Review of Texhnolyze

Texhnolyze is a show about heavy breathing, grunting, and a pissing contest between a group of gun and sword wielding alpha males in suits who speak in bad mob movie cliches. If you force your imagination enough, you may be able to find something deep in the recesses of this art, but the same could be done if you stared long enough at the textures on a rusty frying pan. There's a subplot about "texhnolyzation", a procedure to repair or upgrade a person using technologies such as mechanical limbs. The transhumanist ideas herein, which have potential, are unfortunately enveloped in a lot of empty atmosphere. Mostscenes are comprised of long shots of nothing, sound effects that were ran through one too many flange filters, and cryptic dialog that's just later reiterated in dull exposition.

The tone is reminiscent of the cheap drawings an angry teenager would sketch up after being sent to his room for cursing out his mother. There's hardly any diversity among the characters; they all share the same stern facial expression, and communicate by either mumbling or shouting.

Episodes 19 - 22, though still reliant on exposition, are admittedly fascinating as they focus on the aforementioned subplot. With that said, I'm not entirely sure the ending was worth sitting through the preceding 6 hours of tedium. If this show had been around 10 episodes instead of 22, it could have been good, maybe even great.