I'll start off by saying that this anime isn't the greatest. I feel physical restraint to say that it is good, but that's just because I'm biased towards the Diclonii design-wise + character-wise. This will have heavy spoilers on characters and for the show itself, just be warned! For the sake of brevity, I'll put this into bullet points for longer sections to make this easier on the reader.
I think I'll start with the good because it feels mean to go rabid on this! As stated before, I LOVE the Diclonii's design; the horns and the pink hair show that they are a foreign and mysterious race. The vectors were such an interesting power that I grew to really love.
~~~ DISABILITY REPRESENTATION
This surprised me, and in a good way! I rarely see characters that have physical disabilities, so it was interesting to see a quad-prosthetic and a wheelchair user. They handled this wonderfully, as they didn't make the character their disability nor did they take their power away from them or make them seem 'weak'.
That's... all i can remember really liking. Other than Nana and Mayu, love them both to bits.
I have nowhere to really start ripping into, so I'll just chomp onto Wikipedia's 'themes' that this show has first.
"...discrimination, social alienation, prejudice..."
I understand where the writers were trying to put in discrimination, and it worked... ish. Call me crazy but the Diclonii are something akin to monsters as framed by the show, which... Has some pretty bad implications, to put it bluntly. But I would be here all day if I equated this to real-world race issues. Perhaps I'm just lacking in memory (a very possible occurrence) but aren't they also... feared for a good reason? The scientists claimed that they just killed humans whenever and didn't really care about them all too much despite care being shown, which paints a picture of a race seen as oppressed being inherently dangerous and something to fear. Not the best message.
BUT WAIT! I know I know, Nana is a good little critter and doesn't decide to turn people into shredded cheese. And Lucy seemed to only lash out after she underwent some serious trauma + bullying.
"Random reviewer writer Diceyseraphim, you absolute oaf, can't you see that humans actually made them lash out via horrible actions, and the scientists are just misconstruing it?"
Well, my lovey strawman I just made, I thought the same thing at first. But then I thought a little too hard about it. This view implies a two things.
- Trauma excuses lashing out (it doesn't, but it is a reason for the action. There is a difference.)
- All Diclonii are inherently good until antagonized
Buttt as we know, this isn't true.
- Spoiler, click to view
Lucy brutally murdered families just to live in their homes, they did nothing.
- Spoiler, click to view
Lucy murders people who show compassion towards her, for some unknown/unrealistic reason Kouta is an exception
- Spoiler, click to view
Lucy. That's really it, if you watch the show you know that she just kills just because. Sure, she's given up on humanity- but you don't have to go and snap them all in half- she also kills kids if she must.
- Spoiler, click to view
Mariko turns the woman who was kind to her and regarded herself as her mom into a meatball sub, which like ok I understand you were in a vat of pee or whatever but she seemed to legit care about her, she can't help Mariko's circumstances.
- Spoiler, click to view
Mariko literally kills her the first time she's been let out. Can't say the woman is at fault, but she is a child + may believe that the woman was doing this to her so i suppose I give her a pass.
Long story short, horrible at handling discrimination race-wise, I understand people are afraid of what they don't know, but I find it impossible to view this without the lens of a blatantly failed commentary on racism. I suppose you could argue that society made them monsters, but we see Spoiler, click to view
Lucy embrace the 'Diclonii' side of herself, which can be viewed as a symbol heritage or her race, and then start turning people into legos.
Just my interpretation though, you can gloss over this part if you don't agree!
"... abuse, jealousy, regret..."
- Abuse was handled alright I suppose, but I would be going feral if they included that one character from the manga. You know the one. All I have to say is the abuse is just a way for the anime to believe it is touching on sensitive topics respectfully, and also just a way to keep that feel of... edginess. (Sorry, hate the word but it fits this too well.)
- Does Mayu actually ever recover? Does she triumph over it? She doesn't exactly tell anyone but somehow is 100% fine despite having a horrible trauma that never, never goes away. It's like it never existed at times, which would be sweet if she got some good therapy.
