My interest in Armitage III: Poly-Matrix is a bit strange. I was first exposed to the 1995 OVA-turned-1996 movie by seeing a post about it on my feed — an experience that I'm sure is familiar to many people on this site. What's a bit more out there is how I came to become interested in the dub. For the past few weeks, I've been writing a research paper on the infamous 1995 box-office bomb, Showgirls. To conduct my research, I looked into the filmography of the central credits. To my surprise, lead actor Elizabeth Berkley had the starring role in the dub of anime I was planning to watch. I wanted to know how the actor of Saved by the Bell fame performed when she wasn't directed to overact to hell and back. Seeing as her name was showbiz poison at the time I'm sure her new agent (as her previous one quit following Showgirls) said "Hey, there's this call for the lead character in some Japanese cartoon. It isn't much but it'll help you keep afloat," and Berkley accepted before they could even finish the sentence. If that wasn't interesting enough, Kiefer Sutherland, famous for playing Jack Bauer in 24 (a show that me and my mother used to watch a few episodes of, years ago) stars opposite of Berkley as male lead, Ross Sylibus (the more geeky viewer may better recognize him as the voice for Big Boss and Venom Snake in Metal Gear Solid V). If that wasn't enough, Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad and Malcolm in the Middle fame plays a supporting role.

If you're not as dazzled by the colorful dub cast of C and B-listers, then you might at least find Armitage topical due to the recent release of a high-profile cyberpunk work.

If you glean interest in anime due to the work in of itself and not through unrelated connections to other works ~~(like some weirdo)~~, then allow me to provide a synopsis. Armitage III: Poly-Matrix (that is, "Armitage the Third” and not "Armitage Three”) follows Martian police officers Naomi Armitage and Ross Sylibus in the year 2046 as they investigate the disappearance of country singer, Kelly McCanon. As Sylibus disembarks from his flight, they discover that McCanon has been killed and is, in fact, a robot. The duo come across a slew of murdered robots and find themselves embroiled in a plot that will shake both Terran and Martian cultures…

I usually don't talk about voice acting first, but seeing as it's ultimately the reason I decided to watch the movie over the OVA, I felt it made sense to focus on it first. And I have to say, for a 1996 dub, it's not bad. It's decidedly not great, either, but for all the complaints that even fellow dub watchers lodge at pre 2010-dubs, this is surprisingly watchable (which is a pretty good thing seeing as there's no Japanese-language audio of Poly-Matrix). Berkley is quite good at playing Armitage, excellently giving the character the spunk, seriousness, and playfulness that the role calls for. If you're familiar with it, her Armitage doesn't really sound like her Nomi Malone. Poly-Matrix confirms my sneaking suspicion that Berkley's a decent actor who was shot in the foot by Verhoeven's cartoony directing, ahem I'm sorry, his "expressionist" directing. Hilariously enough, her performance is more subdued here than in the live action Showgirls. Looking at clips, I suppose her voice here is somewhat similar to her role as Jessie Spano, but I don't think it's really to the movie's detriment. She might not have the range of Hamill, but she certainly gets by and it's not like voice actors such as Lisa Ortiz (think Amy Rose vs. Lina Inverse) are known for being able to create countless distinct voices. I wish I could give so much as a quarter of as much praise to Keith Sutherland's portrayal of Sylibus, who always sounds like he's on the verge of passing the fuck out. Here, the man can't emote to save his life and I blame the voice director for not being able to make the distinction between stoic and catatonic. Similar to his phonetic namesake, you'll be exposed to Sylibus once before never wanting to see him again. It's such a shame too, because he really brings down the dub as a whole due to how prevalent he is. Cranston's role isn't terribly big, but he is undeniably great as a wisecracking informant and Dan Woren has a lot of fun playing the nuttier-than-a-Snicker René D'anclaude (and also showcasing his range when he gets to play as the newer, soft-spoken model of D'anclaude). The rest of the voices are fine. Even with Sutherland dragging the entire thing down, this is a decent dub that gets the job done. If you're not a fan of English dubs at all, as per my parenthetical statement, you should probably stick with the OVA.

