Texhnolyze ep.1-4

February 17, 2004 | 6 Comments

I finally get to watch this new Yoshitoshi ABe/Chiaki Konaka's series and what an interesting show this one turns out to be. The opening animation itself is already quite unusual for an anime series due to its frantic and disorienting graphic. In addition to this, the use of Juno Reactor song, Guardian Angel gives the opening a rather creepy tone the first time I saw it. The series unfortunately has been getting some negative reviews from viewers who were turned off by the first episode, which some claimed as undecipherable.

I have to disagree with them because I think this series is far more easier to follow than Serial Experiments: Lain or Boogiepop Phantom. So if you are a fan of those series, please give Texhnolyze a try. Having said that, I do realise that this may not be the series for everyone. So if you require your anime to be light and fluffy, then you may want to stay away from this one since Texhnolyze contains mutilation, some sexual situations (often mixed with mild violence), and features gloomy and depressing atmosphere.

Rogue: 01 - Stranger

The story starts by showing a young guy walking through a dilapidated and dark corridor towards of what looks like a public bathroom. The guy then stops in front of a basin with a mirror, and we see that he's bleeding in some parts of his face. As he looks further into the mirror, we are treated to a flashback of what I assume to be a fight between this guy and another guy which ends up with this guy as the winner after some minor setback. Back in the present, as the young guy is taking a shower, he is interrupted by a woman who walks up to him and hands him some kind of an envelope from the back of his shoulder. The guy is about to take the envelope but the woman withdrew the offer and starts to sexually rubs herself against the young guy, suggesting that he'll only get the envelope if he has sex with her.

The next thing we see is the woman and the guy having sex inside a rather creepy room. Unfortunately for the guy, sex is not the only thing that the woman wants from him. In between her sexual act, we get to see the woman's eyes displaying some sort of interface menu, populated with various different codes. Suddenly, it seems as if whatever the woman is seeing in this room (ie. the young guy) can be seen by another person who's hiding in a different room. In other words, the woman's eyes act as some sort of a camera for the person in the other room. Anyway, after the woman climaxes, we see that she starts to rub the guy's cheek with her fingernails. Her finger then gets progressively closer and closer to the guy's eye and before long, she pokes the guy's eye with one of her fingernails. Thankfully before the guy is injured, he managed to push the woman off him.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, we see a person wearing a gas mask stops at one of the staircases leading to the city and decides to take a break from his walk. The show takes us back to the young guy that we first encounter in the episode. We see now that he has got away from the woman and the room and now is roaming the city and ends up in one of the city's sewer tunnel. In there, he opens the envelope that was offered to him by the woman at the start of the series to reveal two cash notes. What we get to see next unfortunately are a series of images which will be meaningless until we get to see some more of them. Among these are a shot of the dilapidated city, a shot of a girl wearing a cat mask, a short scene of a rich-looking guy having a conversation with someone on the phone. Finally we're back to the guy with the gas mask continuing his journey down to the city until he meet the girl wearing the cat mask. The man opens his gas mask and reveal a man with a short mustache.

Upon seeing the man's face, the young girl also opens her mask and signals the guy to follow her. She leads him to an old ruin to meet an old guy who recognises the young girl and called her 'Ran'. The old guy greets the guy with the mustache but before they can have further conversation, Ran suddenly screams as she gets a futuristic vision of the old guy getting shot in the chest. Not long after this, a shooter appears out of nowhere and attempts to shoot the old guy. At the same time down in the sewer tunnel, we get to see the young guy we met early in the story being chased by a group of men who managed to shoot and capture him. Among these men, is the woman who had sex with the young guy before. It is presummed that she was sent to hurt him but failed and therefore now they need to sent a group of men to catch the young guy. As the poor guy is held by two or three men, another man stands in front of him, slicing his sword into the young guy who screams in pain.

Rogue: 02 - Forfeiture

The second episode starts by showing a businessman-looking guy having a localised operation on one of his legs. At the same time, he tells someone over the phone not to take revenge on the 'Alliance' but to instead focus on the safety of 'the old man'. Meanwhile back to the sewer tunnel, we find that the young guy who got sliced by the sword didn't really die. But he's not better off either since his right hand was chopped off and he's now bleeding profusely. Cut back to the guy in the operation room who now engages in a conversation with a female doctor who apperently is outfitting him with a 'Texhnolyzed legs', which judging from the look, appears to be a cybernetic/mechanical legs. We then jump back to the poor young guy who's been mutilated by the group of men. As they're about to leave him, we see him standing up and upon seeing the woman who had sex with him smirking, he immediately attempts to punch her. But unfortunately for him, before he can do that, someone managed to slice one of his legs as well.

