This was the kind of series that had a lot going for it from the outset, at least from my perspective. The fact that this was an anniversary passion project from Studio Bones (one of my favorite studios), the excellent artwork, the sci-fi elements (those black holes really pop), a pretty strong OST, not to mention the whole premise feeling like some crazy mash-up between Blade Runner and Accel World. The models for the various members of the Immortal Nine and the designs of Neans are striking. Unlike many who watched this in the early stages, I found being thrown into the narrative blind refreshing. We were learning about both the world and the circumstances of its leads right along with them. That was intriguing and set up for some solid payoffs to its various mysteries as it went on.
…then the series hit episode 5. It’s not like the series just turns bad at this point or anything – I think it still does well enough in much of the following episode – but the writing is on the wall in episode 5 as we’re greeted with a lot of partial answers to a wide variety of questions. Then we get more answers between episodes 7 and 9, which are where the series really begins to drag since the answers we get range from underwhelming to confusing. This series has a lot of good concepts, but part of the problem with comparing it to Blade Runner is that it’s all too easy to see how it falls short of that classic work. To put it bluntly, much of the series feels like it comes down to a simple idiot plot, where just having certain characters talk to each other would solve for so much of what’s going on. And the further you get into this series, the more these issues continue to add up. Most opportunities to characterize the elements of its world in complex ways end up making them seem absurdly simple, to the point that even supposedly complex character motivations just become absurd.
This is where I’d usually focus on the good aspects of the series (I liked the fight choreography in several of the fights, much of the character design, the animation was pretty solid, and for a while at least, the interactions between our two leads), but then we got that ending. What was at least a somewhat reasonable disagreement between characters, none of whom were obvious villains, turns into a villain plot in the first of three table flips contained within the finale. I often find table flips lazy, but especially when they’re done in short sequence one after another, it’s the kind of “4D chess” maneuver that accomplishes nothing aside from frustration. In the end, it becomes a series that confuses more than anything else, adding more moving parts in the pursuit of complexity that ends up making things overly simple and introducing more characters with their own motivations to dry up the deeper themes it was initially aiming for.
This series is a mess, and a sad one at that. I was expecting a lot better from this series. From the outset, I got glimmers of another series that left me frustrated: takt op.destiny, but the worst thing I can say about that series is that it looked good without delivering anything interesting. Metallic Rouge had something interesting, but managed to fumble it badly and ruined its best opportunities.