The anime's aesthetic is what caught my eye and I'm pleased to say it delivered with futuristic designs that screamed "cool." Just look at those shades!

I'm very green when it comes to the genre of cyberpunk, but it delivered the beautiful sleekness, yet sinister grunginess that I expect of the genre. Armitage reminded me a lot of the game Snatcher, which is great, as I immensely loved that game's atmosphere. In addition, as per the genre standard, Armitage uses its futuristic setting to viewers with compelling questions such as "what does it mean to be human?" "what does it mean to be a minority?" and "what does it mean to be a woman?" Now, I'm not necessarily saying the anime does a lot with those questions, but the framework is certainly there, and to some, a framework is exciting. I can definitely envision this as the prequel to a much larger story, a much larger universe. This is an anime rife for fanfiction and if I was so inclined, I'd do it myself.

The animation is also pretty decent. It didn’t blow my socks off, but as OVAs and OVA movies were often made on the cheap, it could have been much worse. There's not an offmodel to be seen and the animation is nice and fluid. The fight scenes are cool and easy to comprehend, with crazy powers nowhere to be seen. Whether you're young and looking for something different or an older fan longing for the animation of yesterday, the hand-drawn animation will please you and, in this modern age, ties to the aesthetic of a rough future. If violence is your thing, the anime has it in spades, though nothing too gorey, seeing as most of the victims are robots. Character designs are decent. You may or may not find Armitage's design obnoxious, but I suppose that's a testament to how striking it is.

I didn't find the music too notable, but the techno tracks do a decent enough job of establishing the setting.

Armitage III fosters setting and tone remarkably well; affirming its status as a cyberpunk in the first few minutes. By the movie's end, its dabbling with philosophical questions show that the movie isn't content just being pretty.. Now, as I'll get into, the philosophy is somewhat ill-defined, but it's certainly there. I'd argue that Armitage III: Poly-Matrix works pretty well as a proof-of-concept, a mere taste of what this world has to offer. It serves as a decent jumping-off point for a hypothetical franchise and I could see it as a passable module for a cyberpunk tabletop RPG.

Where Armitage III fails is in creating a story, in utilizing its setting and themes to create an interesting, compelling narrative.

To begin, I found the characters, the central aspect of most stories, lacking. Sylibus is as boring as he sounds. The showrunners certainly intended for him to have characterization, with him struggling with his prejudice towards robots due to one killing his partner shortly before the series begins. Even so, the anime doesn't do a very good job of adequately explaining who he is, What's his story on Earth? What were his feelings about robots prior to them killing his partner? Near the end, he talks about his reasoning for why he prefers cities to the country, but it comes too little, too late for establishing his personality. He has an arc of seeing the humanity in robots, but it's not as tracked as much as I'd like. Really, the biggest reasoning for this shift is him working with Armitage, who is a robot herself. I suppose that's enough but a part of me wonders if that's only because he's into her. Oh right, speaking of which, I wasn't really a fan of the fact that the two eventually make the McNasty. While she's an ageless android, she's designed to look twelve, tops. As far as Armitage's character goes, she's really only interesting insofar as her status as a robot. Her struggles with prejudice and wondering why she was created if humans hate her kind so much are good on paper, but not when they're attached to a character who doesn't really have a notable personality. Sylibus has an arc, as barebones as it may be, which is more than I can say for our hotpants-wearing heroine. There just isn't that much to her. Much like the movie as a whole, there's a good framework for Naomi Armitage, but she’s barely a character in the product that we got.

