December 19th, 2007
Best show of 2007. ’nuff said. I suppose I should be a little more verbose, however…
I do think that Dennou Coil is hands down the best anime I’ve seen this year in any quantity. However, I don’t think it met my expectations because it didn’t end up being quite what I thought it would be - in this case, though, I think that’s a good thing.
To be honest, I’m not sure what exactly I thought it would be - with the credits behind it, I think that I and perhaps many others who were waiting for the show to air possibly thought it was going to be a bit more arty and experimental. The first half of the series perhaps led many viewers to believe the show would exploit its “digital world” conceit to showcase Mitsuo Iso’s digital animation trickery and various ideas about computers etc. - something like Ghost in the Shell with cyber-moustaches and piranhas, perhaps.
What we got was actually a more conventional anime story in that there ended up being high derring-do, lots of plot twists and angst up the wazoo. Maybe it didn’t totally work on a cerebral level, some of which I will discuss in the extended entry, and I’m not convinced that I actually knew what was really going on some of the time, but it certainly worked on an emotional and dramatic level and I think that’s what really counts. Too many shows get carried away with their lofty ideas and fail to provide a compelling piece of entertainment, and given that Dennou Coil is theoretically a kid’s show I think it was an extremely accomplished achievement to be as cerebral as it was.
Top notch talent oozed out of every pore of the show from start to finish, despite the occasional shortcuts in animation and writing, and it was an absolute pleasure to watch each and every episode. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but Dennou Coil was a whole lot of fun from start to finish and easily tops anything else that’s aired this year from my point of view - sure, there are shows out there that are more artistically daring or have cleverer writing, but for sheer consistent high-quality entertainment Dennou Coil beats the lot of them.
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September 2nd, 2007
I think it’s better for me to keep doing updates at regular junctures, rather than committing myself to episodic summaries - I have neither the time nor the inclination these days.
That said, I feel slightly guilty for doing this to Dennou Coil. It’s by far the best anime of the year by anyone’s reckoning for a hundred and one different reasons that I’ve already burbled about before. That’s not to say it’s not got a couple of problems, however.
I’m going to presume that the production staff had absolutely no way of knowing that their broadcast schedule would be disrupted for about a month by baseball and other circumstances. However, that doesn’t really explain the slightly odd pacing of the narrative that means we end up with two full-on “filler” episodes before the big long break. That’s not to say that episodes 12 and 13 are bad episodes; far from it. Episode 12 is a lot of fun (if more than a little bizarre) while episode 13 packs a nice emotional wallop even if it is predictable pretty much from the beginning. I just think that it would have been nice to have a “plot” episode before the hiatus, especially as episode 14 (which I’ve not watched yet) is mostly recap.
My only other problem with the show is something which I’m almost certain will be addressed in the second half, and that is the wanton destruction the kids are wreaking. Dennou Coil has been very careful to build up a consistent world with rules of cyberspace etc. and it’s clear that the digital world the children are messing around in is essentially a visual representation of at least the local internet structure. Finding unupgraded cyberspace and the like isn’t harmful, but blowing up large chunks of infrastructure and infecting people with beard viruses isn’t just child’s play - it’s irresponsible hacking. I’d be interested to see if Haraken’s aunt could actually make any charges stick to the kids…
That aside, however, everything in Dennou Coil is peachy keen, even at its low points (episode 11, for instance, which was an impressive display of water animation technology but nowhere near as exciting as it could have been had the whole of Daikoku been submerged and rather uninterestingly written). We’ve got more coherent and interesting mysteries than virtually any recent “otaku” show, great animation, a wonderful cast of characters (who would have believed I’d actively find a small child shouting “Poo!” quite so entertaining?) and an all round top-notch production. I hope that the show manages to continue this momentum to the end, as if it does then Dennou Coil will easily be one of my top five anime of all time.
