Technoroid: Overmind is err… not good to say the least. A story about a four android roommates trying to become idols so they can pay the rent and the electricity bills could make for a fun comedy, but with it’s lacklustre animation and generically annoying characters, I found sitting through the first four episodes very difficult.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t watch the first episode, in fact you should. The 180 it does at the end might be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while. I’m not going to spoil that particular moment, but I does set up the B plot of anti-robot discrimination, and you’d only need to have played or watched a play-through of David Cages Detroit: Become Human to know why discrimination against robots just does not work as a stand in for real discrimination.
It also doesn’t help that the four androids in question aren’t particularly likeable. Kei, Neon and Chrom all speak in the same monotone way making it difficult to actually separate the three from each other as characters because their other traits aren’t particularly forefront. The only one who has any personality is Cobalt, but honestly I wish he didn’t because he is very obnoxious.
The only normal character in the cast is the soft boy Esora, an engineering prodigy who starts to take care of four bucket of bolts when they find him dying from sunstroke. He’s fine.
Actually, I do like the world building. The city is mostly underwater presumingly because of global warming, so people have to get around by boats, yet it still has the feel of a dystopian, sci-fi future metropolis. The way Esora performs maintenance on the androids via a musical keyboard instead of a computer one is pretty creative too.
There’s a mystery around the four of them as to why they were created and why they’re unregistered machines, but if you’ve seen literally ANY sci-fi anime about androids learning human emotions you can probably piece together the story yourself.
In fact, I’m going to make a prediction and say that the reason the four of them were built was so they can experience human emotions and learn from them, so that a new line of androids can be built from the data they’ve collected… or something. Then theres going to be a robot uprising that can only be stopped through the power of singing and dancing…
If you want to watch a much, much, MUCH better anime about androids, music, dystopian futures and a robot uprising, then may I recommend one of best anime of 2021, Vivy: Fluorite Eyes Song. Not only does if have a much better plot and characters, but all the songs amazing (I still listen to them from time to time) and the music numbers are fully 2D animated with 3D tracking so it looks gorgeous, unlike this show which makes me feel like I’m watching a Just Dance play-through whenever they sing a musical number.
In conclusion, watch Vivy, don’t watch Technoroid: Overmind… unless you have some alcohol and friends to laugh at the first episode with. I do recommend that.
2/10 Bad.
