Metallic Rouge is a series that boasts of grand ideas from the outset, invoking names such as Issac Asimov and ideas from titans of science fiction such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Unfortunately, it lacks the substance to back any of this up, the disorder from its very first episode never abating and only devolving further into an incoherent mess punctuated by mind-numbing action and ostentatious dialogue attempting to resemble drama. It is almost entirely style over substance with constant obfuscation of what turns out to be relatively simplistic or tropey plot points and ideas to anyone familiar with the wider sci-fi genre. It gets to the point where one wonders if they can only follow the narrative because of how tropey everything is instead of the exposition and causality within the text itself actually making any sense. There is a serviceable, albeit much less intellectually compelling, show buried beneath the crushing weight of the ideas and plot Metallic Rouge has failed to execute. Yet we only get glimpses of this in the few moments the show unburdens itself from convoluted exposition or trying to aggrandize its simplistic ideas and is just satisfied to be a quirky buddy cop show in a sci-fi setting. All of it reaches a point where Metallic Rouge has little going for it, with even the relatively strong portrayal and voice acting of its characters unable to make up for how detached the viewer feels from them due to the flimsiness of the world they inhabit. At the very least, it only botches its themes due to a glaringly simplistic and underbaked conception of these lofty questions instead of producing any kind of distasteful conclusion.

Metallic Rouge opens with a homage to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, with the first of the special androids known as the Immortal Nine that Rouge fights being an opera singer. In fact, one could reasonably argue the entirety of Metallic Rouge has been derived from Blade Runner with an anime veneer plastered on top of it. However, the show goes beyond taking inspiration or doing a more light-hearted adaptation of Philip K Dick’s work when it decides to cram elements of other sci-fi series into its narrative to the point of overload. Within just the first two episodes, we are told of regular androids (Neans) being controlled by a code in the vein of Asimov’s Laws, that there are alien visitors involved, and that there was an inter-planetary war between humanity and a third alien faction, all of which involved the Neans somehow. While these certainly can be made to interweave together into an interesting plot, it is abundantly clear that leaves little time for anything else in only 13 episodes. In fact, an astute viewer already notes that these elements leave only a few possible directions the plot can go in while having them all intersect in any meaningful way. This predictability is not necessarily a problem, but it does shift the weight of the show onto its execution given its ideas are almost entirely borrowed and mysteries hamstrung by the massive number of plot threads it needs to tie together.

This starts to fall apart as soon as the third episode when the show attempts to complicate its premise of androids being treated as lesser beings with the Neans “reservation”. It is frankly mind-boggling that an android population, created by and entirely subservient to humans, would need to exist in such an absurd arrangement where they are placed in a guarded ghetto. Unfortunately, most attempts in Japanese media to tell a story about an underclass or slavery tend to end poorly, for whatever reason. In this case, the show conflates the sci-fi question of the point where an android stops being a tool and becomes a person with the very real problem of having a part of human society being systematically maltreated. While these questions undoubtedly touch on similar and overlapping points, their associated scenarios would transpire in vastly different ways given that Neans need to be built instead of being born into the world, among a myriad of other issues that makes mixing the two dubious at best. The situation is in fact so incongruent that it makes the viewer question if they are missing something and if this is somehow a set up for the Neans to be some kind of bio-android that needs to reproduce organically, in effect something closer to intelligent beast of burden. Unfortunately, instead of going for that variation of androids to claw back some semblance of sense, it is simply one of the many instances of this show’s obfuscation of basic facts the viewer ought to know since it is later confirmed that Neans are indeed manufactured. Even then, this key detail is still largely left implicit from dialogue and is ever explained in a way appropriate to high concept sci-fi. The regular Neans barely appear in episodes after this, giving the impression that their oppression is being set up to justify the plot instead of this being a narrative that actually involves them. At best this is a poor and patronizing storytelling choice made due to how bloated the plot is, needing to resolve it aliens and super androids among other frivolous ideas it has dragged into the mix. But for most of its run, the show uses the plight of the Neans as merely an abstract point of contention the other characters clash over, which ultimately does a disservice to its themes. Having conflated the fictional and abstract question of whether a robot can become human with very real ways humans are abused has only made it more glaring.

It is from this shaky premise that Metallic Rouge brings out its core idea: what does it mean to be free? While a natural question to arise out of the show’s premise, it conflates many ideas of liberty and freedom together so as to make the discussion intellectually vapid. It is certainly unfair to the show to demand an academic level of distinction and debate on the matter, but the extremely surface level prattling the characters occasionally launch into is sore lacking given how prominently the show emphasizes its theme of liberty and attempts to frame it in a serious manner. The central premise of the plot surrounds the oppression of the Neans and their effective enslavement by Asimov’s Laws. And in a similar but distinct vein of discussing liberty, Rouge and the other special Neans of the Immortal Nine are constantly asking superficial questions and parroting truisms about if they are really free. It gets to the point where it feels like a transparent attempt by the writer to clumsily remind the audience that they ostensibly have a grand theme behind the nonsense, especially with how these musing happen in predictable pattern as if there is a checklist task for each episode to bring it up. Yet instead of dedicating time or effort to having scenes of real introspection or debate, the majority of narrative time dedicated to discussing freedom is used on vague, abstract or poetic sounding bits of flowery dialogue which are at best sophistry. Arguably there was never enough time for the show to have any real discussion on this given how much is crammed into the plot, but that merely shifts the blame onto the conceptualization of the story instead of its execution. More importantly, it assumes that there would even be a compelling answer or problematization the show could offer on this idea of freedom.

