulant grumpy tone can get old and feel overused. Characters in other shows can be grumps or whiners but have more of a vocal range that they use in other scenarios. Oddly enough the side characters actually seem to have this down, but the leads needed better direction. As-is they aren't terrible, but I've heard better.
The art is where things start to get weird. The general style of Noein is... idiosyncratic. The characters aren't drawn quite like other anime characters. Noein is hardly the only show to have a unique and particular style to its character designs, but it doesn't end there. There are, of course, the designs of the 'aliens and monsters' (so to speak: there are no literal extraterrestrials. I think.) which are pretty unique., creative, and usually twisted – including both the ornate pearl and gold Shangri-la machines and the visceral, used organic and mechanical elements of the Dragon Cavalry. It's more than that, though. The show pretty heavily uses CGI, and it's fairly conspicuous in its use... but I think it's supposed to be conspicuous and jarring, since the biggest use of CGI is for effects that could at least be termed 'magic'. It has an otherworldly feel to it, when a lot of the show is supposed to be otherworldly, so as jarring as it might appear I can't really fault it. Then, on the other side, there are the times when the show swerves hard the other way, going into sketch work with very exaggerated distortions. It's so strange and stylistic that I'm not sure if it's an artistic representation of the feelings in the scenes in question, literally what you would see if you were there including the changes in texture and massive deformation in motion, or if the animators just ran out of budget and resorted to animating the storyboards for a couple scenes. I don't know whether that's brilliant, insane, or both.
The characters do contain something of our callback to reality. The “Normal world” Timespace characters, particularly the kids, are mostly fairly normal. You understand their wishes and desires and their motivations for doing what they do, and the show takes its time building them up, including characters that other shows might get away with leaving flat (like Yuu's mom). Mercifully, despite developing a huge cast, it doesn't distract the show from moving forward. The characters from other timespaces, though, La'cryma and Shangri'la? They're a little more troubling. We aren't privileged to fully understand their struggles, at least not until we're pretty darn deep in the show, and they're subject to Rules of the Universe that we also don't fully understand, meaning that there are degrees to which we can't understand their motivations. Their histories can also be issues. Even though many of the alternate-time characters are the future versions of the kids we know, we aren't privy to what shaped them in the intervening fifteen years between the 'normal world' and La'cryma except by vague and sometimes misleading implications. Add in that there are plenty of La'cryma characters who we don't have past-time analogs for and they're a hard bunch to get a read on. Shangri'la is even worse... I've finished the show and I'm not totally sure what's up with just about anything Shangri'la. To an extent though... does it matter? The struggles of Haruka are well enough explored to carry the show, to an extent everything else is just kind of window dressing.
Which brings us to the plot. The plot is a mixed bag within itself. On one hand, it's a brilliant exploration – in some ways it's the very definition of an epic, a harrowing series of events that fundamentally changes everyone involved by the end, so we can see the journey of the characters as well as the journey of their world. On the other hand... there's some pretty basic, even annoyingly basic, stuff in here. An average arc is that somebody is menacing Haruka and somebody else doesn't want that person to get their way and moves to stop them. Salt with weird stuff happening thanks to Haruka without her understanding or controlling this. My biggest problem with the plot of Noein is that our real main characters, the ones in which the show tries hardest to build emotional stakes, Yuu and Haruka, have frustratingly little agency. Yuu does pretty much nothing except grump and brood until the last act; in my opinion, he needed to be a little more useful, at least in spirit, earlier in the show, and maybe have his personal growth acknowledged better and sooner. Haruka also doesn't do a lot on her own. As the Dragon Torque she has phenomenal cosmic power... but said power didn't come with a manual, so she can only use it as she's mentored to or does on instinct or by accident. And, especially earlier on, there's not enough mentoring and way too much blind accident. In almost every arc, Haruka is dragged along as an object. She is, in a sense, a living McGuffin, despite the fact that the Dragon Torque is ultimately well enough defined that such a label really shouldn't apply to it. I wanted to see Haruka reach for something of her own free will, to act rather than to react... and she kind of didn't.
And yet... I enjoyed this show, particularly its plot and writing, immensely. I think it's down to the pacing. While, looking back it, Noein probably dragged in places in a technical sense, and while I certainly felt it was dragging its heels about a few topics (especially Haruka/The Dragon Torque), it never really felt like it was getting bogged down. Even the longwinded discussions of applied quantum physics were interesting, engaging, and internally well-paced. The action is strong, and a lot of that is down to pitch-perfect build up in the writing. Whenever characters fight in Noein, you feel something about it. Sometimes, especially in the first couple conflicts, your perspective is more that of the frightened kids caught in the crossfire, but by the time the show has reached its midgame the stakes are always there. And I mean, real emotional stakes that viewers can connect with; the show has a lot of “Or it's the end of the world” scenarios but it knows better than to lean on the scope of a devastation that we don't or won't see to provide drama, instead reaching for drama through investment (and frequently putting the fairly likeable Haruka in mortal danger. That helps too.)
The emotional arcs are the strongest part. You feel what the characters feel in Noein, their joy, their pain, and their desperation... even if sometimes you don't really comprehend why. In the end, I think that emotional investment is what holds Noein together and makes sure it works despite everything else being all over the place.
SCORE BREAKDOWN
Story: 7 (a very conflicted 7)
Art: 7
Sound: 6
Character: 8
Enjoyment: 9
Total: 8 (7.4)
VERDICT: If you want to watch Noein, strap yourself in: it's a chaotic roller-coaster in both its content and in some areas its quality. But, rough patches and all, I think it's well worth the ride.
