Review of Den-noh Coil

This is a kid's show. Yes, it deals with themes about death and moving on. Yes, it involves complicated plots and settings that'll have you double-guessing whether something actually happened in the show or not. Yes, it treats characters and events in a much more mature light than other kid's shows. But none of that's gonna change the fact that this show, in its best and most genuine moments, is a kid's show. This is a very different kind of show. It's a show that frames mature events or themes through the eyes of a handful of innocently young children, all still in middle school. It's not a showabout teenagers struggling through depression. Nor is it about adults struggling through life. It's about a handful of kids.

Because of this, the show is almost free from the limitations that an older cast would have. It is almost completely free from all cynicism. All the pessimism and negativity that more 'mature' shows tend to have. All that anger, depression, and hatred. Instead, it is replaced by this more genuine innocence. This heartfelt idealism. This hopeful outlook on life all true youths share. Sure, it wasn't totally free from all nihilism (those beardlings were the funniest little things ever), and I'm not saying that a show that's filled with skepticism and criticism can't be good. However, it was just a wonderful breath of fresh air to see these themes and problems dealt with not from a cynical adult's point-of-view but from an idealistic child's point-of-view.

I'll be honest. I felt a sudden pang of nostalgia while watching this show. I wasn't sure at first why, but I think it's because everything in this show is supposed to give this youthful and childish feel, from the characters down to the artstyle.

All the children feel like real children. They got the children to actually act like children. From the silly stupid and sarcastic banter, to the things they think about, to their motivations. I felt like I was in middle school again. These ARE middle school students. What else could they be? Too often in shows, kids like these are often depicted as either too young for their age, wherein they only serve as foils to older siblings or as comedic relief, or too old for their age, wherein they are shown as scarred emotionless beings or as overly wise which is symbolically (or comically) used to contrast their appearance. It has been a while since I've last seen middle school students act like middle school students. They act spoiled towards their family but genuine towards their friends. They think about what to do with their friends and how to spend their time together a lot more. They're easily motivated by relatively shallow things but act upon these motivations in a very genuine manner. The children were indeed spot-on, especially Yasako and Fumie. The only characters who didn't follow this were Haraken and Isako who both acted older. Haraken acted more like a depressed teenager whilst Isako was pretty much an adult. While this is not really a bad thing because of their scarred lives, I would've loved to see them act more like children especially during the ending when they have already gotten past their problems. (Isako did get her moment however that was only during her lowest moment and we never got to see her as an actual genuinely happy child).

The artstyle too gave everything a youthful feel. It's the pastels, I think. The pastel color palette gave everything a more foggy dreamlike mood (y'know, other than the abundance of actual fog). This color choice alone gave me a huge bout of nostalgia. It was exactly how I saw everything back when I was younger. Like a dream. Foggy. Muted. Or maybe that's just how I remember it. Maybe that's not how I saw things back then. That's just how I see my memories. Anyway, I'd certainly like to commend the artstyle. I wouldn't say it's pretty or anything, but it certainly set a good mood for the entire show.

Something I also want to mention which is something that I don't usually talk about is the setting and how 'enclosed' it is. What I mean is that everything that happens in the story, all the events that happened to the characters, happen just to these characters, just in this certain part of the city to a small handful of kids and adults. Yes, there are groups of people who sometimes butt into the affairs and there are also implications that the events of the story does have some effects on the outside world however everything that happens in this story happens only to a small bunch of otherwise insignificant people. There's this sense of 'enclosedness' such a setting gives. This is not the only show to do this though. Practically every show that has a cast of less than thirty characters have this kind of setting. It applies to every show that only seeks to focus on smaller things. Small events in one's life instead of actual wars or events that affect entire populations. The thing is though, the events that happen in this show are actually fairly big. They should affect at least an entire city, the denizens of Daikoku. It should also affect the entire reputation, scope, and development of cyberglasses which, if I'm not mistaken, is already adopted by a good majority of, at least, the Japanese population. And yet, it never does this. The show never acts like anything that happens in it affects anyone other than its main cast. However, as much as this is a detriment to the show, it also, to me, adds something to its very youthful feel. Back then, when I was a kid, I used to think that everything that happened to me was everything that happened. I knew there was an entire world out there with lots of other things happening that didn't involve me, but I didn't care about that. It didn't involve me. So, I guess the fact that the setting was so enclosed added to the enjoyment I was already getting from the nostalgia. Critically-speaking, this is probably a writing flaw, but to me, it enhanced my experience by, at least, a little.

EDIT: After looking at the other reviews, I realized that I barely placed focus upon the ACTUAL setting about the technology and virtual reality. Everyone seemed to be talking about it in their reviews. The thing is, the technological aspect concerning virtual reality and human consciousness never actually stood out to me. The reason being the show treated the technology instead as a superpower, depicting metatags as magical grenades and the Coil domain as just "The Other Side". It treats metabugs and kirabugs as magical gems and encodes as magical spells. It never fully explores any of this as technology, never pointing out the philosophical ramifications of having your consciousness ripped out from your body, and the show is more akin to a show about fantasy than towards a show about technology.

