Metallic Rouge
a review by ZNote
a review by ZNote
There is a distinct difference between something working out in theory versus it working out in practice. If you were to visually lay out or list everything within Metallic Rouge in terms of its characters, places, and concepts, you’d be able to have a pretty firm grasp on what’s going on. In part because it is deliberately drawing such heavy influence from other cyberpunk or science-fiction media before it (with Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner being the most overt), the pieces to put everything together are indeed there, even if you don’t happen to know of its inspirations. However, the anime’s sense of revealing this information is to have revelations or twists come in rapid succession, proposing a whole slew of questions for each one it answers, and bloviating the world to be so all-encompassing that one could be easily forgiven for getting confused or lost in the wash. It is true that it is the viewer’s responsibility to be able to grasp what a piece of media is doing and try to meet it halfway, but that doesn’t mean Metallic Rouge is freed from the fault of its haphazard storytelling. With so much “stuff” that is explained and only thirteen episodes to get it all done, the parsed-out result is not a project that is poorly conceived, but one that struggles as a realized product to find its stable grounding.
And there is plenty to work with, too. As an oppressed synthetic population within the world, Neans are essentially shackled to the Asimov Code—itself named after science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who coined “the three laws of robotics” in the 1940s—which means they cannot harm humans both directly or by inaction or indecision. Coupled with their dependence on a substance called Nectar, Neans are robbed of any real sense of self-signification, clearly positioning them as a population both within society and metaphysically to be pitied by the audience. Within the Neans is the so-called “Immortal Nine,” proto-Neans that can exercise free will beyond the Asimov Code and take matters into their own hands, violently if needs be. Enlisted to stop them are Rouge Redstar, a Nean who isn’t particularly bright but can punch really hard, and Naomi Orthmann, the brains and tech-wizard who seems more relaxed.
For all the players involved, Metallic Rouge poorly orients how they all factor into the grand scheme (or, to use a framing device that the anime loves to employ with Puppetmaster, roles to play). If the series opted to have the two main characters as the main force walking through the narrative, it doesn’t succeed at this. A pair of characters embodying a tried-and-true “buddy cop-esque” dynamic is not poor by itself, though in terms of what makes Rouge and Naomi tick, there’s surprisingly little that feels distinct. The early interactions are occasionally tinged with remarks that border on yuri-adjacent signifiers, or turns of phrase that are meant to be endearing, particularly from Naomi. Yet, it assumes that tiny touches like these are substitutes for actual meat, rather than the potato chips or chocolate that our heroines like to indulge in. Given especially how much of the show Naomi and Rouge hardly see eye to eye, if not just being uncommunicative, dishonest, or not even within the same proximity of each other, it’s hard to care about them as a binding tether within Metallic Rouge’s story.
The Immortal Nine, despite being for the notion of Nean freedom and actualization, take actions that are bizarrely counterintuitive to their goals. Part of the reason for this is the wide disparity between its members; some of the Immortal Nine are docile and just want to live peacefully. Others are quick to violence, even if it means that some of their own fellow regular Neans—the group that they are ostensibly trying to help—die because of their actions. In making the Immortal Nine ununified and having both extremes as operating ideologies within them, Metallic Rouge unintentionally undercuts the very issue of Nean independence that it is proposing via the Immortal Nine’s stance. It is difficult to care about an oppressed class when the group most representative of them has characters killing “for fun” or murdering their own kin. This is not a case of “a few bad apples spoiling the barrel,” as the old saying goes since there’s only nine of them. When half your apples are spoiled, it’s a sign that you’re a poor farmer.
Because Rouge and Naomi as the protagonists cannot be positioned as antithetical to Nean freedom (because that would presume the series is advocating slavery is a better option, which…uhh…), the narrative thus puts them at odds not with Nean freedom, but rather against the Immortal Nine. And since the Immortal Nine possess personalities or cause actions so cartoonishly outlandish or evil to give the “good guys” and the audience a force to understand but not sympathize with, Metallic Rouge cannot elicit any meaningful introspection. The complexity of the Nean Freedom issue is relegated to battles with easily identifiable antagonists, defeated / killed in tokusatsu fashion in favor of gradual integration of Nean rights into human civilization to prevent “chaos.” The result is a civil war narrative in which even if both sides are simultaneously right (the investigator Ash [even says this outright]( https://i.imgur.com/BaLNCpN.png), just in case you missed it), the actual sense of exhilaration to see the conflict play through to the end just isn’t there because there is not a good enough reason to care. This, of course, does not discount the idea of the Asimov Code still restricting their options for self-defense or self-preservation at human hands.
Part of what magnifies this uncaring is the mis-prioritization of what transpires within these thirteen episodes. The Neans themselves as a larger collective seem strangely out to dry. While there is a visit to a Nean settlement for a short while, and the first episode involves watching a Nean suffer Nectar withdrawal and die as a result when no one offers to help (itself a good moment of worldbuilding), most of the interactions within the story don’t involve the Neans themselves as communicating bodies. The latter half of the show has so few Neans featured within it that further opportunities to see their interactions within the world are rather nonexistent. The Immortal Nine, in essence, speak on behalf of virtually all the Neans, and given their own wildly contrasting personalities, it’s a shame that they are the primary representation this population has within Metallic Rouge. For non-proto-Neans, Noid is the only one who has any kind of longstanding presence within the show, and that’s mostly as Ash’s subordinate.
The show instead more heavily focuses on the interpersonal—and familial—drama and having so many revelations or actions come one after another for the sake of shock or worldbuilding / expositing. It makes the mistake of thinking that the intrigue of Rouge’s contemplations, the Immortal Nine’s ideology, Naomi’s quips, etc. can map onto or substitute itself for the Neans. For supposedly being about creating revolution, the people who would most benefit from it are barely anywhere to be found. It is perhaps the irony of ironies that the oppressed Nean class within Metallic Rouge is so underrepresented in their own longing for freedom, shoved to the side for those proto-Neans and other humans that are not slaves to the Asimov Code that imprisons everyone else. For all the things within the anime, it feels so hollow in the end.
I do not doubt that Bones wanted Metallic Rouge to be their next big showstopper and a massive celebration for their 25th anniversary of bringing joy in anime to millions. Part four of the 25th anniversary documentary on Crunchyroll is essentially a giant ad for it. But perhaps in their efforts to make it the “most thing” that it could become, they didn’t realize until it was too late that it had become so large that there was no way that it could be as fully developed or realized as it could have been. In what should have been their crowning hour, it turns out that the emperor had no clothes.
That is, in essence, Metallic Rouge’s great failure – in trying to “cram in everything,” it doesn’t ultimately amount to anything. Its characters are caught within a moral conundrum that leaves no particularly delicious food for thought or thrills, residing in washed-out ideological shadows. It assumes that twists (out of left-field or otherwise) or other “big moments” are enough to cover when the inner cohesion is lacking. The result is a cyberpunk anime that has no real life within itself, keeping itself fueled with doses of its own Nectar and burning through its supply so quickly. Much like that Nean in episode one who was pleading for Nectar in his final moments, the anime was desperately searching for something to grasp onto.
Anime could always do with some more originals IPs, but an original IP does not make a good show by default. Most regrettably, Metallic Rouge demonstrates this to be the case.
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