Well, what do you know... an up to date post on an anime title that finished its run only a couple of days ago. I'm not sure how it happened, either.
In 2071, Earth has achieved great strides in finding an unlimited power source. Yurizaki Shiro discovers Dimension W and invents coils to harness the energy harvested from it through the towers built around the world by his company New Tesla. It doesn't take long for illegal coils to appear in the black market, prompting New Tesla to hire collectors to retrieve them. Mabuchi Kyoma is one such collector, known for his aversion towards technology, even driving a gas-powered car despite the skyrocketing prices of the old energy resource. He encounters Yurizaki Mira, a robot who calls the now-recluse Yurizaki Shiro father. Shiro kills himself in lieu of getting caught by New Tesla, leaving Mira the message to follow the illegal coils before doing so. She joins Kyoma and becomes a collector in the hopes of finding what Shiro meant for her to find.
I had actually meant to just check out the first episode of Dimension W and decide whether it's good enough to keep in my viewing list to enjoy at a later time. But it was hard to turn away from the series after that initial viewing, and new episodes became a highlight every week. Dimension W features an interesting premise, of a future world that relies on energy from an entirely new dimension and, while people are content enough to enjoy the privileges of unlimited energy, it's easy enough to guess that there are bound to be consequences to that gift. While coils make it possible to use the power harvested from Dimension W, they are also the source of rather horrific ends when they malfunction. This makes the work of collectors important, because illegal coils have a higher probability of causing Dimension W to manifest itself in their reality. And that manifestation is never a pretty sight.
While featuring a large cast of characters, especially in the last third of the series, Dimension W is the story of Kyoma and Mira. Kyoma is averse to anything related to new technology, which makes his animosity towards Mira a given. Their dysfunctional partnership is central to the storytelling, but it's the unfolding of their individual yet entwined stories that gives Dimension W its dose of humanity, even if one of them is a robot. While I felt that Kyoma's initial treatment of Mira got old fast, since she's as sweet as can be and clearly not just your typical robot that follows commands, it does make watching their eventual friendship grow more satisfying to watch.
Kyoma and Mira end up working together on different collection assignments, with each one eventually contributing directly and indirectly to the central mystery that helped define Dimension W as a must-watch anime series. There is a good balance of drama and comedy, which keeps the series from becoming emotionally heavy or difficult to watch for the audiences (as was the case in PSYCHO-PASS, even if I loved the hell out of it). And the action sequences are beautifully animated, which are a definite plus given all the fighting that happened in the last couple of episodes.
Dimension W could have benefited from a longer run, but it was still a joy to watch with the twelve episodes we were given. The series left audiences with a couple of questions left unanswered, but the answers we did get are enough to provide us with a satisfied viewing experience. And there's always the still-running manga series the anime was adapted from if you need to have that inquisitive itch scratched.
Happy viewing!!Labels: Action, Adaptation, Anime, Dimension W, Drama, Dystopian, Must-Watch, Sci-fi, TV