I wish we got to see more of the Thirds and robots in general. They're arguably the most important and salient part of this movie, and their history and function are really only explored via unengaging infodumps. We don't get to really know any of the Thirds because their only purpose in the movie is to be brutally executed by René D'anclaude. I was personally drawn to the novelist, Rosalind Horhes (Gee, wonder why?) and I thought her story would be more interesting than Armitage's. What inspires her? How is writing as an android different from writing as a human? Most importantly, I wanted insight towards her experience of being a Third, of having to hide her identity. This is a very (post-)human aspect of the work that seems like a no-brainer to include, so its absence just feels that much more egregious. As I'll get into, besides the Thirds, details on other robots are scarce, forcing me to rely on external sources to get more information on them. For the life of me, I can't figure out why the showrunners would neglect to adequately address one of the main draws of their setting. It feeds into the idea that the would of Armitage III: Poly-Matrix as impressive breadth but lackluster depth.

Its shallowness can be further seen in how it bungles its political elements.

And before the (self-proclaimed) apolitical user base of this site gets their pitchforks, let me just make it clear that I'm not "dragging politics into this."The genre is known for how entwined it is with politics, so overt that it can't really be called "subtext." Besides pondering abstract philosophy, cyberpunk is a genre that rebels against tangible systems of oppression and power. It is punk, after all.

So why, oh why do we focus on cops in Armitage?

I'm very aware that discussion and outlook on police is very different in 2020 than it (generally) was in 1996. I'm also aware that views on law enforcement in America differ from views in Japan. That said, one of cyberpunk's influences is the American-centric noir genre and, whether in 2020 or 1996, America or Japan, cyberpunk is rebellion and no matter what your political leaning is, I'm sure you can agree that being a police officer is one of the least rebellious things you can be. Framing the main characters who are police officers that become dissatisfied with their jobs could be a decent framing to show how rotten the setting is. Armitage and Sylibus do end up defecting, but it's played in the most typical, unsatisfying way. You've doubtlessly encountered it before. They essentially decide to leave because of the System™’s red tape. The faceless, goalless, System™ that's easy to hate because you're essentially not saying anything by criticizing it. By putting the onus of wrongdoing on faceless higher ups, the police department is essentially given a pass, being allowed to shrug and claim that their hands are tied. I'm not saying I wanted to see every single officer drown kittens, but it kind of takes the wind out of the sail of whatever criticism boat you professed to be on when you don't really have the gumption to portray any actual police officer character badly.

Instead, the group you're supposed to root against is the feminists.

No, you did not read that wrong.In a move that I’m sure will endear many of Anilist’s users to Armitage III, the feminists turn out to be the real antagonists all along.

Miraculously, I managed to delve into the topic of Showgirls without having to consider if it's a pro-feminist or anti-feminist work. As it turns out, it's very easy to just focus on the fact that the movie’s hot garbage. Armitage III, thanks to its genre trappings, is so overt that whatever feminist message that may-or-may-not exist in Showgirls is subtle in comparison. So, in following Berkley's filmography a bit too closely, I've found myself caught. So join me as I make an ass of myself talking about feminism as it relates to this 1996 cyberpunk anime!

Let the record show that I acknowledge that I am in no way properly equipped to discuss this topic. I don't consider myself a feminist and I'm not a woman. The only reason I find myself discussing feminism is because the topic unexpectedly showed up in the movie and it's probably the most intriguing aspect of it. I certainly didn't go into this anime expecting that I'd have to clumsily work through feminism; I'm honestly as baffled as you doubtlessly are.

Towards the end of the film, it's revealed that feminists control the Earth's government (yes, feminism in this world is a monolithic, powerful movement enough to control the planet) and they plan on trying to reign in the Martian colony, as they find that the colony's use of Thirds, feminine robots that can give birth, as a threat to their existence. My first inclination was utter bafflement, wondering why feminists would object to robots that could procreate. I thought that perhaps these were traditionalist feminists, ones who conflated being a woman with being able to give birth.

