Review of Den-noh Coil

Den-noh Coil is quite the polarized mixed bag of an anime with clear strengths and weaknesses. I will give it credit where it's due in the upcoming sections, but I'd like to jump head first into the elephant in the room. Den-noh Coil is, quite simply, too slow and too boring for too long. More than half of the program, probably closer to two thirds of it or more, moves at a snail's pace, does the absolute bare minimum to advance the plot and spends way too much time featuring characters that are ultimately minimally relevant. The "payoff" in the latter part of the showis overstated. Yes, it's significantly faster, more engaging and overall better than what came before it, but that's largely due to just how underwhelming the first chunk of the program is, which is not the correct way to do payoff. Ultimately I feel the program never fully gets over this hurdle, hence landing on a final score a good bit lower than what the consensus here on MAL seems to be, and I'll get into it a little more thoroughly below.

First of all one of the things Den-noh Coil does very well is create an original setting. Cyber-integrated worlds aren't anything new and franchises like Ghost in the Shell go neck deep down that rabbit hole, but things are different here. Glyphs, Meta-Tags, spatial distortions, removable glasses that allow you to see your surroundings completely differently, "the other side"... There's many elements here that aren't present in similar programs which throughout the viewing experience makes the world of Den-noh Coil feel genuinely unique and distinctive, though it does suffer from plenty of logistical issues and does require some level of suspension of disbelief in order to accept.

While the setting is worthy of praise, the characters sure aren't. I disliked the very muted, dull color palette they opted for throughout the show. The art style does the already bland, one-dimensional characters no favors by making far too many of the characters of the same age look remarkably similar, but more egregiously these are some of the most intelligent, fearless, capable 12 year olds I've ever heard of, to the point of complete non-believability. This anime also suffers from the same problem that many other shows featuring child main characters fall victim to- where are the adults in all this? Where are the parents, teachers or authorities? Why is it up to 12 year olds to address these extremely serious, world-threatening problems that the adults around them seem to be completely oblivious to? How does the rest of the adult world function completely normally around all of this while these events take place in the background?

The pacing issues of this program are unforgivably brutal, but there's also tonal inconsistency. The best episodes of Den-noh Coil dip into the horror genre, but the anime is afraid to go any further with this than just getting its toes wet and in my opinion a lot of wasted potential is left on the table. Sometimes we're supposed to sympathize with the illegals and try to help them and other times we're supposed to be extremely afraid of them and run for our lives. This is a mystery first and foremost, but they randomly try to splash in other elements, such as comedy, that really fall flat.

The plot of Den-noh Coil is actually highly complex and interwoven and many of the characters are related to others in roundabout or unexpected ways, and to its credit they actually do properly resolve all the major plot points and tie off all the loose ends by the conclusion, which is often not the case. The core story here actually has a lot of meat on the bone and has the potential to be really satisfying, making it all the more puzzling and frustrating that they chose to tell this story in such a lopsided way. It's not an exaggeration to say that 80% or more of the plot occurs in the final third or later of the anime and it simply shouldn't be that way.

The opening song, Prism, was lovely and I added it to my playlist and the voice acting in the English dub was rock solid and consistent. There were no obnoxious and unrealistic voices or blatantly botched translations that didn't make sense. The pieces really were here to have something special, but the execution is just so botched.

At the end of the day no matter how many smaller things this anime did well and no matter how engaging the final third or so of it was (which I'd say was GOOD, but not AMAZING), I'm just unable to get away from the fact that for more than half of the program I was struggling to stay awake on an episode to episode basis. It was an all natural sleep aid in the worst way. This program probably didn't need to be 26 episodes and could have trimmed some fat and picked up the pace significantly sooner and wound up with a 16-18 episode program that would have simply been better. As it stands, it's too much of a slog to get through the initial part of the show and while it absolutely tries its best to make up for that towards the end (preachy, heavy-handed final episode aside), it just isn't enough. I don't think I hated this as much as my wife did, but I can't say I liked it either. I'd only recommend watching this if you absolutely love the genre (mystery) and have a lotttttt of patience.

OBJECTIVE RATING- 6-7
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 6-6.5