In all the years I've spent watching anime, or movies and TV in general, I've found plenty of genres that I don't particularly gravitate to, with one of them being sci-fi. It's not that I hate sci-fi series, but I often find them hard to understand. A lot of sci-fi stuff seems to rely too much on technobabble to tell their stories, almost like the creators of said stories only want to appeal to hardcore sci-fi fans who would actually understand the overly scientific terminology they use rather than people who just want to watch/read an interesting story and follow a set of characters. A lot of this is why I couldn't get into something like Orbital Children, as it relied way too much on just dumping science-y exposition and pretentious philosophical concepts at you without giving you time to, y'know, process any of it, among many other issues. Other sci-fi stories put too much focus on the action and special effects at the expense of everything else. Thankfully, there are exceptions to be found, with one of them being Kurau Phantom Memory, an older BONES anime from 2004 that got a lot of praise when it came out, but nobody seems to talk about anymore. I'm seriously glad I decided to sit down and watch it, because in my opinion, this is what sci-fi should be like.

The year is 2100, and on the colonized moon, a special project is underway to explore and study new energy that's been discovered. But that's far from 12-year-old Kurau Amami's mind when her father tells her he has to work on her birthday. To make up for this, he invites Kurau to his research lab, to which Kurau happily accompanies him. This winds up being a bad decision, as a lab accident causes two alien entities called Rynax to take over Kurau's body. There's no way to remove them from her for the time being, and for now, everyone has to adjust to Kurau's change. Ten years later, Kurau works as a freelance mercenary, having adjusted to her new circumstances and the powers she wields...but Rynax come in pairs, and she wonders when her pair will finally appear. One day, her pair appears from her body in the form of a preteen girl similar to how Kurau looked when she was a kid. Kurau names her new pair Christmas, and the two of them try to make a life together. But an organization that hunts Rynax called the GPO finds out about them and are determined to capture the two of them, and probably kill them. With help from Kurau's father and an ex-GPO member named Doug, Kurau and Christmas have to run from the GPO and wind up learning some harsh truths in the process.

Being an earlier BONES anime, it doesn't look as sleek as some of their later works, like My Hero Academia or The Case Study of Vanitas, but honestly, even for its time, I think Kurau Phantom Memory is very well animated. The show's overall art isn't always the most consistent, but what it lacks in consistency and budget, it manages to make up for it with dynamicism and fluidity, especially during the parts that matter. I also appreciate that the character designs are leaning more towards the realistic side rather than going full-on cartoony, with the characters having smaller eyes that are more proportionate to how a regular person's would look. The soundtrack is also just fantastic. It doesn't have a huge amount of tracks even for a 24-episode anime, but nearly every track that’s there is a feast for the ears and does a brilliant job at enhancing the atmosphere. I also love the different variations on the ending theme song.

Of course, the cast of characters are the ones carrying this show, and Kurau Phantom Memory puts character development first and foremost over action and special effects, which works really well here, especially with Kurau. This show absolutely nails its lead character. She's incredibly well-developed and three-dimensional, with her own set of strengths, flaws, and quirks, and even though the show can get pretty dark at times, she's always portrayed with the right amount of warmth. The rest of the cast is well-written as well. They all behave and act naturally. and even the side characters who don't appear for a long time get fleshed out quite a bit even as their airtime ends. The only characters that don't get this treatment are two of the main villains, and they're mainly relegated to the background after a while. It does help that Kurau Phantom Memory does a great job at balancing both its lighthearted, heartwarming moments with the darker parts, with neither one feeling like they clash with the tone the show is going for, nor is something randomly inserted into a scene and destroying its mood or atmosphere. Take note, Orbital Children and The Heike Story.

As much as I want to hail Kurau Phantom Memory as a masterpiece, it's unfortunately not without its flaws. They're pretty minimal, and didn't detract from my personal enjoyment of the anime, but they may make or break it for others. For one, the voice acting can border on pretty cheesy at times, which makes the natural dialogue come across as rather stilted and forced in both languages, oddly enough. Yes, even the Japanese version isn't safe from this. Secondly, some very early parts of the anime haven't aged well, like Doug's initial introduction, but that actually gets addressed early on, so I personally had no problem with it. Others might take issue with the fact that the series puts more focus on character development than on the action, and not a whole lot of technobabble, but I don't think that's a reason to give Kurau Phantom Memory the side-eye. Plus, a lot of scenes are taken up by characters just saying each other's names and not much beyond that.

So if you want to watch a sci-fi anime that has a strong story with real moral dilemmas and situations that aim to bring the best out of its characters but don't want to put up with intrusive technobabble or over-the-top action, definitely give Kurau Phantom Memory a shot.