- Jelousy was the worst sub-theme in the world. It was boring and was only really used to further Kohta's worth to the audience. I'll touch on that later. No relevance to the plot outside of motive for Spoiler, click to view
Lucy
- I imagine regret refers to Spoiler, click to view
Lucy killing Kohta's family, but frankly how is your audience going to connect with a mass murderer when you touch on regret? I'd understand if this was used on more characters, but the only person who comes to mind in this matter other than Nana's 'dad' is Lucy, which is probably the most impossible to relate to action-wise. Boohoo you killed your crushes family. huh??? obviously you're gonna feel bad if that's the main reason the dude doesn't want anything to do with you near the end, but that's just feeling bad for yourself, not regret.
THE SHOW RUINING PROBLEM~~~
Ok, yes, i'm being dramatic but come on, let me have a little fun. The Top review already touches on its edginess so i'm not going to go into that gere other than saying i 100% agree that some things were uneeded and were just there to make the anime feel special about its perceived 16+ rating.
Spoiler, click to view
If you don't agree, please refer to Mariko's first meeting with Nana. Had no reason to strip her and took away any tension it had.Alright, I hate the Main character. Big whoop, throw the tomatos at me if you so desire. It's not for his character, but moreso what the writers do with it. I'm putting way too much time into this so- erm. Bullet points my beloved, aid me in these trying times.
- Removes agency from every character and acts as a completely uneeded 'hero/savior'.
- Nyu's 'savior'
- Was Lucy's 'savior'
- Was Mayu's 'savior'
- "That one chick in the manga I promise myself i wasn't going to bring up but here I am
"'s savior
I'm focusing on Lucy right now though because she paints the picture better than anyone else.
Spoiler, click to view
Despite her ENTIRE CHARACTER! HER PERSONALITY! HER EVERYTHING! She doesn't kill Kohta. WHY? Because he was kind? Are you high on crack? Do you have any idea how many times people were nice to her only to die or be seriously hurt? People who tried to be nice? Kohta literally 'betrayed' her in her mind, but she didn't kill him. "B-but Diceyseraphim!!! You absolute animal!!! She LOVED him!!! They had a special bond!!!" Yeah ok so I see you forgot her first friend who got her ~!dog killed accidently but not even actually causing it. If I told someone about my friend's coke bottle and they drank it, would my friend kill me as well as them? NO! They would only kill them obviously, seeing the giant crime commited was done by them. Do you see the many holes in logic? In her mind Kohta had commited such a horrible sin that
Spoiler, click to view
his punishment was HIS FAMILY DYING. HE was the one that did that, why in God's name is this man still having all his limbs?!~
I'm not getting into the others because I'm beginning to be a little sleepy, but just think about how much things center around this guy despite the fact they absolutely shouldn't. I understand he's the main character but the plot armor this guy has is thicker than a bowl of oatmeal.
Last jab at this is how poorly the show handles info. I am left with more questions than answers, and you know what- maybe the manga actually explains half the stuff in the show. But I shouldn't be scrambling to understand what that one dream sequence was all about only to have it never have any relevance outside of the obvious hamfisted symbolism which doesn't even make sense in the context of her situation. It's sad when the theories I had were more interesting than what the show had to offer. I thought the Diclonii were a hivemind of sorts and it all loops back to this one single Diclonius that is inside of them all, which means that this core diclonious is able to show them things other Diclonii had experienced. (I'm referring to the crucifiction thing, and also this explains why they can sense each other and such). Alas, nothing actually came out of it. Sobbing.
At most I would consider this at a C-tier. I am utterly baffled by how people love this, and honestly I have no idea how people can like it if not for nostalgia or your fix of booba. I respect your opinions of course, but this show just felt like such a slog to get through and the plot quality was garbage, sorry qwq. Uh, but Mayu and Nana are the best characters and if you disagree sorry ur wrong XD
