/a/ - Animu & Mango

>>913318

I honestly can't tell how deliberate a lot of the more "artistic" presentations of the story are and where it is just bad direction, but I enjoyed the muddled feeling near the middle as it added a lot to the mood for me. The locations are amazingly well, especially the mine which, when I watched this, I also worked at and it was jarringly similar to where I worked with the same rusty equipment, platforms, etc. showing how much field work (or experience) the animators were drawing from. The characters were certainly not well fleshed out, but they seem to be more of an instrument for the larger story.

I watched this years ago and I remember I liked it somewhat even though I couldn't follow the plot. I may have watched it twice even. I was in high school.

I watched this and at no point did I feel that the action ever took away from the overall story at any point. I feel that the length of the show was just right, and it had a great story with wonderful characters that I found loving and enjoying seeing.

I did feel that a couple scenes with the internal Organo politics could've been shortened. I didn't want to to see boring old men talk about business deals.

One of my favorite series I've ever watched, but depressing as all hell.

>>913471

I mean, I'm not saying i hated it, just that I didn't love it. I definitely think it could've been cut down to 12 episodes and retained all of the atmosphere and key plot points though.

>>913476

There is a heavy bias towards the Organo side of things in the show, which I think is somewhat detrimental to the overall message. There are basically 4 factions and 2 of them aren't really explored at all while the main focus seems to be the Organo.

I guess if you consider Ichise to be the main character, focusing on just one of the factions as much as they did is an odd choice. Since all 4 have radically different ideals, railroading him into 1 specific group takes away from the questions it felt like the show was trying to ask us.

I loved the soundtrack, my two favorite songs being the ending and Blue Darkness ~ A Sleepless Town. I also loved the general feeling the series had.

The characters were good and although when i started typing this post i only remembered most of them distantly, just looking them up not only made me remember them but also most of the plot.

I kind of agree with you on it feeling too long but mainly because the only episodes i truly considered great were the first few and the last few.

>>913318

I didn't like it at first but after rewatching it and discussing it I ended up loving it. The will to live of humans even in the worst possible conditions explored by it is beautiful.

>>913670

>The will to live of humans even in the worst possible conditions explored by it is beautiful.

On that note I really enjoyed the episodes where they (Ichise and the alcoholic doctor lady) went to the surface. It took that surreal and dreamy feeling of the show to another level. But it just worked so well I found myself really interested in all the little details. And the contrast between the violent and dirty world underground and the creepy/mysterious/ultra-clean world above was great.

I guess I'll get into spoilers since there are some smaller points I'd like clarification on:

I don't really get why Ichise got in trouble with the Organo in the first place. He was some sort of fighter and then he was fucking some girl who tried to gouge his eye out. But I guess he hit her or something? Why did this force the Organo to come after him?

Even though nearly half the show involves Yoshii (the mustache guy) setting up an elaborate plot to plunge the city into chaos, it really kind of fizzles out and goes nowhere. It's not really explained why he wants to do that, to my knowledge, other than sort of vague explanations about possibly wanting to make everybody as hopeless as they are on the surface. I dunno, this is where I feel like a lot of time is taken setting something up and ultimately it sort of goes nowhere. You could argue this period of instability led to further events but it's not concrete enough for me.

I also wonder if Yoshii had any partnership or knowledge of Kano's plans. You could say that Kano used the chaos and uncertainty that Yoshii spread to drive people to him, but was it just luck/coincidence that it all came together?

I'll probably think up some more later, but these are some of the questions I had so far.

Bad as a show, good as a sci-fi.

>>913697

>Why did this force the Organo to come after him?

Been ages since I watched it but I think he was working as a male prostitute, and the women he ended up hitting to protect himself was the wife(?) of an Organo member

>>913700

I dunno about him being a male prostitute. I thought he was some sort of fighter employed by the Organo who ran some sort of boxing/MMA circuit. Because in a later episode when he joins up they go back to the gambling place where he fought and he gets flashbacks.

I did think that the woman he fucked/punched looked like Onishi's wife, although maybe they were different people. Onishi even having a wife was kind of another one of those side stories that felt thrown in and didn't necessarily add anything to the story except to make him seem like a dick. But this sort of ties into what I said here:

>>913489

In that the story itself focuses pretty heavily on the Organo and at times they seem like the reasonable side while at others they seem like a bunch of jackasses with too much money. It feels inconsistent. I kinda went from disliking them to liking them to liking some of them, etc.

Then you have the Union who is vehemently against this cyberization. But it's never really clear what their motivations are. They're presented as a powerful group, and yet when they do carry out attacks it's like 1 or 2 guys in a disorganized, suicidal assault. I don't think there's a compelling case against getting a cybernetic limb really, unless it's supposed to be a cost thing. Even then, if you can afford it, why wouldn't you want to get a new limb? I think the politics surrounding the differences in opinions between the Organo and Union was glossed over when in reality it's actually quite a big deal. And on a larger scale this made some factions redundant. The Class was going to force everyone to get the procedure. The Rakan and Organo didn't really seem to care. The Union was against it. Maybe this weird blend of ideologies and complex politics was meant to play into the uneasiness the show wanted to express, but at the same time it felt a little overly complex and unclear to me.

>>913318

>My first complaint is that it feels too long.