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July 17th, 2007
“Metabugs” are the underground currency traded according to their “stock market” value for software and other goodies in the virtual world (this explains why Daichi and co. are able to repair the massive amounts of damage their cyber-glasses suffer if they’re hording this stuff). Both the Hacking Club and the Coil Agency make a move to investigate a junkyard filled with abandoned buses, where a vast horde of metabugs is said to lie, although Isako certainly seems to have ulterior motives for leading Daichi there. Fumie and Yasako, however, are accompanied by Haraken, the reclusive Biology Club president and fellow Agency member, with secret skills that come in handy when things blow up out of control and the Sacchis arrive to take care of the situation…
Quite aside from the animation of Dennou Coil, which continues to be rich and expressive, the mythology behind the show continues to get deeper and deeper. Iso has presumably sat and very carefully worked all this out; a currency system, the mechanics of what happens when data is neglected (as we see when the Hackers fall into holes in the buses), and even the surprisingly convoluted little twists and turns in the relationships between the characters (for example, Fumie’s little brother being a Hacker!). Dennou Coil probably has the most complex writing of any show this year, and that’s including stuff like Seirei no Moribito!
Haraken is an excellent addition to the cast, in my view, and refreshingly different from the usual brash Paku Romi-types. Being several episodes behind in blogging, but not so much in watching, I’m well aware that he’s pretty central to the storyline, and he makes a nice counterpary to Yasako (and contrast to Fumie!). Isako, of course, continues to lord it over everyone; it is of course key to her character that she treats people with so little respect, but she’s so entertainingly megalomaniacal that she gets away with it.
She can’t stop Sacchis in their tracks with a single word, though, can she?
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June 12th, 2007
Isako’s arrival in Yasako’s class should be innocuous enough. However, a simple spam e-mail prank played on Yasako by Daichi in vengeance for her siding with Fumie ends up turning into something more when he foolishly turns his simple trick against Isako’s imago skills. Swearing vengeance on her, Daichi and his “hacking club” launch a fullscale assault against her as Fumie and Yasako try to investigate Isako themselves after Isako spurns Yasako’s friendship sensing a suspicious past involving some kind of bullying; whilst Isako easily takes care of Daichi and his foolish friends, Fumie’s obsolete cyber-fuda come extremely close to penetrating Isako’s defenses, only failing at the last second. Yet Fumie comes away with some strange information - just who or what really is “Michiko-san”?
Whilst not as mindblowingly great as the last episode, I was pleasantly surprised that we didn’t get some kind of “filler” here where nothing much happened. True, the battle between Isako and Daichi was mostly eye candy to show off just how awesome Isako is, but the development of the Michiko-san plotline (does it have anything to do with Yasako’s “brother”? And where is “the other side”?) and the hints about Yasako and Isako’s pasts were more than welcome developments. Plus, there’s no Kyoko in this episode - obviously the writers know exactly how long the poop joke can last without needing a break!
The simple truth is that Dennou Coil is, most of all, great fun to watch. I enjoy every minute of every episode, and it’s surprised me by being much more complex plot-wise than I was expecting (I thought it might be a bit more “slice-of-life” than it has turned out to be, which I’m very pleased about). It’s the only show I’ve been keeping up with on a weekly basis, and it’s well worth the effort in my opinion. I just hope there’s plenty of other people out there watching it too.
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June 12th, 2007
Isako’s Mojas are victorious against Mega-baa (whose body gives way) and Kyoko (who basically just loses interest and has more fun blowing up Mega-baa and screaming “poop!” a lot) and carry off Densuke to their mistress Isako. However, Yasako ends up giving chase when the two of them are hunted down by Sacchi, only to discover there is far more to Isako than what first glance reveals. Why is she so obsessed with the Illegal that has infected Densuke? What is the mysterious key she holds that can rend the fabric of cyberspace? Moreover, why does she have strange, glowing marks tattooed onto her back, and is it something to do with the shadowy organisation she works for? Yasako’s going to have a lot of time to find out, as Isako is a belated transfer student into her class…
Whilst the first two episodes of Dennou Coil were great fun, this episode is where I became totally convinced that it’s an absolute classic. The whole episode was just… epic, essentially. From the slick animation (remember the visually awesome episode of RahXephon set in the past with the baby Dolem? The same nifty digital animation techniques are in evidence here, and the effect is wonderful) to the taut pacing and tension that easily rivals most more “mature” action anime, everything about this episode really hit the spot for me. We now have some good old convoluted anime mysteries for me to get my teeth into (even if they’re not developed much in the meantime) and the playoff between the mysteriously overpowered Isako and the clueless yet innocent Yasako should hopefully be developed well throughout the next episodes.
I mostly just can’t get over how awesome the sequence beginning from when Isako separates Densuke and the Illegal is, though. An absolutely brilliant setpiece, essentially, especially if you’re a sucker for glowy lights and stuff like I am. Mmmm, pretty…
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