Tokyo 2024 AD.
More than twenty years have passed since a magical disaster unlocked a
door to a dark dimension. As Tokyo
continues to rebuild, creatures that escaped from that doorway to Earth, known
as Lucifer Hawks, lurk about the city.
That’s where they come in. The
“Attacked Mystification Police”, or AMP, is a unit comprised of all women, who
combine futuristic technology with ancient sorcery to combat the Lucifer
Hawks. And they’re about to get a new
recruit: Katsumi Liquer, daughter of one of the greatest mages of all
time. Her untapped potential may be the
final key the AMP needs to turn the tide in this war against the darkness.
A man made disaster from several decades ago? A special kind of monster the police cant
handle? A team of women who are the only
hope for a futuristic city that looks like Blade Runner? Hmmm…this sounds a liiiiitle too
familiar. As I sat down to watch the
first five episodes of our next series, Kia Asamiya’s Silent Mobius, I noticed
right off the bat the number of similarities between this show and Bubblegum
Crisis Tokyo 2040. The situation, the
character classes, the enemies. There’s
a supernatural twist but I feel like watching something too familiar might’ve
hurt my possible enjoyment of the beginning.
What drew me to Silent Mobius, besides the awesome Bandai
Entertainment trailer with the theme song playing in the background, was the
set up. My whole life, ive been an equal
parts fan of both Science Fiction and Fantasy (probably gotten equally from
both of my parents). So seeing that
there’s a series out there that blends a Blade Runner style aesthetic (even
with Spinners, yes they borrowed the name from the Police Rides from that film
for the flying cars here) with supernatural horror seemed like an exciting fit,
oh and there’s a cast of incredibly beautiful women. The problem is: not only does it all feel
like BGC with magic, the characters initially aren’t that engaging. Some did grow a bit over time but it took time
that this series cant really afford to waste.
Let’s look at our cast.
We have Katsumi, the super hot secretary mage from Hawaii who, quite
frankly, is a bit more OP than necessary.
That brings up one huge, glaring flaw about the AMP in general. I hate to agree with the police big wigs but
they have a point. Until Katsumi shows
up, it looks like the other girls cant really do too much against the Lucifer
Hawks other than irritate them before they get their butts kicked. Before Katsumi came along, just how did they
plan to do their job? The combo of magic
and science doesn’t seem to be doing them much help unless they have a super
awesome spell, usually provided by Katsumi in Sailor Moon fashion, to even scratch
the monsters much less destroy them. The
fact that the AMP get’s approved is beyond me…in a sense, it probably just got
started for storys sake.
Back to the characters.
Of the main team, I liked Kiddy the best. She’s a no nonsense red head with super human
strength. She’s hard headed but knows
how to watch out for her team. Her and Katsumi’s relationship goes through
varying stages of “SHINJI GET IN THE GIANT ROBOT!!!” in the first couple of
episodes when Katsumi refuses to accept “with great power comes great
responsibility”. But after Katsumi
reveals why she’d rather fight alone and without a team, Kiddy lightens up on
her and we start to see a good friendship form that I think will do them both
some good. There’s also Lebia, Yuki and
Nami and all three have skill sets that either seem sub par or non essential to
the team. Nami, an exorcist, tries to be
an offensive force but her spells are easily shrugged off. Likewise, Lebia’s attempts to use technology
seem ineffective and Yuki kind of just stands there, scared out of her mind
while sensing things with her psychic powers.
There’s also Rally Cheyenne (gotta admit, her name is cool) and Isozaki,
who seem more Gendo and Fuyutsuki from Evangelion more than a combo of the
psycho leader Sylia from BGC. Granted
Rally is clearly hiding things and Isozaki didn’t leave much of an impression
until Episode 5 when she purposefully unleashed some Lucifer Hawks on a party
the team was holding to make peace with the other Police Departments. Wow…did she not watch Final Fantasy: The
Spirits Within and know that plan could have gone totally sideways? For lack of a better term…Isozaki is a b-
Moving on, the rest of these intro episodes feel pretty
by the numbers at this point: The AMP takes on a couple of Lucifer Hawks they
have a hard time with; some hints are dropped about Katsumi’s past and destiny
by both the Hawks and Rally; the team pulls together and/or learns a lesson;
Katsumi saves the day; rinse and repeat.
With all this repetetiveness, it’s surprising I found Episode 5 to be
the most entertaining episode of the bunch.
As stated above with Isozaki, the team reads the police message boards
and finds out just what the world thinks of them: Katsumi is too gloomy,
Kiddy’s too thuggish, Nami’s unmemorable and Yuki and Lebia are labled as
background characters. While im
surprised the male dominated force didn’t once drop a comment about the hotness
of the team, it’s a wonder the show pokes fun at its characters like this. It’s as if the writers are acknowledging how
the characters have been presented so far and are taking an episode to make
some course corrections. It works mostly
with Lebia, Kiddy and Yuki. Nami still
doesn’t do much for me. Katsumi, on the
other hand, seems to be finding love with Roy, a cop who helped train her. It definitely doesn’t feel like a forced
romance for them, in fact, theyre kind of cute together. Same goes for Kiddy and Ralph. Im sure that’s heading into romantic
territory soon and we’ll see how that plays out.
Besides the cryptic story, the characters who are all
still finding their role in this mix, and the not so smooth fusion of science
and magic, the one thing that I have to nitpick about this intro set is the
inconsistent animation. The first
episode is done in a style that seems just a level below X-199 The TV
Series. However, subsequent episodes
seem to be ditching that digi paint animation for a more traditional handdrawn
look. Both look…ok? I cant really decide which style id prefer
over the other. However, trying to mix
and match them isn’t working for me.
It’s like looking at the Zeta Gundam Film Trilogy, where they tried to
mix new modern animation in with the animation from the 80’s with the original
Zeta series, it was pretty bad. The
switch ups in animation cant be ignored, even with a cast of cute police
officers fighting monsters.
Silent Mobius is off to a rough start and I really hope
it gets better. It has the workings of a
great show with a fun premise, a nice cast and a great setting (I’m glad Blade
Runner’s had such an effect on the world of Anime). But some characters just aren’t gelling (Nami
and Isozaki), the overall premise feels too similar to Bubblegum Crisis with
Lucifer Hawks instead of Boomers, and the change in animation every few minutes
is a bad sign that the animators couldn’t make up their mind how they wanted
this series to look: old school or (at the time) new school. There’s still time to work out these kinks,
it is the start of the series after all.
But then again, it’s also that, the beginning…and shows can sometimes
live or die based on how they get started.
Anyway, the magical techno mayhem continues next
week. See ya then.
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