In the future, virtual reality and neural-integrated computers are as common as smartphones today, and there is a growing generation of children who have never been without them. And now a new program is spreading, secretly, among such children: Brain Burst, a program that lets you accelerate yourself in time, allowing your mind to work at 1000 times the speed of an unenhanced human. The creator of this miraculous software added an extra part to it: it's a fighting game, and you gain points by winning and lose them by losing and using the acceleration. But what is the purpose of the game? What is was the creators goal? What experiment are they performing by making this power? The answer can only be found by reaching 'Level 10' and defeating the greatest members of the game.
The story revolves around fat, short, game obsessed loser Haruyuki, who finds that the beautiful upperclassman who goes by 'Snow Black' is in awe of his AR skills and believes that he can be the one to learn the truth, and an awkward relationship blooms between them. Haru, however, wonders if the only thing holding their relationship together is this game, and his concern is natural and human.
In short, the series starts out as a pretty interesting pre-transhuman romance set in a futuristic high school setting. I was impressed, I wanted to know why this thing existed. Was there some great lesson about growing through conflict? Something to be learned through putting this gift on the line? It had a lot of potential.
And it went and screwed it all up by devolving into a pointless parade of cheating villains, broken rules and video game superpowers for the entire second half of the series. It came together for a decent finish, but the initial wonder of the concept and the transhumanism of the story are completely lost, as if it felt like it deserved a second season to wrap itself up. Except at the pace it was going, it wouldn't have.
I can't be too harsh on the series, because the anime was based on a light novel series that's incomplete and in the process of being milked until it sucks, and I guess that's what you do with popular franchises, but it was still a really disappointing crash down around episode 13 as they struggled to make a villain last for the entire second half of the series. It wasn't terrible, the characterization was good (I especially liked the character of Chiyuri, Haru's childhood friend, who managed some really heartrending moments during the later arcs), the animation was pretty, the story held together if you didn't engage your brain on how science and computers work. But it was a disappointment, one of the biggest disappointments I've seen recently.
If you want a show with some good fights, pretty girls and interesting relationships, you could do worse than Accel World, but be sure you watch it knowing the second half kind of sucks. I think if you know that it'll be fine, but like so many series, if you ask too much of it, it'll leave you very disappointed.
No comments:
Post a Comment