Dennou Coil

It's so funny now-a-days how thanks to streaming, an old show from the past can plop into your lap and, despite it's age--- utterly astound.

Den Noh Coil is just like that. It's an Anime from 2008. A Story that seems to just be about Life for Children in a city that has adopted a city-wide virtual reality that can be accessed by 'Glasses'.

At first it tells the story of these children as they just go thru life, growing up... cute and endearing with stories and family friendly messages that many would recognize...

But then a mystery unfolds: The virtual reality may not be what they think it is. And something dark wants to remain hidden from forces that want to destroy it.

The story is great for children of all ages...and best of all, it's enjoyable even for adults. And that's before the story arc about the dark mystery starts to unfold in astounding complexity.

But, my god...The sophistication of the Den-Noh technology and how they imagine it being implemented is FANTASTIC. And though this was from 2008-- the show's creators were ahead of their time in their imagining of this futurity.

It was a Future that was at once mundane and believable...but the story told from the children's eyes is at the same rivetingly different: It's about Magic!

Watch this one!

Binge watched all 26eps in three days. Let me tell you something, its perfect. All great casts, soundtracks & effects, love the drew animation style and especially love the plot. It was an amazing journey for me to dive into this awesome world. Highly recommended. It has everything, action, adventure, horror, mystery, slice of live, comedy, romance, and emotional. Absolutely loving it.

Anime has a lot of mediocre shows and movies, some good ones and only a few greats. Until recently my list of great anime creators was restricted to Hayao Miyazaki, Abe Yoshitoshi, Makoto Shinkai and Hideaki Anno. Now that I've seen Denno Coil I have to add Mitsuo Iso to that list. You can really feel the passion, talent and effort that went into creating this anime.

Denno Coil is basically an excellent children's show though by the end even adults will be left scratching their heads and wondering what is going on. The story is not incomprehensible but there was so much thinking and imagination that went into creating into a complex world that 26 episodes are not enough to explain everything at a leisurely pace.

The action takes place in a future where a virtual space coexists with real space and can be seen using special glasses. Children and some adults use this virtual space mostly for fun but as they get more and more involved in it the danger of attaching yourself to things that aren't real becomes apparent. The quality of the script shines in places, for example a monologue where a character asks herself what is reality and after going through different phases comes to the conclusion that anything that can make you feel and think is real. Don't get me wrong, it's not Shakespeare, but this is a show aimed at young people that's more subtle and intelligent than most adult ones. And while I wouldn't call it light-hearted it manages to throw in a lot of good natured humor too. The quality of the animation is another high point. The fluidity of the movement is exceptional, the backgrounds detailed and the animation of the characters shows well what they are thinking.

Maybe I have standards that are too high, but for me Denno Coil was the first great anime show since Haibane Renmei (and it's been 5 years...). No need to say that I fully recommend it.

I enjoy deep, cerebral anime and I enjoyed this one. But it was lengthy and drawn out... and at times the plot quite confusing. They finally tied up everything in the end, but it's definitely way over the head of the average child, who will likely become bored with this rather quickly. Children may also be afraid of the Searchies and dark figures... to the point of nightmares (both were exactly the type of characters to freak out a child).

The primary downside to this is that it's a 12-episode anime done in 25 episodes. It's repetitious, with a whole lot of running, dodging, firing weapons, temporarily disabled virtual objects that quickly re-rez and then back to yet more running, dodging and firing weapons. That got old pretty quickly.

Some of the characters were drawn so similarly that seriously... one has trouble telling them apart. And while they did tie up the loose ends in the final episode, it was somewhat sloppy... with no real lead-up to the climax and conclusion.

When I was finished with the series instead of thinking, "That was a great anime"... I instead felt mentally drained and exhausted from trying to follow what was going on. That's not a good thing for an anime to do.

In the end, it had mediocre animation, bland characters, and a plot so complex and convoluted that one doesn't really figure things out until the final-episode "reveal"... in which essential facts to the plot are suddenly presented with no real prior heads-up. It did tie it all up, but unsatisfactorily-- somewhat like a murder mystery solving the murder in the final chapter by bringing in characters or facts that hadn't been introduced prior in the book.

So 6 stars for "better than mediocre, but I can't rate it higher due to the convoluted plot and undeveloped, one-plot characters. The story line was just too disjointed and complex to be an enjoyable watch.

This series isn't for kids or adults. The plot is confusing and annoying. The science aspects were okay but they were never important for the story. The animation was okay. That's the only good thing I can say about it. Except the time alloted to the kids. Otherwise the anime was horrible. I don't understand why this got high ratings. It's confusing and flips around to make it more confusing. I watch a lot of anime and this was an exercise in just trying to finish it without wasting my time sitting through every episode. Do not watch this. There are plenty of better anime out there. Took me 3 days to get through this.... don't do what I did.