Shameful Otaku Secret!

Her future’s so bright…

I still don’t know what to make of this show. Masamune Shirow and Production IG put their heads together and give us fanservice first, then filler?

Recap

An avatar called Iron Schwartz (I shit you not) from the Metal built for streetfighting, with a propensity for dislocating his opponents’ joints after defeating them, gets uploaded into an android. That android subsequently goes berserk dislocating random shoppers at the mall.

Minamo happens to be in the mall at the time, looking for expensive antique diving sunglasses she can give to Haru. But when she finds them, Schwartz-bot thinks they’re his and starts chasing her all over the place. After a bit of chase scene action, Nyamo-chan runs into a real-fight club where her brother is sitting with Holon, grilling her over her fighting techniques.

Souta, with some help from Holon, manages to give himself an ego boost by defeating the unbeatable Schwartz, but not until after Minamo tries to stop the fight by giving the robot the glasses. Unfortunately, the expensive glasses break, but at the end, Haru bestows his own old ones on her.

Thoughts

There were actually a couple laughs in this episode, mostly from the hilariously brutal droid with the hilariously ridonkulous name, Iron Schwartz. His habit of dislocation is so over the top and gnarly that it’s actually funny, as is the moment when a patron of the fight club tries to shake his hand and gets his head kicked in. It’s like when punches in Fist of the North Star go through people’s faces. You just have to laugh a little. Minamo’s little sunglasses war when she first meets Schwartz has great comic timing too.

But what are they playing at, anyway? Five episodes in, we’ve just barely established the gist of the series, and already we’re blessed with filler? I can’t see how this will have any bearing on the overall story — it didn’t even really have Haru in it. And while we’re complaining: if it can’t have any meaningful plot, why not a little touch of fanservice? You know, outside of those now-infamous and oddly satisfying Real Drive thighs. But Shirow is Shirow, and true to I.G. form, even this episode looked fantastic, so I’d be silly to quit now when they could have so much more in store.

That’s what she said

Normally a 22 or 24 episode series has me pretty much hooked by episode 15 or so, even if it’s half-shit. After all, that’s a major time investment I’ve already put in. Yes, a show should really be selling you by episode 3 at most, but sometimes I keep pressing on without really knowing why. Shakugan No Shana really took a while, I was pushed on simply by the occasional island of true brilliance in its sea of clichés.

But one series that has let my interest dwindle more the farther I go, rather than the opposite, is Texhnolyze. What is it about this show that can’t hold my attention? Let’s look at the facts:

• It’s about gangsters. Gangsters are rad! Everyone knows that.
• It has a creepy child. Creepy children rock the house.
• Cyberpunk, despite being a little passé nowadays, is still pretty swell.
• Juno Reactor, that sure as shit is better than some generic J-Pop.
• Broody anti-hero lead character, OK, I can deal.
• Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere.

We should be good to go, right? Apparently not. I was really excited early on about this show, but my attention span is nonexistent as of about episode 16. What happened?

First off, they blew their wad pretty early on. The incredibly atmospheric, nearly dialog-free first couple episodes were outstanding. They were almost Lynch-ian, and like nothing else I’ve ever seen, although I saw shades of a sexed-up Lain (did that sound gross? I totally apologize). But they couldn’t hold that without totally alienating everyone trying to follow what the hell was going on, and the more I learned about the weird moss and the warring gangs, the less I cared. I loved Yoshi, who comes in for the express purpose of fucking with everything (and having a mustache), but without him the show became pretty standard young guy-joins-gangster-organization fare. Just without Al Pacino.

The animation also started to get to me. The job is really sub-par for Madhouse, both in character design and straight up quality. People aren’t distinctive, and drawn without any real appeal. Of course, they’re also written without any real appeal. I’m guessing that Ichise will manage to develop some sort of personality as a climactic event, but as of now his aimless floating through existence is not endearing to me.

And as for the plot… I accused Shana of introducing too many new elements all the time, but those are just standard anime plot contrivances designed to get the writers out of whatever corner they paint themselves into. Texhnolyze’s story just adds layer upon layer of humorless, dry intrigue that just isn’t very intriguing. I love following a complicated plotline, especially in a gangster story, but I really stopped caring a while ago.

I’m sure I’ll finish at some point, and maybe then I’ll change my tune, but as of right now it’s collecting dust. Which is a shame, because this seems like the kind of show that is designed to have some appeal to Western audiences, Akira-style. But when I’d rather watch the next Clannad than something with gangsters and cybernetic limbs, I think there might be something wrong.