A.I.C.O. Incarnation

A.I.C.O. Tells the story of Japan being overrun with "matter", a sort of abstract material that destroys everything in it's path. The story is a bit generic but the pacing make's up for that. The biggest issue I had with this anime was the main character; Tachibana, Aiko. it's not that she lacks depth, it's the way she reacts to every situation. It's like she was made to be shocked at every turn. And it gets tiresome fast. The best aspect of the anime is the artwork. The elegant animations and fast pace of the series is what kept the two dimensional characters in check and made the series watchable. I did like the small details that made the world of A.I.C.O feel more authentic, e.g. the artificial suits that needed to be fed in order to function properly. I wish a little more thought was put into the world building of the series, it felt like I was watching a CW series with good visuals. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it does make for a good popcorn anime.

Though it wasn't great, A.I.C.O Incarnation definitely was not bad or mediocre. It wasn't great either though. It was OK. Netflix has been pumping out anime like crazy so it would be easy for this title to slip under the radar. The story takes place in the future where Artificially Intelligent Cellular Organisms (AICO) are created to advance humanity's medical knowledge in the hopes that one day they could make human beings immortal. However, an incident occurred that created the "Burst" a mass of cellular organisms that swarmed over Kurobe Gorge, consuming anyone and anything in its path before its advance is halted but not reversed. Aico Tachibana is just a normal school girl until she (quite literally) runs into a recent transfer student named Yuya Kanzaki, who, after a daring escape from several government spies, reveals to her that she was in a car accident that nearly killed. Her father, Yura Tachibana, created a duplicate body and brain for Aico. A complex and and top secret surgery was performed that switched the brains of Aico and the duplicate, placing her brain in the duplicate body and the duplicate in the real body. It was successful, but the surgery made the duplicate brain panic and create malignant matter at an alarming pace. In order to stop the "Matter" that has filled the gorge, Aico, Yuya, and a group of mercenaries have to traverse through the gorge and reach the research facility to perform the same surgery and stop the burst once and for all.

I thought that the story was just the average sci-fi plot that didn't show me anything new, with the secondary characters being blander than a bag of rice. But the animation more than makes up for these problems, and we can all thank Studio Bones for this. Bones has been going above and beyond the call of duty in its titles like "Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood", "Mob Psycho 100" and most notably " My Hero Academia", and this show is now different. The action scenes are wonderfully choreographed and with "Matter" seeming bright and alive, making you feel that it has a mind of it's own. Thought some other animation studios would have cut corners and used copious amounts of CGI, Studio Bones goes that extra mile in providing a vibrant setting with wonderful animation. Thought the plot and characters were not great, I kept watching to see those beautifully rendered scenes and backgrounds. If your bored and looking for a binge watch on Netflix, look up this title

Pros: Moves at a fast pace. Most things are explained.

Meh: Story is nothing special. Mildly thought provoking.

Cons: None, really.

This is a basic anime with a semi-clear goal early on, and a few twists along the way that aren't too crazy. There a couple thought provoking aspects to it but nothing major. The ending is a little perplexing,, as you wonder why they are doing that, and then they wrap it up nicely for you anyway.

Decent, fast moving anime to watch, nothing terribly special though.

A.I.C.O sets forth a fairly simple story of a girl essentially trying to return home after a catastrophic event called the burst consumes a portion of Japan. The burst is a huge growth of living cells that seems to be out of control and set on destroying everything in it's path.

This review contains NO spoilers and personally I'd recommend not reading too many reviews as it's better to watch and enjoy without too much prior knowledge of what is going to happen.

The story does run fairly slow but is designed to give you chance to understand all of the main characters. There is plenty of action the whole way through and small clues are left throughout as to how the story may or may not pan out.

The animation is fluid and great and the voice acting was well done and suited to all the characters. I noticed other reviews stating the voice acting was bad (referring mainly to the dub) as I watch all anime in it's original Japanese dialect I decided to go back and watch the last episode dubbed to see. I think it's important to note that when I have got into an anime in Japanese and then see a dubbed episode I don't normally like it as I've become accustomed to the voices. However in this case I was surprised that the dub voices were well matched for the main characters. I can only assume the voice acting issues were not from the actors themselves but perhaps from needing to fill or shorten sentences to match as closely as possible to the anime visual mouth movements. For example if a sentence is long in Japanese but in English only ends up translated to ,"I want to help", then the director will need to add in words to match the visual speech aspect. This can result in a less natural flowing attribute to the language used and ultimately the anime can suffer for this.

Overall I think A.I.C.O deserves 8 stars. I couldn't help but binge watch to satisfy my craving of what happens next. It kept me interested the whole way through with the first few and last few episodes being the most interesting.

If you're looking for the best version and have no problems with reading subtitles then watch the Japanese dub.

This anime explores some moral issues with the possibilities that the future brings us. Clever, creative, and beautiful!