Anime Review: Pluto

*this review is Spoiler free!*

Hi everyone! I'm back for the first time in a while with a review of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto anime that debuted on Netflix in the fall. Let's check it out!

Here's a short summary of the plot: Pluto focuses on a detective robot named Gesicht who is on the case of a serial killer who's targeting both beloved well known robots and humans who champion for robot rights. He hopes to find the killer while grappling with the knowledge that he is a target himself.

I think the series started off a little slow/rough, but I was hooked by the end of the first episode. The episodes are all 1 hour long, which allows for more time to develop the plot in each episode. As a mystery anime enthusiast, I thought the story was super compelling. The characters are all extremely likable, even if they appear for only a short time, and they all have memorable designs and characteristics. I was especially fond of Epsilon and Atom.

Something everyone should know going into this series is that Pluto is a retelling/reimagining of one storyline in the Astro Boy canon. Astro Boy is an extremely popular comic series in Japan that originated in the 1950s, and Naoki Urasawa was given permission to adapt the story in 2003. I’ve actually never seen or read anything about it, and I was worried at first that I'd be confused. However even though I had no prior knowledge of Astro Boy I had no issue following the story of Pluto. If anything, it just made me more curious about the original series and made me want to check it out later.

I will say, some of the animation in this series I was less than pleased with; during moments that in other anime would typically be higher budget, more detailed, or a higher frame rate, in some cases actually looked worse than the regular non-action scenes. This may be due to my personal gripe with the use of 3D models in 2D animation, so I'll write it up as a me thing for now. Either way, in my opinion the animation is definitely the least impressive aspect of this series.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable show and honestly a great introduction to Urasawa's works for someone who might not be familiar. I highly recommend this series to anyone who enjoys mystery or sci-fi anime.

Thanks for reading!

-threecheersforinking

Paranoia Agent: Anime Review

(spoiler free!)

Paranoia Agent has been on my to-watch list for a while, since I've seen all of Satoshi Kon's movies and generally like his work. I had a lot of mixed feelings about this show and want to talk about it, so let's get into it!

Here's a quick summary of the plot:

After work one evening, a popular young character designer stressed about her upcoming deadline gets suddenly assaulted by a young boy on rollerblades with a bat. Soon afterwards, various people all over the city begin to claim they have also been attacked by this boy, known by the media as 'shounen bat', and the citizens began to speculate whether shounen bat is real or a figment of the victims' imaginations.

Knowing that Satoshi Kon's other stories often focus on the disparity between reality/unreality/imagination, I was intrigued. I am critical of many of his portrayals of individuals with mental illness in these stories, but overall enjoy the way he writes about the uncertainty between what is real life and what is not. With this show, the audience is in the same position as the characters. The entire time, you will be questioning who shounen bat really is, and why he exists.

I thought this anime was great for the first couple episodes, but around episode 7, it really stagnates and the quality drops significantly, in my opinion. To me the show seemed like it was reaching its climax at that point, but this is a 13 episode show, so I knew there had to be more of the story left. The episodes in between episode 7 and the finale aren't bad by any means, they just seem to disrupt the flow set by the first several episodes. This is just my opinion though, I'm sure some people may disagree about the pacing issues.

This is a side note, but I also think this show has one of the most unsettling opening songs/animations I've ever seen in anime. It's just deeply unsettling, lol. I don't know how else to describe it. This is a good thing though, I think it captures the mood of the show perfectly.

Overall, if you like some of Satoshi Kon's other works and are curious about Paranoia Agent, I'd say it's definitely worth a watch, but it's not something I'd necessarily recommend, especially to anyone who isn't familiar with Kon's directorial style. But that's just me.

Thank you for reading!

-threecheersforinking