Not long after the incident, the businessman who had been outfitted with the Texhnolyzed legs arrived on the scene and informed by his underlings that 'the dog' (the young guy) gets the treatment because he doesn't follow the rule that is set by some organisation. Well, I sure am glad I don't know these people. The businessman told the rest of the men that next time they should have reported the incident to the 'Organo Organisation' instead of acting on their own. He approaches the young guy who's been mutilated and tell him that a dog doesn't deserve the healing power of 'Lufia' and certainly doesn't deserve to get Texhnolyzed treatment. He then fires 3 shots at the guy. We later find out, however, the businessman only shot blanks or simply shot the ground instead of the guy. He then tells his henchmen to leave the guy alone.

Back to Ran (the young girl), the old man, and the guy with the mustache. They, or rather the man with the mustache, finally managed to kill all of the shooters before they have the chance to kill the old man. As a thank you, he's invited to the old guy's house whereby he tells the old guy that it took him 4 days to go downstair to the city. The old guy wonders why the guy with the mustache has come to the city known as Rukussu (Luchs). The old guy, who turns out to be called 'Ouji', then gets a phone called from 'Organo Organisation' who wants to check on his safety. Upon ending the conversation, Ouji explains to the man with the mustache that just as the man thought, Ran can see into the future. However, there are many futures and Ran can only see one of the many permutations. The man with the mustache tells Ouji-sama that he intends to continue going deeper into the city and then remembers that he hasn't introduced himself. His name is Yoshii Kazuho.

Meanwhile, the young guy who got mutilated has somehow managed to drag himself as well as his severed arm and leg back to the city. Upon arriving near the city's well, the guy ends up exhausted and anemic thanks to the extreme loss of blood. He ends up looking sadly at a mini vial that he holds tightly in his left hand. Feeling hungry, he decides to stop at an open stall to buy a soup. However, upon seeing his state, the woman who runs the soup stall feels sorry for him and decide to give him a free soup. You have to admire the guy because even though his condition is really bad, he refuses to receive free handouts and rather walk away than compromising his ideal. As he walks, however, he accidentally stumbles into two men who were not happy that he bumps into them and decides to push him off the street.

Elsewhere, the Alliance attack on the Elder of Gabe, Ouji-sama, has upset the Organo Organisation and divides the opinions between its members. Some thinks that they should retaliate and strike back. Others, including the businessman we see earlier thinks that they should take it slowly and instead boost everyone's moral by having a feast. We then back to the slum of the city as the poor young guy is dying from the loss of blood and in the process becomes delusional and starts seeing a version of himself climbing a bright stair to what looks like an afterlife. But, his determination seems to prevent his soul from leaving just yet and the delusion soon disappears. In its replacement, however, we get to see the female doctor who operated on the businessman from the Organo Organisation. It looks like the poor young guy is about to be saved by someone after all.

Rogue: 03 - Texhnophile

The third episode begins with a flashback where a young boy and his mother are carried to a place where they get to see their father/husband die from being hanged by a group of people who look like they belong to an organised crime syndicate. The mother eventually dies from either stress/old age, leaving the young boy called Ichise with nothing but a small vial that contains a trace of his mother's cell. That young boy eventually grow up to be the young guy whose hand and leg got mutilated in the previous episode. Elsewhere, Ran has been told by Ouji-sama to take Yoshii to the city by train. As they board the train, Yoshii asks Ran if he can get a favour from her. And that favour is to not tell anyone including himself of his future fate, even if Ran can somehow see it in one of her visions.

Meanwhile Ichise (aka. the guy who was mutilated) found himself awake inside a high-tech laboratory. He sees a female doctor working behind a computer and plea for a glass of water. The doctor grabs a bottle of water from one of the lab compartments and cruelly throws all of it to Ichise's mouth without giving him a chance to take it or to relax. I must be either stupid or idiot because everytime I see a new character, I keep thinking that they'll be the one who help Ichise from his run of bad experiences. Well, I was wrong. There doesn't seem to be a decent person living in this city. This doctor is only interested to use Ichise as her test rat for her brand-new Texhnolyzed products. And in order to persuade Ichise to accept being Texhnolyzed, she cruelly throws the now frozen hand of Ichise and tells him what can he really do with a mummified hand? In a fit of anger, Ichise knocks the doctor down and chokes her while asking her about the whereabout of his little vial.

