Hey, it’s that show about special glasses that let you see a virtual world superimposed onto ours that I’ve been getting all excited since… checks his del.icio.us account… October last year!
The first four episodes of this NHK broadcast show by Mitsuo Iso make a pretty strong argument for it being the best anime TV series of decade so far.
Sure, I loved Paranoia Agent and Kemonozume, but they were made with adults in mind and broadcast on a pay satellite channel. This is going out on a national public broadcaster’s educational channel. At 6.30 on a Saturday evening. You can argue all you like about cartoons not being just for kids, but the I believe making a good cartoon to appeal to kids is harder than making good cartoon to appeal to adults. I point you to the many bad kids cartoons as evidence of my point. Surely the makers didn’t set out to make them that bad? It must be hard thing to do for there to be so many, and yet have so many fail.
I imagine being made for NHK and being freed from having to consider advertisers and sponsors facilitated Denno Coil’s all around ace-ness. Likewise the lengthy production window they animators have apparantly been given. But that would be for nothing without great artistic choices and this has them by the bucket load.
In terms of plot, what would seem to be “cyberpunk” territory at first glance is instead something that feels more real and relatable. The world in which the characters live isn’t some 1980’s neon and rain future, but a world that looks just like todays world, just with charmingly designed computer generated entities running around and an endearingly arts and crafts approach to computer programming. Who doesn’t want to see a show that features hand-made computer programs made by your granny? Nobody.
The show has wonderful muted colour scheme, and characters that while drawn “cartoon-ishly” move and look far more real than most cartoons do. Drawing clothes that look like they are being worn rather than painted on helps. Along some great facial expressions and body language. And given Iso’s background in digital effects work, the show has the best use of digital animation I’ve seen.
One thing in the narrative that I really liked was the approach to describing the virtual reality aspect of the world in way that brings to mind XML. It’s like metatags have been applied to reality. And the I really like fact the characters in it seem like real people using the technology in the show, rather than the technology making them unrecognisable as real people.
Given the standard of the first 4 episodes I don’t see this show being beaten in terms of quality this year. Fantastic show.