Tekunoraizu

I value animes that seek to provoke reflection and thought rather than simply entertain. Nowadays, most productions focus more on providing instant entertainment than exploring deep concepts, life lessons, or moralities.

Texhnolyze, with its dark and monotonous aesthetic, doesn't stand out for beautiful and captivating visuals. However, it focuses on showing rather than telling a relatively simple but thought-provoking story, although its 22-episode runtime can seem long and tedious to follow.

The visual appearance of the anime faithfully reflects events, sometimes charming despite the lack of colourful images or flashy animations that characterise contemporary animes. This choice, however, contributes to the overall concept of the anime.

Regarding the music, although I haven't paid much attention to the ambient music, I must highlight that the opening song seems very fitting, and the ending song is the best thing I'll take away from the anime; I loved it.

As my final detail, in a world marked by dilemmas addressing violence, cyberpunk issues, and the destiny of humanity, Texhnolyze presents interesting directions that provoke reflections on current and future themes, some of which have already been lived. What will be the human fate in the future? Will it be consumed by the desire for immortality through «texhnolization»? These are fascinating analyses, even in a dystopian setting distant from our own.

However, there are important warnings. The anime's pace is slow, and its 22-episode duration can become tedious. Characters come and go, experience joys and sorrows, without making a significant impact. Although it presents shocking events, it fails to fully deliver, and because of this, the anime doesn't feel worthy of another look. Texhnolyze, while having a well-constructed and fluid story, a gloomy appearance, and interesting themes, lacks the ability to captivate and entertain, which, though not essential, is important. Ultimately, it's a decent anime but one that could easily be forgotten.

With minimal dialogue and an overwhelming emphasis on atmosphere, Texhnolyze's first episode can be off-putting. While there are elements of surrealism in the visuals, this is more of an artistic direction and does not extend to the plot - which for the most part is founded in reality.

While the show's first few episodes were inaccessible and seemingly pretentious, I was surprised that they managed to be entertaining. The overarching plot does not reveal itself until episode 7 of the show. From this point the show becomes far more involved and exciting, and the emotional aspects of characters are developed as the show progresses.

The action sequences are fun to watch but always tasteful, and I think it's the well-handled balance between the violent scenes and more subdued, detached dialogue between characters that made this show great.

The pacing might be alienating to most people, however I never felt that the show tried too hard to appear smart or "artistic".

Texhnolyze is a demanding series - it is not until after episode 10 that each episode becomes filled with clear plot developments - but what is most noteworthy about the series is the final 3 episodes, which are refreshingly beautiful and haunting.

Yeah seriously, I hadn't a notion what the damn hell was going on but man, the soundtrack to the whole series was so damn upbeat including the opening song and the fighting scenes were brilliantly intense. The art may be old for an early 2000's anime but it still has its charm of producing such fantastic scenes and the fact it was produced by Madhouse, makes it 10x better.

Definitely check out this anime folks if you want to have a mixture of emotions and hear a lit soundtrack!

Texhnolyze is a fantastic, brilliant and unfortunately underrated anime that comes from most of the staff who worked on a similarly dark anime Serial Experiments Lain.

The plot is as follows: Lux, the name of the underground city is ruled by gang warfare, all aiming for more and more control of the decaying city that is Lux, and the technology of Texhnolyze (allowing the use of robotic limbs in humans). The story follows Ichise, a young man who spends his life fighting in underground fight clubs, Doc, the creator of Texhnolyzation, Onishii the leader of Organo, Ran, a young girl who can see into the future and Yoshii, a mysterious visitor from the surface world.

Unlike most anime, Texhnolye is very experimental, (with very little or no fan service whatsoever) and this is often seen in the dramatic angles, fight sequence, explicit violence and even in its soundtrack, which itself, is a mix of acoustic, electronic and orchestral music which suits the show very well.

Texhnolyze is thought provoking series, often characters will talk about the nature of humanity, man's ego, the effects of technology on humanity, power, greed, redemption and salvation. Although you might think the characters talking about these subjects could be out of place in the anime, it is not and fits naturally within the scene.

One of the flaws of Texhnolyze (and this is one echoed by many) is that the first few episodes (particularly the first episode) are not very interesting. For example, in the first episode, barely 3 lines of dialogue are spoken. It's something like that that can turn most people off the anime instantly. Unfortunately for Texhnolyze, it is a slow burner, and it can take a at least four, maybe five episodes before it really draws you in. But when it does, it doesn't let you go.

I encourage everyone to see this series and most of all, give it a chance, because this piece of art deserves to be seen.

Have you ever watched something so good it made you want to throw up?

I am being completely serious - Texhnolyze, as well as being less than intuitive to spell, is nauseous in all the right ways. The grotesque, bewildering, horrifying and utterly despairing all have their place.

Don't let the first few episodes put you off. At first I kept watching for the style alone (no point bothering with the details but there's some crazy and better yet successfully experimental art/sound/space/editing stuff going on), but far better things grow out of it. The last few episodes, for instance, are honest-to-god one of the most jaw dropping sequences I have ever watched. What happens in between is also great, but fuck me, the end of it..

Lots of anime claims to think. Usually that means half-arsed monologues by side characters that either don't make sense or are completely irrelevant, trying to pass as philosophy by using lots of big words and being boring. Here's one that actually does.