Review of Casshern Sins

Casshern Sins is the anime embodiment of style. The animation and sound direction/quality is the best of anything I've ever seen. Everything from the color pallet, contrast, angles, pacing, just everything is astounding. Not only does the animation do exactly what the plot wants it to do, but it goes out of its way to stand on its own as breathtaking. Most trailers are cut very awkwardly so they wouldn't be the best reference for something like this. If you watch the first episode or first couple minutes you'll understand what I mean. So then, is Casshern Sins all style and no substance? The shortanswer is no.

Casshern Sins stands out to me primarily for its ability to swiftly shift focus from theme to theme. By that, I mean that the plot itself can morph into whatever the characters need it to be. In the beginning, it appears that the plot is everything. It is presented as this huge mystery and that the main character's sole goal for the series is to uncover it. The only reason it sets off this way is as a means of exposition for Casshern. Once that is no longer needed, the plot slowly dissolves the mystery to the point that it's not even important by like episode 16. There's also a great many things that go unanswered in the series, some extremely important and interesting things. However, they go unresolved simply because they are not required to tell the story the creator wanted to tell. For example, in the beginning, they show you three main characters. The anime tells you that they are not human, and not a machine either, and that they were created for a certain purpose. The anime never tells you what they are, how they were created, or for what purpose. Many people would naturally assume this is a bad thing and that it makes the anime bad, but that is not the case. It was just never important enough for the characters to find out. They ended with much bigger personal and interpersonal conflicts. Not to mention one of the themes of the anime is about forgiveness and letting go of the past. It'd be hypocritical for the anime to then spend a great deal of time and effort explaining the characters' past, wouldn't it?

I told you everything that Casshern Sins is NOT about, so then what is it actually about? Casshern Sins, like the title suggests, is about coming to peace with one's sins. However, it also delves deeply into other themes, kind of dependent on which character we're talking about. Each character has some internal struggle or conflict that is unique to that character. This idea is aided by the fact that a little over half of the anime is entirely episodic. We got to meet a new character and its conflicts every episode. My favorite character from the series was Braiking Boss. He is very similar, yet arguably more complex, to Yoshii from Texhnolyze. So instead of spoiling this anime here, I'll talk about Yoshii and what made him interesting. Yoshii was in a pseudo-utopian world, where humanity had reached its evolutionary peak. He decided that the world was too peaceful, that life in that world was no life at all. He then started causing chaos, death, and destruction, simply to see how humanity would react.

Ending thoughts:
Casshern Sins is spectacular. The only thing it did that I didn't like was that it simplified the plot. As I said, it was done with great purpose, but I prefer things with a little more complexity, especially for this kind of anime. I think it could've done a lot more with its universe. Evangelion only had 2 more episodes (counting End of Evangelion as episodes 25 and 26) and that was immensely more complex, giving it a great deal of creative freedom. I'm not going to harp down on an anime for not being Evangelion, but simplifying the plot is what brought the score down so much. Regardless, it has my highest recommendation for people who do not mind slow-paced storytelling. For all philosophy aficionados.