The main issue with the show attempting to link Rouge’s question of freedom to that of the Neans is that it conflates freedom from interference with freedom to do as one wishes. There are more formal academic terms for this like negative and positive liberty, but a simple, less technical explanation will suffice. These two ideas of freedom are certainly linked, do overlap to a degree, and are still being debated upon, but they are useful distinctions in Metallic Rouge since its ideas of freedom sit at literal opposite ends of this dichotomy. Rouge as a character is not coerced by other actors into her choices. In fact, it would be incredibly difficult to oppose her agency in any situation given her immense power. Instead, she is convinced, or perhaps manipulated into actions she might not agree with or does not fully understand. The central struggle Rouge has for her freedom rests on internal questions, what her desires really are and who she really is. While her desires do stem from external expectations, they are notably appealing to Rouge’s emotions or ideas of herself instead of her being physically impeded or deprived of the opportunity to act on whatever choice she finally makes. If this sounds intuitive, it is because this is generally what the lay conception of freedom is and what most narratives tackle since it digs into the beliefs and psyche of their characters. However, the plight of the Neans is the most extreme example one can give of having their freedom denied by interference. Asimov’s laws are ostensibly binding, hard coded into their existence that makes them subservient to humans and a source of their plight. They know what they desire but are unable to attain it due to others stopping them. To then have most of the plot revolve around Rouge and the special Neans like herself searching for freedom from expectations or preconceptions not only misses the point but also diminishes any themes to do with the Neans. Rouge is seeking a very personal and philosophical kind of freedom while the Neans as a whole are seeking freedom in a concretely material and political sense. One could argue that this is simply Metallic Rouge trying to address both conceptions of freedom, but given how little we see of the Neans and how vapid the show’s actual discussions of freedom is, this is simply far too much credit. Even when the show finally attempts to connect the two conceptions in its finale, it appears more as an unintentional accident as a result of yet another plot twist than anything self-aware.

Adding insult to injury, the narrative somehow botches even its ideas around Asimov when it is revealed the Neans are not compelled to action by an innate programing but are threatened with termination by the Asimov code if they fail to follow its rules. While this is still certainly coercion to an extremely high degree, it waters down and misunderstands the central themes to do with exploring if androids truly have a will or if it is merely complex programming mimicking a human mind. This conception of Asimov’s Laws renders them little different than draconian rules a normal human would face, they merely happen to be self-executing instead of requiring a court of law to pass judgement. There is no longer a question of if an android even has the capacity to disobey an order like a human being innately does despite the consequences. A more capable and cerebral show might turn this into an interesting discussion of freedom given that a choice to do something or die is really only one by technicality, but here it seems like the writers not having the required understanding to write on the topics they chose. Ultimately, every possible theme surrounding androids that has been covered in other sci-fi becomes muddled or at best conflated in its narrative.

This extends further into other elements surrounding the Neans, such as their seemingly innate ability to tell Rouge is not a human, and therefore do not need to obey her despite there being no obvious outward signs that she is not. While it is understandable for the writers to occasionally make mistakes, given how intricate and complex these concepts can get, there is simply nothing else done to help a viewer look past these incongruences since they occur on both the conceptual level and in the execution of the plot. It is then even made more glaring when the show implies Neans were meant for hazardous environment work on Venus despite them being modelled after the human form without any significant leap in durability. It brings into question if the writer actually knows what the purpose or nature of the Neans are in their own setting or if they are just trying to force the concept of a possibly human android into all the premises that have been mashed together for the plot. Using Neans on Venus is the equivalent of employing a quantum computer to do the job of a Raspberry Pi and is hard to find convincing. The introduction of conventional metallic robots with limited autonomy later in the series only makes it worse, establishing a clear pattern of thoughtlessness behind the conception of Metallic Rouge’s premise and world. All this gives the impression of a lack of effort that was meant to be concealed by convoluted storytelling and mystery boxes.

