Anime: Dimension W

As this is my first time writing a critique for AniDB, I would like to take a small bit of your time to explain how I present myself in writing. This review will have a header and footer but they will not be present in the future. First off, the numbers are lies (I rolled a few d10s for them.) I do not believe that an opinion can be properly represented by an arbitrary value. Enumerated reviews make readers lazy in my eyes because of the ease that they allow readers to cherry pick data. I also feel that a proper critique should NOT be a checklist. In light of that, I chose to leave certain aspects of the topic of review unmentioned because I do not think they are significant to contribute to the focus of the review.

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From promotions and the short clip of introductory exposition at the beginning of each episode, I had hopes for this anime series. The idea of tapping into a new dimension for energy had been the starting point for the most impressive science fantasy for me (I’m speaking of the Xeno series.) Alas, this anime ultimately failed because of two major flaws: the unresolved mystery involved with the attempted explanation and application of its mystical McGuffin and the hasty change of the plot from the potentially sound, gradual immersion of this fantasy world to a generic, comedic romance between typical Japanese Byronic hero with amnesia and his sex bot.

As mentioned, my disappointment with this series is the sudden shifting of the plot to a rather generic, predictable, unsatisfying, and very boring ending. The anime spends its first half foreshadowing an evil corporate organization with a monopoly over the world through ownership and application of the mystical McGuffin. Kudos and boos to Steve Jobs's cameo, at least I think it’s him. I never liked Mr. Jobs, his company, his company policies, nor any of their hypocritical products (By the way, I’m very hypocritical since I am writing this review on an Ipad). Therefore, I am simply delighted that his doppelganger was the head of said evil organization, but unfortunately the writers didn’t go any further with the idea. Nevertheless, all the foreshadowing was completely wasted because 1/2 of the way into the anime, the writers decided the plot should romantic be a comedy driven by an amnesiac's quest for revenge and redemption. By the way, I do not consider this a spoiler.

My second disappointment with this anime series is its bad aesthetics. I honestly can’t fathom what the production staff was trying to show. While this can be observed in the backgrounds, it is most pervasive in the cast of characters.

We are introduced to the protagonist with him hip-hop dancing. The same character has amnesia, is anti-social, and is a shell-shocked veteran with a lot of emotional baggage on his shoulders. He insists on wearing a happi coat and hamaraki most of the time, especially in combat, just to show that he is a stereotypical, Japanese, male bravado. He has super strength, bullet-times, and is too cool for guns and other modern weaponry while opting for shuriken throwing knives with piano wires. He lives in a gas station reminiscent of ye oldie times America and drives classic gas guzzling antiques in an age where the world’s oil supply had pretty much dried up.

I have a hard time putting all of this together into anything reminiscently familiar or coherent. Why did the writers tried to pin such a random amalgam of characteristics on the protagonist? All I see is an excuse to force feed the hard sell that this anime is cool, that it’s Japanese, it’s cool to be Japanese, or maybe if you want to be cool and Japanese you have to act like this and have a sex-bot? My silly rant aside, it is apparent that the writers want to develop a memorable male protagonist that can spearhead the anime but ultimately, it is the circumstances surrounding a character and the consequences to the character’s action that makes him or her unique and a forced and trite collection of tropes of what is believed to be socially pronounced in the modern definition does not compare to giants like Spike from CowBoy Bebop and Vash from Trigun.

Moving onwards, I frequently call the female lead the sex-bot because that is what she is. This anime is another in a long list that contributes to the disappointment of what the anime industry portrays as romance. Love expressed in a mature and vibrantly emotional way is almost non-existent and instead we get tomfoolery that is substituted for teenage romance (not that such romance has any poignant value to begin with) portrayed in the most childish and pedantic of ways (oxymoronic, I know, but alas view it closely and you’ll see what I mean). All the while, the anime industry has consistently managed to demean the woman as a character with the worst of stereotypical behaviors and no amount of moe can justify that. So what was the reason for all that preaching? It means that this anime can get away with many close-up, high angle shots of all her naked, lady parts without stepping over the line because she’s a sex-bot.

Aside from role as a fan service device, the female lead has no significant or memorable value. Fan pandering aside, she is the worst extremely, human-like robot searching for her humanity that I have seen recently. Plot progression and what happened in the ending does not redeem her character. She is too un-expressive and wholly ignorant when confronted with situations requiring human emotions and conversely, she is a complete ditz at being a robot. One could say that such imperfections and dichotomous existence is in a way human as we are so very imperfect as well. I call bullshit. You could replace her with a flaky, high school girl or even a dog and the story won’t be change much. Also the robotic tail reminded me of the Transformers live action movie series and that’s a very big negative.

The bad aesthetics extends to the rest of the world design as the story progressed. Support characters are shoehorned in for the sake of the plot; again. I won’t go into significant details but the support cast reminds me of an international gallery of inept super villains from Saturday morning cartoons of the late 90s. They are, for the most, uninteresting and are just stand-in cameos for other archetype and their backgrounds are no less stereotypical. I’d call racism but alas, American entertainment is as guilty.

At this point I would like to give special recognition to what I see as the only gem in this anime: Ms. Marie, the portly employer of the protagonist and middle management for this shady business of collecting illegal contraband. She runs a strictly by the book business while providing a motherly figure to the two strays cats she picked up (the protagonist and his sex bot.) For an anime built on the rule of cool and mainstream fetishes, it was quite refreshing for a character like her to be the lone, sane woman.

I know I spent a lot of time talking about the characters but that is because they ARE the selling points for this anime. The plot is terrible and wastes all the potentials from the anime’s opening premise. It transitioned from a villain of the week in the early quarter to a revenge quest in later episodes while meandering through flash backs to try and patch glaring plot holes. It didn’t. The flashback just introduce a forced romance probably aimed at more fan service in guise of character development for the male protagonist and his collection of cool tropes. The trend of conveniently introduced elements, characters, and plot-solving devices continued until the very end. In fact, one scene's level of cheese is comparable to the revelation of the Crucible from the Mass Effect franchise (I'm talking about the fight with Superman.) The ending is predictable and adds nothing to the story. Nothing about the plot is resolved (the big bad got away scot-free and its biggest thorn removed) and no major development were given to any of the characters on cast because, at the time of the anime's end, the manga it is based off is still on-going. That's right, it's another 12 episode commercial.

Dimension W started off with an good idea that would have paved the way for a successful story with many opportunities for immersion from many points of views. From political machinations, to corporate tyranny, or even deciding the fate of two worlds, it could have had a much better plot but squandered its time on gratuitous mainstream fetishes. It tried very hard to be cool and practically shoved the idea down your throat. It tried to be sexy. It begs for your attention. Personally, I think Dimension W excuse its existence by begging forgiveness for all of its flaws through fan service and the unbridled use of generic character tropes that are easy to identify with and consume (please watch me copy and paste this line for many, many animes in the future.) This is horrible way to write any story.