Review of Casshern Sins

Casshern Sins is what you get when you get two different cliches' in anime: robot fights, and tear wrenching sadness, and blend them together. While the blend is an interesting original idea, Casshern Sins has a few issues with its plot, flow, and general over-sadness for me to have overly enjoyed. This anime is sad. Sad, sad, oh so very saaaaaad. The world of Casshern Sins is in ruin, and by that I mean every city in the series is decaying, both its buildings and its citizens. There is barely any nature anywhere, and the world is swimming with sandstorms. All the robots in the showused to be immortal, but the ruin changed that, and most robots we meet are having various mental stresses trying to deal with imminent death which they didn't have before. Casshern Sins is sort of a zoo exhibit, with each episode featuring a new robot who is sad for one reason or another. Sure it has a core plot, but overall the main strength of the show is in its singular stories within each episode featuring a robot.

The core plot of the series is iffy. At the start of the show, we're introduced to Casshern, the main hero, who everybody wants killed. It appears that Casshern is actually responsible for the ruin, and robots have spread a rumor that whoever eats Casshern will regain their immortality. Casshern has no memory of what he did to cause the ruin, nor why he did it. He starts off the series as a blank slate, and the various sad robots (and one human) he meets fills him with sympathy, envy, guilt, regret, and other emotions, and help him grow over the series. This original premise is great, but certain later developments of the core plot didn't make sense to me either because I missed something important in the plot, or the plot was just flawed. I'm gonna list the main ones I can recall, but if you don't want any spoilers skip the next section.

1. What exactly happened in the past? Did Luna actually die? What exactly caused the ruin to begin? Exactly why did Casshern do the murder, and where did his amnesia and immortality come from?
2. Was the Luna that shows up later indeed an imposter, or was she genuine?
3. Why does Luna have her powers? It was never really explained why Luna had the ability to repress the ruin, she just did.
4. I more or less missed the explanation of Casshern and Dio. Why isn't Dio as strong as Casshern?
5. Where are all the humans? As far as I recall, there was one human in the entire anime. Are they all dead, and we just witnessed the very last human being ever?
6. In episode 17, they uncover a gem and Ouji seems very excited about it, saying that with it he may be able to reverse the ruin. However, after the episode it's completely forgotten. Ouji comes running back later, looking like he has made progress on the gem, but nope. It's as if the gem erased itself from everybody's memories.

Casshern Sins is half pretty and half ugly. While it does have some shiny robot battles that look amazing, most of the time it really doesn't have much to show, except how sad everybody is and how you should also be sad. The world really does look like it's in ruin. It reminds me greatly of the future world in Chrono Trigger, as if the future was ended by an apocalypse. Most things look gray, or as if they're rusting. The anime does have the occasional colorful flower bed, but those only exist to make some sad plot development to make you more sad.
The BGM is usually slow and humble, making it very forgettable. Most of the time there isn't any BGM at all, probably to emphasize the sadness the show wants to portray. I very much like the opening song a lot, as well as the ending songs Reason and Hikari to Kage. If all other music in the series is forgettable, at least these three songs are wonderful and very good at setting the tone. The English dub is rather unimpressive. Some English lines sound silly, particularly KILL CASSHERN, DEVOUR CASSHERN, which is said all the time! One character in particular, Sophita, sounds dreadful in English. SOPHITA WANTS TO FIGHT YOU! Yeh, just watch with Japanese subs, trust me.

Two characters in the show are greatly developed throughout, those two being Casshern and Lyuze. These two really carry the show from episode to episode. Casshern starts off completely blank, and at the end he has a clear understanding of what he believes to be right and wrong, important and unimportant, and just and unjust. He develops his own philosophical believes by observing his sad world, and decides for himself what he should do about it. Lyuze starts off as a anger driven woman obsessed with revenge, but over time she changes. She cannot get revenge on a man who has no memory of his crime, and decides to travel with Casshern, and get her revenge once he regains his memory. However, over time, she also observes the sad world with Casshern and changes her beliefs 180 degrees.
All other characters aren't that important. They either serve a purpose within that episode to make the viewer sad, or they make many appearances to make the viewer sad many times. I do not really understand Luna, Braiking Boss, or Dio very well, which is a shame since they're all so important to the core plot.

So what exactly is the point of all the sadness the anime spews out? Well, it becomes clear, especially in the later episodes, that the point of it all is to convey the life message "Life is only truly beautiful because it has an end". This message seems good, but many events in the series work to make this claim weak. Many robots die in vain, never truly able to see how beautiful their lives were. Many don't even understand that they are alive or what it means to be alive. A character says early on "were we ever even alive to begin with?" Especially in the last few episodes when a particularly important character dies off from the ruin (when this character had the opportunity to continue living but passed it up), we're left feeling as if this message couldn't be more false, and it would have been better if that character were immortal.

This anime has a few very good episodes within, and at least a few of them will make you sad (and a bit existential). The core plot has some issues, but the growth of Casshern is excellent and makes watching this much more enjoyable. The anime has some robot fights, and some are exciting, but most of the time it's really one sided and exists just to be there. If all you want to see is robots fighting, this anime is definitely not for you. The anime's real shine comes from its sad stories, and whether those touch your heart is really up to you. Casshern Sins can be really good sometimes, but most of the time for me it was just alright.