It’s about bloody time, but Clain was finally bearable to watch in this episode. Yay for character-development!
Seriously though, this was a build-up episode for the finale of this series (there are only two episodes left, after all), but for once he doesn’t spend his time whining but he actually pushes the plot forward. A large part of this episode was about building up the tensions between the Lost Millennium and the Fractale system, which eventually came down to Clain, Phryne and Nessa being left behind. It was a moment in which the massacres of the early episodes came to bite the Lost Milennium in their behind and they finally decided to uninvolve themselves with the innocent Clain and his companions. It was a bit of a melancholic episode.
Naturally Phryne immediately goes back to the Fractale system in order to do whatever with her father, but even there Clain actually stood up and did something immediately. Overall this was a quiet but intense episode and I’m really glad to see that the creators managed to pick themselves back up here.
So yeah, Fractale does not belong in Noitamina. It’s just too rushed and unbalanced, and even two extra episodes would have been excellent to give a bit more depth to the story, but ideally this should have had 22 episodes. Right now this show tries to do a lot of things, but they don’t mesh well. I like how they ended up using the Fractale system in a completely different way than you’d first expect, but in the end it just got too little airtime. The concept of taking away touch from humans: that is actually a pretty original backstory, but when the analysis of this doesn’t really go beyond pervert jokes, you just have to feel that something is missing.
Of course, the good point about this is that this allows the viewers to form their own conclusion. This show basically is your standard adventure story that has the cast walking around this original and thought-provoking plot device. Whether that’s going to be enough, though…. that’s going to depend on that finale.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
I have to agree with the “this isn’t really a noitaminA show”comment, I’ve been thinking it myself recently a lot. Frankly, I did like the first half of this episode but I’ve been frustrated with this show a lot and really wish the plotting/scripting/what-have-you had been differnet for this show and more, mmm, mature I guess. I feel like trying to make the show appeal to all auidences is causing more problems for it (plus, noitaminA, it’s a timeslot for shows for young adults, not all ages!).
“The concept of taking away touch from humans: that is actually a pretty original backstory, but when the analysis of this doesn’t really go beyond pervert jokes, you just have to feel that something is missing”, now that is the best way to describe Fractale.
Seriously, this show could have gone through amazing routes, but the execution is just poor. My biggest disappointment so far =/
Well in all of this mess the High Priestess words about ‘fractale’ just add confusion in my head on what the heck do fractals have to do in all of this matter of cloning and such.
Is it something about people being held hostage in a big virtual reality system the same way as the Matrix? But as along as the name was just being used, they changed it to ‘fractal’ that is another less known mathematical structure to take names from maybe? Do they really know what a fractal is?