Agreed. This show could've been condensed into 6 episodes plot wise.

>>913788

>I watched 7 episodes with my mom

That's cute, anon. Did you get her any chocolates for Valentine's day?

>>913743

it's intended to be emotionally draining

>it's too long

You mean you found it too boring? I binge'd this in a day and I found myself totally immersed Saying it's too long because it could've been shorter is always a weird thing to say. It's intentionally slow-paced and you're fine to dislike that. But with your other points I agree.

>>914180

To be honest, the main reason I decided to watch Texhnolyze was because I love Haibane Renmei (my favorite anime of all time) and Serial Experiments Lain (a great show, and one I like to talk about it). Both of those are similar in a lot of ways to Texhnolyze I think. The MC is sort of thrown into the middle of larger events and they sort of figure things out as the series goes along (as does the viewer).

If you can look at it from that perspective though, both HR and SEL are 13 episodes while Texhnolyze is 22 episodes. I just didn't really see a benefit in the extra length. As I said in an earlier post, most of the first half of the show goes into setting up Yoshii's plot and downfall. But I just don't really get how that (basically half) of the show factored into what happened later. I can sort of see how it did, but I'm not sure if it was intentional or just something else that was going on. I did really like SEL and HR, which I think we can all agree are relatively slow and atmospheric shows. But I think they both did a better job at using a set amount of time to create a world that was rich in conflict with a lot of wheels turning at the same time. I think you could argue that the world of Texhnolyze was much more complex, but I would argue that at its core it's much more similar to HR and SEL than it is different.

Basically I don't want it to sound like I was "bored" by Texhnolyze, but I do think it could have been condensed. When SEL and HR ended, I found myself wanting more of that world. I wanted to continue watching what happened. When Texhnolyze ended I felt as though that world had died, in a sense. I could easily see (although I don't necessarily want) a sequel to HR and SEL. With Texhnolyze, there's nowhere else to go really. Maybe I should look at Texhnolyze as a 2 season anime? In that respect it works better I think. I guess I just wasn't wanting a real end to the struggle that we're given in Texhnolyze.

>>914192

>When Texhnolyze ended I felt as though that world had died, in a sense.

It did.

>>913697

The reason Yoshii wanted to plunge the city into chaos is because he was from the surface, and he both saw and hated how the surface ended up being. As far as I remember, the shit he stirred was to either prevent the underworld from becoming like the surface, or to help the surface. Been too many years, can't remember clearly.

>>914200

>the shit he stirred was to either prevent the underworld from becoming like the surface, or to help the surface

Well the way I remember it the surface was "perfect", which means there was no strife or conflict, which made people apathetic and listless, and quite literally "fade away", thus the people fading in and out of existence. He wanted to stir up a gang war in the underworld to prevent it from sharing that fate.

>>914200

As far as I remember, the shit he stirred was to either prevent the underworld from becoming like the surface, or to help the surface

but those are two completely different objectives from my understanding of the show. I really wish the surface world had some more explanation, although in some ways I'm fine with it being left as it is.

It's more like I'm unhappy with how Yoshii's character arc was played out. He went down for an unclear reason, knowing that Sakimura (the quiet, long haired guy) was sent down instead of him. Yoshii really wanted to go. I suspect it's because Yoshii envied how they live down there, with purpose and the desire to live. What is left unexplained is why he wanted to go, and if you remember, Yoshii himself had cybernetic limbs which is another unexplained plot point that feels like it was meant to be more important than it really ended up being. We don't really know why he became like that or more about why Texhnolyzed limbs only work below ground where they are near the monolith/tower/whatever. This is especially strong when we see something similar in one of the last episodes. The mayor or governor of the town above ground is shown with some sort of texhnolyzed limbs, but they seem very rudimentary and simple compared to the advancements made underground. Furthermore, the governor guy explains to the alcoholic doc that they don't even really need Raffia, the plant stuff that is required to mesh humans with these cybernetic limbs and only buy shipments out of tradition. Since nobody uses the Texhnolyzation technology up there, there's no need to use Raffia.

Do Yoshii's motivations even matter, though? I guess not. He brought about a period of uncertainty that ultimately drove many of those in competing factions to the Class, who had other plans. Was Yoshii aware of this? Was he attempting to prevent people from joining the Class or to accelerate that transition for them? In many ways, the end goal of Kano was essentially to drive the underground society closer to the surface, by means of having them accept a new branch of human evolution. His monologue in the last episode seems to amount to that idea. He calls himself the "last sane person" around, and that he justifies his actions in that it was necessary to force people to accept something new. It's different than the accepted doctrine on the surface, which was to wither away to nothing, and yet it's the same in that he agrees humans have no place on the earth anymore and must become something else in order to survive.

>>914192

My headcannon is that everybody worth a damn in Texhnolyze came back as haibane, Doc and Ran especially need a second chance to find sone happiness.

>>913797

Her birthday is actually on valentines day so we did a lot of stuff.

>>914276

I really enjoyed Ran, although I thought she needed a little more time to develop. As it is now I don't really get what that whole group did up there (in Gabe? Or was Gabe nearby? I wish there was a map of the underground). I'm also not sure how they interacted with the Class and the Organization, or why the Union would send guys to assassinate them.