Plot-wise, it's fairly 'mature'. Several dark things happened in a complicated manner in a very complex setting. People died, characters were forced to move on from these deaths, and there were a handful of sad backstories to pick from. Not overwhelmingly dark as something like Evangelion, but is not scared to tackle such themes and events. And it tackles them in a very tasteful way, into terms even a child could understand. It doesn't sugarcoat any of its dark themes, but it doesn't force you to deal with it either. It just presents it to us enough for us to stop and think about them intellectually, slightly playing with our heartstrings here and there but it never really tugs on them. Enough for a young middle school student to deal with. It does so by mixing its dark themes of loss, moving on, and human distance with more common kid's show themes of friendship and emotions that middle school students often feel (with a hint of first love) and forms connections in between them. It teaches younglings about these themes in a way they would understand. A lot of this can be seen with the show's pets. SPOILER We've all had pets we've lost before, right? Those companions we really cared for that we were forced to part with? END OF SPOILER The happenings of the pets are then placed side-by-side to what happens to the other characters. By doing this, it creates a comparison that can help the many middle school students who've probably had pets to further understand the darker concepts the show tries to present.

However, people say this show's plot is complex. And, in reality, it is very complex, annoyingly so. It gives you so many plot points to remember that you end up forgetting a good majority of them. There are many moments when the show refers to something that has already happened and I go "Wait. When did that happen?" after which I head towards Wikipedia's episode list (ignoring all the episodes coming after) and rechecking the previous episodes summaries. There's just quite a number of things to keep track of and it becomes tiresome to remember them all. To me, it feels like there are plotholes, however, when I try to remember an example, I can't think of any. This is a bad thing. If you write a show that makes your viewers feel like there are plotholes even though you've completely ironed out your entire setting and plot of all inconsistencies, then congratulations. You've made your plot too complicated. I really feel like the show would've benefited greatly if it had a simpler plot and setting. I believe it would've added more to the youthful and childish feel this show gives. Instead of flooding us with a truckfull of plot points with characters running around, encountering all these plot twists and developments and all these revealed secrets about this forgotten company, maybe we could've just watched these same characters still running around but without all these complicated explanations and backstories. Keep all the important events, but tone down on the context.

This show also has some pacing issues. It takes a long while to start up and get on its legs. It spends its entire first cour setting up all the characters and setting very slowly (it was nice seeing all the friendships develop though which is almost entirely absent in the latter half), then there's this several-episode long gap filled with nothing but filler (although, it does include episode twelve which, although still filler, is the funniest episode of an anime I've seen in a while), and starts going faster and faster. It reaches a point where it's enough for me to handle around episode 18 to 19, but after that, the show just goes into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE and barrels us with plot developments on top of plot developments. This has apparently also been in development for a decade, so maybe that's why? Typically, projects that take a while sometimes lose track towards where they're going. I don't know. Just a theory.

Of course, this show has other flaws too. Fumie, the best friend character who acts all best friend-like and Daichi, the jerk character who is actually kind of sweet are practically completely forgotten in the second cour of the show which is absolutely frustrating because the show shipteased them in an early episode but never did anything to add towards this relationship development. Also that Denpa kid, that soft-spoken kid who's pretty weird but really a good guy. I wish we got to see more of him. The plot twists at the end, although sometimes pretty awesome, can start to feel like the writers are just pulling everything "WOAH" they can think of. Yasako's backstory, although sounded pretty goddamn cool at first, just ended up kind of random. The character from her past just kind of comes in to criticize her then leaves. I felt that although it added a bit of character to our protagonist, it could be easily dropped from the show without changing anything. Or they could've gone full-on with that backstory. That would've been cool. I wanted to see a mean Yasako being mean. Also, even though I praised how the show takes dark themes and makes it understandable to young kids, I feel that a lot of the small nuances such themes have are lost in translation. Finally, the antagonist is a very one-dimensional character. There's barely anything to it, and his motivations are paper-thin.

Overall, it was a refreshing breath of nostalgic air. I don't see it as a masterpiece like everyone says it is, but it does things in a way few other anime does. It managed to present mature themes in a way children can understand, it managed to keep me on the edge of my seat even though it does so inconsistently, and it made me feel and think like a child again, giving me very relatable characters such as Yasako who really acted like middle school students.

I recommend this to those who'd like to see a show that deals with nihilistic themes in an optimistic way even if it may be in an oversimplified way, to those who like plot twists even if they don't come in in a very well-pace manner, and to those who just want to feel like a middle school student again.

Overall, I'd rate this show a 7.35/10.

+ very nostalgic
+ presents mature themes in a way children will understand
+ full of plot twists
+ very relatable characters; especially the protagonist
+ unique art style
+ very refreshing and different from the usual anime

- lots of plot points to keep track of
- overcomplicated setting and context
- not well-paced; slow at the first half, filler in the middle, extremely fast-paced ending
- somewhat simplifies its mature themes
- some characters are forgotten by the end
- the protagonist has a random backstory
- two characters act too old for their age
- one-dimensional antagonist