Review of Texhnolyze
By Far The Hardest Anime to Ever Complete for me. Out of 100, 200, 300 animes I ever tried/watched. Texhnoloze might be the hardest and longest it ever took me while only being less than 2 seasons worth of episodes (22). Major reasons for that could be how it is in fact hard to watch with how subtle the narrative is and how it drowns you with utter silence (literally the first episode there was no dialogue till 12 mins in) and lot of dark tone background imagery and music. The reason why pointing this out is important to me is because by far is thisnot my first encounter with psychological thrillers yet alone my first experience with the creators work. I seen Serial Experiments Lain, Haibane Remnai, Pretty much every Satoshi Kon work, Evangelion, Devilman Crybaby, ghost in the Shell, and Ergo proxy (surprisingly is the closest in comparison to Texhnoloze when Ergo Proxy is by a different person.) none of which came close to how long it took me to get through this show.
By all means Texhnoloze is not bad at all, in fact it’s one of the more Unique animes out there, and lot of the times “unique” isn’t always a good or bad thing, really depends on execution however with Texhnoloze it doesn’t really seem to be an issue here for me as you come to understand why the story seems so pessimistic and despairing. Really tying it to its themes of Theseus Paradox, Dehumanization, nihilism, and existentialism (that being in its more hopeful elements that are near the ending tho).
Even though it took me about 2-3 months to finish this 22 episode show, I really do not feel that negative about it and in fact rated it 9.2-9.3/10, it really does what it’s supposed to as a post apocalyptic world and it’s psychological element regarding the human condition and human evolution and limit of existence, the narrative itself has a hard to grasp plotline because the storytelling is very much on the “show don’t tell” side where it is subtle and leaves lot of interpretation towards the audience rather than spoom feeding every detailed event which I like about this show. The biggest pros of the show is it’s show dont tell storytelling and themes/concepts and the biggest con of the show is it’s lack of entertainment and bleakness but again it’s a more justified issue.
Give it a watch if you want.