| |
|
Two eleven-year-old girls, both named Yuko, return to their childhood home of Daikoku, a picture-postcard Japanese city now pioneering an embedded artificial reality system accessible through advanced eyeglasses. Yuko Okonogi, nicknamed Yasako ('gentle girl') is kindly, compassionate and mild, and uses the AR system only to interact with her beloved cyberpet Densuke - until she's strong-armed by her cranky, retired software-engineer grandmother into joining the combined kids' club and research team 'Coil Cyber Detective Agency'. In short order Yasako runs afoul of Yuko Amasawa, called Isako ('brave girl'), a fierce, aloof superhacker who lords it over their school's young amateur haXX0rs and relentlessly pursues the formless 'Illegal' entities that dwell in obsolete sections of the city's cyberscape, aiming to unlock the rumoured pathway to the world beyond virtual space.
A setup like that could serve just about any children-centred anime show well, but it doesn't prepare you for a series as bittersweet, funny, thrilling and emotional as Dennō Coil. In praising it to others I've invoked the likes of Serial Experiments: Lain, Noein and the films of Hayao Miyazaki - comparisons so lofty I'd hesitate to make them if I didn't think the series could back them up. This show has the best ensemble of child characters I can remember seeing, and I guarantee that within a few episodes you'll love every one of them; Yasako's heartbreakingly tender, burgeoning relationship with the melancholic, absent-minded Haraken is worthy of special mention.
Plotwise like many 26-episode TV series it's a slow burn, foregrounding character and world-building as we learn more about the bustling, multilayered dennō [Japanese for 'cyber-'] system and the ingenious ways in which the children interact with it. The show makes superb use of location and atmosphere here, tying the flashy AR technology intimately to the traditional Japanese environment - Daikoku's myriad Shinto gates, temples and stairways overlaid with both the virtual architecture and the chittering, spirit-like software agents that haunt it. As the show's mythos deepens the children's fearful relationship with the Sadako-esque urban legend figure of Miss Michiko, a girl said to have strayed through the dennō system into the realm of the dead, becomes pivotal, and the launchpad for some of the eeriest, most nervewracking and visually stunning sequences in any anime show. Dennō Coil also has a wonderful array of nonhuman characters - Densuke the dog, the dopey and inflexible antivirus bot Satchii, and the lurking Illegals are superb pieces of design and elevate the show yet further.
It's recently been translated - particularly well in this case - by fansub group Ureshii, and though not yet licensed for Western distribution, it's surely only a matter of time. Meanwhile, watch the first part of episode one here. If nothing else you'll hear the opening theme Prism by Ayako Ikeda, one of the loveliest anime songs I know. And by the way, if episodes twelve and thirteen don't make you fall down laughing and dissolve in a puddle of tears respectively, you're off the list of decent human beings. |
|
|