I looked into the series online to try and get a better picture. "Firsts," in the world of Armitage III refer to robots that we could currently have in our world — inhuman automatons. "Seconds" are essentially sexbots with exaggerated features, made to be companions to the mostly male frontiersmen on the newly colonized Red Planet, giving them an incentive to leave Earth and work the land. They are smart enough to perform tasks on their own and pantomime human interaction, but they seemingly have no wills of their own. "Thirds," created in secret, appear outwardly human and seem to possess "souls." Thirds are all women and possess the ability to conceive and birth children. They were apparently created to fix the problem of low Martian birth rates, as the populace is overwhelmingly male, seeing as Terran women don't want to emigrate and lose the powerful status they have on Earth. "Fourths" or "Alives" are plant-like robots that would aid in terraforming mars and free humans from being forced to live in bubbles. "Fourths" and "Thirds," used in tandem, would free Mars from the shackles of Earth. Let's ignore that the very interesting classification of robots and the fact that Mars is terraformed, two vital parts of the setting, are explained on TV Tropes better than they are in the actual movie. Instead, let's think about how this relates to Armitage III's feminists.

The feminists are apparently angry that the use of Seconds and Thirds makes them obsolete. This would imply that, to the feminists in Armitage III, women are only needed for their ability to have sex with men and birth them children, which is obviously a gross thought, one that I doubt many real feminists would agree with. On the other hand, one could make the argument that the film is painting the Martian men in the wrong. After all, they are the ones who created the robots. Kelly Mccanon's manager, incredulous over being told the singer is an android, tearfully states that she's "the most human woman I know." Later on, we realize that he's referring to the fact that he was able to impregnate her. Her manager is obviously meant to be scuzzy, so are we supposed to sympathize with the feminists of Armitage III? It's feasible that they're not ascribing these reductive qualities of women, but the men are, believing that the robots meant only for sex are a good enough replacement. You can understandably see why they’re annoyed and could make the counterclaim that the Martian men are the ones who see women nothing more than things to have sex with.

It's really hard to make that argument though when the feminists are subtextually written to be unpleasant. For one, the character design of their leader is drawn to be ugly/different (at least in comparison to typical anime characters) in a way that the female robots are not. Second, the feminist government is what keeps Mars from being free. In a genre focused on fighting evil systems, the powerful government a colony wants free from being a one run by feminists is telling. Ultimately, I'm not comfortable with how petty and cartoonish feminists are painted — seeming to believe that a woman's worth is determined by her being able to procreate and also seeming to be hungry for the attention of men.

...yet I do think that something could be here. With a bit more detail, this could be a lot more nuanced, more intentional. As is, this idea of feminism is ill-defined but just defined enough to annoy me. This idea sexbots could have been explored/depicted more. Maybe not to the point of being a full-blown ecchi, but actually giving the audience more food for thought than we have currently and painting a fuller picture of life on Mars. As is, the feminist aspects are present enough to be eyebrow-raising at best, uncomfortable at worst, but not enough to really say anything definitive about.

"Undefined" describes a lot of the themes. We see protests against the use of robots, but these aren't given a lot of focus and I question why people rebel against robots when they imported them for companionship in the first place.

Even with all its faults, it’s among the better of OVAs I’ve seen, though it still doesn't hold a candle to the crème de la crème Macross Plus. It’s certainly more competent than Macross II, though that more speaks to how inept Macross II is that this is more competent than it. Unlike Macross II, this feels like a complete work. That said, much like Macross II, it feels strangled by its restrictive format. It utilizes its short runtime fine all things considered, establishing a decent setting, but I can't help but yearn for more. The questions I have about the world only serve to show me how shallow it really is. It doesn't adequately explore its themes, leaving me either dissatisfied or uncomfortable. As I said, I can absolutely imagine a Cyberpunk module based on the world of Armitage III. In that regard, this is a good enough starting point. As an actual story, however, it doesn't quite make the cut.

6.2/10
D-