Dennou Coil – 01

Hah, no need for quick first impressions here, simply because I know I’m going to blog this anyway, and it would take to long till the next show starts to air. Dennou Coil was THE show for me to look out to this season, and when I have to compare it with the other first episodes that have aired during this series, then it’s safe to say that Dennou Coil so far has featured the most unique and imaginative first episode of the entire season. Still, when you were expecting a show with high-budgetted graphics, then Dennou Coil will probably disappoint you. The graphics are kept very simple on purpose. The animation looks great, though. The backgrounds are brighter than normal, and they give off a strange feeling. Still, I love it so far. 🙂 The story: Yuuko comes to move in to a strange city, along with her younger sister Kyouko and pet dog Densuke. Her parents apparently moved to that place before, and now the two of them arrive in the city as well. So far, so good. But now the concept: Dennou Coil plays in the future. I’m not sure exactly what year, but one major invention is virtual reality. At the point of the anime, this has become more and more integrated with real life, up to the point that you can have cyber-pets which only appear if you put on special kinds of glasses. Densuke is indeed one of these virtual pets. The strange thing is that you can actually hug him, even though he doesn’t exist for real, but when you drop a bag on it, it falls through him. Naturally, every character in this anime wears glasses. ^^; They provide some handy features, such as a mobile phone, a gps, and a people-tracker. Also, once you have a pet, any type of glasses can see it, creating a real cyber world. I love it so far. Things get even weirder when there are even places in the virtual world that don’t exist in the real one. Special types of UFOs have been employed to destroy these places, and things that shouldn’t be in the virtual world. One of these things is a mysterious dark speck, which hangs around in the neighbourhood, doing random things. Densuke ends up chasing it, even when it goes to a space that exists only in the virtual world, and ends up getting lost. Cue another main character: Fumie. She knows quite a lot about the cyber-world, and actually hunts for lost cyber-pets in her free time. Thanks to her, I’ve lost track of what’s real and what’s cyber. For example, she carries a pouch where anything can fit in, including a strange, wobbly creature she uses to track Densuke in the virtual world. Two other characters introduced in this episode, but not much time has been devoted to them. One of them is a girl who probably knows even more about the cyber-world than Fumie does. She seemed to be either after the black speck, or cyber-cat that we see Fumie hunting later on. The other is a boy who seems to be either Fumie’s friend, or her rival. Dennou Coil has been created by one man: Mitsuo Iso, and I have to praise the guy’s creativity. There are so many original ideas in this anime, I feel like the future episodes have something very interesting in stall for us. ^_^ EDIT: okay, never mind me saying that everything in this anime is brighter than usual. That was just the video-file that I downloaded. ^^;]]>