Now if these ideas are starting to sound rather complicated, and perhaps a little unfair to a show that has its veneer being cute girls fighting androids in Iron Man suits, it is worth remembering that Metallic Rouge brings all of this up by itself. The initial impression the series gives with its cast and voice acting is that it will be more in the vein of a quirky buddy cop show. And that could have been the case if not for all the additional sci-fi premises layered atop an already complicated framework surrounding the singular topic of android life. For all the grandiose, high concept elements of the premise, the whole series does eventually boil down to a bunch of characters fighting each other with superpowers. Everything else, from the freedom of the Neans to the aliens being involved, is just there to give the pretence of stakes and greater meaning to these battles. All this betrays a desperate attempt to justify the drama playing out on screen as more than it is than any real exploration of its themes or ideas. There are numerous other small allusions or references that constantly work to give the impression of intelligence or depth. The appearance of the works of William Blake in the hands of Noid during the opening sequences perhaps suggests religious undertones and allusions to anti-slavery. Similarly highbrow, the show decides to reference Heidegger by having the trite, and ultimately pointlessly named, ‘Ministry of Truth’ Rouge and Naomi work for be officially called Aletheia, a conception of truth as “unconcealedness”. These allusions could be explained in detail but suffice to say they do not support or link to any robust central ideas and are thus not worth the time. To put it more directly, this is name dropping things with the reputation for being cerebral in the hopes of deceiving the viewer into thinking the show is complex and they are simply “not getting it”.

The same can be said about all the out of place, “avant-garde” imagery and motifs the show uses with things like the travelling carnival and puppet master. Many of these metaphors and symbols are painfully on the nose, while other more poetic connections are convoluted at best and only serve to distract the viewer or waste their time looking for deeper meaning where there is none. At their lowest point they even attempt to create some kind of metanarrative layer by winking at the fourth wall and claiming this is all a performance. This ends up being more insulting than anything since the show has already crammed far too much into its narrative for its own good and has done nothing to earn or support a metanarrative reading. These theatrical motifs can only be seen as another cheap attempt to confuse the viewer into thinking the show is smarter than it really is and distract from how disjointed its themes and premise is from the actual drama playing out. But the most painful aspect of this style over substance approach is how these surface level aesthetic connections are sometimes the only rhyme or reason for “twist” reveals like with the identity of the puppet master. With how deliberate these quasi-intellectual allusions are, the self-aggrandizing framing of the plot, and its blatantly obtuse exposition, it is hard to justify the audience then being asked to pare back their expectations to this being a simple feel-good buddy cop show that happens to have a sci-fi setting.

It is a pity since there are glimpses into a much more entertaining show being led by Rouge and Naomi in episode 6. Without being dragged down by onerous and needlessly confusing exposition, the chemistry and charisma of Miyamoto Yume and Kurosawa Tomoyo can finally shine through in what is a simple and zany murder mystery onboard a cruise ship. Not only was it the only enjoyable episode of the series, but it is much more in line with the impression the series gives and perhaps what it is more suited to given its many more anime-ish elements like Cyan. It even made the caricatured and obnoxious mannerisms of Fate Giallon bearable, primarily due to his nonsensical “chaotic” or “twisted” behaviour no longer being used to drive the plot forward in an eye-rolling arbitrary manner. Even then, most characters are still left rather lacking with how little time there is to them beyond a surface level charisma from their portrayals. What exploration we do get is vague and occasionally melodramatic backstory dumps that suggest things about the characters but never confirm anything or tie ideas together.

What the core themes or even narrative of Metallic Rouge would be if it did make the pivot would be hard to say. Even episode 6 feels like it is mechanically placed as the “endear characters” section with how it exists almost entirely irrelevant to the plot and could easily have been skipped over given how pressed for time the show is. The world of Metallic Rouge does not even function very well as a sandbox since it only manages a veneer of a dystopia. The power structures and society of the setting remarkably unclear with only a smattering of information about there being a Ministry of Truth and a Public Security Bureau. While certainly sinister sounding, it relies on being a reference to better works instead of actually having any meaning within Metallic Rouge itself. What is abundantly clear is that many of the characters and their voice actors are being wasted in a narrative that is overwhelmingly dominated by attempting to resolve its plot at the expense of all else. At the very least there seems to be minimal dropped plot points with only the narcotics angle surrounding Nectar falling by the wayside, which is perhaps a testament to there being some degree of competent planning, but clearly not enough.

Overall, instead of being satisfied with being Do Nedoroids Dream of Electric Mareeps, Metallic Rouge insist on trying to have its cake and eat it too without doing any of the work. It overloads its premise with too many concepts for its run times, fails to explore with intelligence any of its themes, and frustrates the viewer by obfuscating everything about its simplistic plot, which then all proceed to smother its character performances, robbing the series of its one possible saving grace. It is even possible to call Metallic Rouge an abject failure with how onerous it can become to watch given its seeming allergy to any kind of effective storytelling. Giving the show the last bit of credit possible, it is at best a 4 out of 10 when accounting for episode 6 actually being pleasant to watch and hinting at the potential it could have had. However, that is still being incredibly generous and a 3 out of 10 would be more appropriate given it neither appeals to the sci-fi fan hoping for something interesting, nor an audience looking for simpler entertainment given how needlessly convoluted it is.