Well. I know that to some participants in Reverse Thieves 2nd Annual Secret Santa thingamajig didn’t necessarily feel like Santa visited them. Others felt like he’d left them coal. In truth, it’s supposed to be about something that your Secret Santee would enjoy, and whoever picked mine seemed to be in touch with my inner child when he or she put these recommendations under my tree: Dennou Coil, Giant Robo OVA, and Kino’s Journey.
Kino’s Journey was something I had contemplated buying sight unseen at a sale, and I already owned (but have yet to watch) Giant Robo. So I went after a series that is often cited as an example of the best unlicensed anime out there. Spoiler: I enjoyed the hell out of Dennou Coil.
A long time ago (in blog terms), anime meant a certain thing to me. That was partially due to my own limited exposure to a certain kind of anime, but I’m sure also reflects the changing trends in the medium. To me, the 1990s were about cyberpunk futures, unfathomable plots, relentless violence and wild, creative visuals. As I delved further into different genres, and anime itself expanded, I found that some of anime’s greatest strengths lay in simpler pleasures like learning to love characters over the course of a serial story.
So how did the promise of the 90s meld with some of the 2000s’ more understated appeal? In truth, there aren’t too many cases where it has. RahXephon comes to mind, a more human version of an Evangelion-like story; and Cardcaptor Sakura, its highly developed characters creating a closer relationship with the viewer than say, Sailor Moon.
And there’s Dennou Coil, a cyberpunk story about kids who go through life wearing augmented reality glasses and unwittingly stumble upon some truths that make their favorite pastime seem a lot less like a game.
Mitsuo Iso threw an astounding number of classic anime elements into Dennou Coil‘s two-cour length. Did he intend to focus on the complex intrigue of the plot? The oh-so-cute unspoken childhood romances that made Cardcaptor Sakura pull on your heartstrings so effectively? Or was it the real-deal science fiction premise of the implication of a cyberpunk future in which the participants are mostly children?
In less skilled hands it probably would have seemed like a mess, unwilling to commit to being serious or whimsical. But Iso seamlessly blends these feelings in and out of each other, sometimes in the space of a single episode. I’m thinking of the beard episode here, in which the main character Yasako finds herself not only growing a beard, but one that’s housing a tiny cyber-civilization who worship her as a god. She thinks this is great fun for a while, until she starts to feel the responsibility of leadership and her little citizens begin warring with neighboring beards on the other children’s faces. Ridiculous? Sure. Silly? Absolutely. And it starts off that way, but gradually becomes a very serious and thoughtful meditation on the nature of God, the temptation of power, and the horrors of war. But it never gets so heavy that it feels out of place. And many of Dennou Coil‘s best episodes are like this — they ebb and flow with meaning and whimsy, always maintaining a single personality that’s an effective mix of both, rather than feeling schizophrenic.
It’s hard for me to write about this now that it’s done, since I tend to do posts on subjects that come to mind while watching a series, but the mandate of Secret Santa is to throw up a post at the end of the viewing. And beyond some very powerful scenes near the end of the series, what Dennou Coil left me with was that singular feeling that I had watched a classic anime full of classic anime elements, rather than what could have been a spastic jumble of unrelated feelings and elements. Just… watch it.
God, that beard episode is a classic among classics. Dennou Coil is definitely a technical masterpiece. It’s a show that I have to say everyone ought to watch once. It left me and a lot of other people feeling a tad empty afterwards (including the other guy who had this as his secret santa show) because in spite of being so amazing, it doesn’t really cling to my heart. I don’t feel like I want to rewatch it or call it a favorite. This is why a lot of the people who did watch it don’t really talk about it, even though all of them would most certainly recommend it.
While your own anecdotal evidence might support you, I feel pretty strongly in the other direction, and also that you are a faggerjack. The festival episode is a pretty good one to point to in my defense. I got bitten by a certain nostalgia bug somewhere during Dennou Coil and it colored the rest of my viewing. There’s a post coming to expand on that, I think.
H-HIGE! One of the reasons why I liked the beard episode a lot is that while it’s your typical “war is horrible” message by Japan, it does it by escaping the heavy-handedness that most stories utilize.
See that soldier crawl on the floor with his guts oozing out? WAR IS HORRIBLE.
See that pilot, who only wanted to play the piano, explode inside his pilot suit? WAR IS HORRIBLE!
See that ICBM, wiping out a region of some kid’s fake virtual beard? It’s quite horrible, don’t you think?
Also, if I played the Civilization Beard game, I’d have my beard people build a fuckton of robots, just because.
Yeah it really did do a great job of making its point in a less overt and heavy-handed way than …oh I dunno, Tomino. It was almost understated. Which, to me, is indicative of how DC touched on a ton of ideas and themes without going overboard on any of them (except for the primary theme of friendship and “letting go”). It’s probably one of the reasons for its popularity; it seems dense with ideas.
The theme of this year’s Secret Santa is “Dennou Coil or bust”.
Yeah there were four total recommendations (including coburn, one of the people who pushed me strongly into the similarly well-regarded Haibane Renmei) and I think everyone felt like it was a win.
Ugh, yet another anime I really need to get to eventually …
I would gladly campaign for anyone to move it up a couple spots in their watch-list.
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Dennou Coil is a pretty good anime, though I felt that the show lost it’s way a little near the end. Besides that, one thing I really enjoyed about the show was it’s full immersion into a setting where two settings are mixed and can interact with each other freely. Not too many anime do that well, and I thought Dennou Coil expanded on that in spades.
You know, I hear this a lot — something about failures toward the end. And I have yet to hear any specific accusations leveled against DC, but it’s so persistent that there has to be something to it. Any idea what makes you feel that way?
Wondered that myself. I thought it ended with a great yuritacular ending.
Whew. Glad you enjoyed the series, and glad that I didn’t completely fuck up the choices too. Looking forward to the other posts.
The choices were all great. It just seemed like the right time to watch Dennou Coil because I wasn’t sure if I’d do it on my own volition anytime soon.
Thanks Santa!
Watching Dennou Coil for me kind of came out of nowhere–I heard about it on some forum somewhere, decided to watch the first episode for the heck of it, and after five seconds of the opening or so something clicked and I realized what I was about to watch had a good chance of becoming one of my favorites. I was right, too!
This is a good article and I’d say the fact that Dennou Coil blends so many elements so well is key to its success, although the the show eventually dips a little too far into crazy plot twists at the end. But what I’d say really separates Dennou Coil from the pack is how exactly it captures what it is like to be a kid, occasional moments of incredible creepiness and all.
Being about kids really is one of its strengths. I think I have another post in me on that subject.
Deep tikhnnig – adds a new dimension to it all.
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I’d just like to say, my friend and I love your blog and are pretty super excited to see you back in the game. In other news, will watch Dennou Coil.