Texhnolyze – Spectacle (Animé TV, Set Two)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-      Extras: C-      Episodes: B

 

 

The setting:  Lukuss, a futuristic, underground city, where crime runs rampant and people cut off each other’s limbs as a sign of dominance.  The technology: A prosthetics innovation known as Texhnolyze, cybernetic arms and legs that still have a few problems to be worked out.  The plot: Four individuals – a crime lord, a girl who sees the future, a man whose arm and leg have been replaced by Texhnolyze, and a mysterious man from the world above, all attempt to control the fate of Lukuss.  Three would save it, one destroy it.

 

It sounds, from the description, as if Texhnolyze would be a gory sci-fi action-adventure, full of crime, amputations, and one-on-one conflict.  Instead, the tone is more akin to that of a Noir film.  A dark, subdued palette, angled shots, ominous shadows, and long silences prevail.  Frequently we find ourselves looking through a character’s eyes, staggering along with a wobbling, blurring point of view, hearing him or her struggle for breath.  The sound of halting gasps may well outweigh the spoken dialogue.  Intrigue between characters builds, but has yet to be resolved; each new development is just added on top of the previous mysteries. 

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if Texhnolyze follows a similar pattern to Serial Experiments Lain, another anime by the same creators and producers.  Each episode of Texhnolyze is almost entirely detached from the others, joined only by a few connecting threads – a character here or there, a white flower.  As in Lain, the story’s disparate parts may not come together until the final episode.  Even then, it may remain ambiguous.  It also has Lain’s tendency to use extreme close-ups: people’s mouths as they eat, their eyes squinting, the backs of their heads while they’re on the telephone. 

 

An interesting aspect of the show is its use of conversations between unseen speakers to inform the audience of facts about the city, Lukuss, and its past.  These conversations occur off-screen, while we watch a shadowy factory full of giant machinery, possibly a power source for Lukuss and its residents.  This expository tactic works similarly to the “shadow play girls” in Shoujo Kakumei Utena.  The conversations, while tangential to the action, undoubtedly relate to the over-arching plot.

 

The DVD of Texhnolyze doesn’t come with many special features.  You can watch the opening without text, a feature that is becoming common on many anime DVDs, and there are some alternate dialogue outtakes, but that’s about the full extent of its bonuses.  There was some incompatibility between the subtitles and my television, resulting in a buzzing sound any time the text overlapped the picture past a certain extent. 

 

Texhnolyze may be a frustrating watch for those who want a shoot-em-up thriller, or who are prone to fall asleep when the show gets too quiet.  However, Texhnolyze’s dark, X-Files-y tone remains unmarred by typical Animé conventions like giant robots, busty girls in skintight suits posing for the camera, or characters going super-deformed.  It carries out its artistic vision successfully, though some viewers may find themselves wishing they could shift the balance of suspense and action.  Texhnolyze might be up the alley of viewers who liked Serial Experiments Lain, Boogiepop Phantom, or possibly Witch Hunter Robin.

 

 

-   Anne Moffa