Elsewhere, The Organo leader or rather the businessman-looking guy is about to walk into his car when he realised that someone is pointing a gun at him. Upon recognising the person, he taunts the shooter if the guy is really keen on war. He adds that it is funny how the person idolised his leader, Kimata, even though the flesh fanatics leader has actually performed one of the Texhnolyzed operation on himself. The guy who points a gun at the businessman is surprised to hear this. But before he can do anything else, the businessman adds that the only thing that Kimata is interested in is Lafia. He then shoots the guy as well as another one who's about to shoot him from the back. We then return to Ichise who looks really sad as the doctor coldly tells him that she knows that the vial contains the cell of his mother but prolonging the life of just the cell inside such vial will produce nothing if there's no purpose for it. This is because the vial will just end up using his mother cell as a bio-circuit to sustain the vial unit's own 'livelihood'.

Rogue: 04 - Synapse

We get a minor exposition as a preamble to this episode through a journal written by Yoshii as he travels into the heart of the city. To begin with, we find out that in this underground city, the Organo organisation holds the power. In the beginning, the city was ruled with lenient autonomy by the elder of Yama, also known as Gabe. But Organo's armed forces and its good organisation managed to snatched this position away from the Elder. The episode then moves back to Ichise and the mad doctor who tells him how the majority of today's Texhnolyze units are the 4th generation models which features greatly improved speed and reaction. Elsewhere in the heart of the city, Yoshii the traveler stops to rests in the middle of a quiet street and opens a book containing a picture of a man called Oonishi.

Back to the lab, the mad doctor continues to exposition the viewers by telling Ichise (and us) that the core technology of Texhnolyze can be divided into several parts: molecular engineering phase, mechanical engineering phase, and bio phase. The bio phase happens when the technology connects to the nervous system. It is revealed that the Texhnolyze unit connects to the human body through nanocarbon intermediation. The unit then targets the pineal body and transmit neural information by connecting to the nervous system in the brain. In addition to these three phases, there's one last phase called 'The Black Magic' phase. It is here that the doctor revealed that Ichise's father used to perform this job while he was alive. Many trial and error experiments were apparently happened in order to find a way to compensate for the loss of a limb. There's just one flaw here. The flesh remanufactured using tissue engineering does not seem to be usable for the time being.

Even if, supposedly, there's another person's limb available to transplant, the chance is that our body will reject the transplant. It is believed, however, that the rejection from human body can be removed through the use of the flower that can only be found deep under Rukkusu/Luchs, a flower called Lafia. The doctor finally stops the exposition and begins the operation to insert Texhnolyze arm and leg on Ichise's body. We then cut to the leader of Organo who arrives in the Alliance Headquarters without any bodygoard so that he can speak to the head of the Alliance. At the same time, Yoshii continues to write his journal and mentions how the natural healing process of the people in this city has somehow degenerates over the years. This condition seems to have inspired the city's organised groups to use mutilation as a form of punishment for their enemies. Yoshii also adds that Rukussu/Luchs is controlled by power where the people of the class build their own world which is unreacheable by the rest of the slums.

Unfortunately, because he's too busy writing his thoughts in the journal, Yoshii ends up having his backpack stolen by two guys. Meanwhile, the leader of Organo seems to be a bit depressed after his meeting with the Alliance leader and as he climbs into his car, decides to chase away his frustation by kissing his female chauffer. Back to Yoshii, he tries to chase the two thieves but unfortunately they seem to have disappear from his sight. But apparently they're not that far because not long after that, a gun is pointed to his back by one of the thief who demands that Yoshii gives up chasing them. Yoshii tells them that they can take his gun but they need to return his backpack. After a few disagreement, they end up in a brawl but as the fight goes on, the thieve realise that one of Yoshii's hand has been Texhnolyzed and as a result, they have no chance of fighting him. The fight ends when Yoshii is greeted by a man who turns out to be the leader of Lakan. He asks Yoshii to forgive the behaviour of his men. Yoshii says that he's okay with them as long as they return his backpack. Elsewhere, Ichise manages to run away from the high-tech lab after being outfitted with a Texhnolyzed arm and leg. Depressed and sad of his condition, on his way back to the city Ichise encounters Ran who looks at him in serious expression, as if reading his future. And that's where the episode ends.

Anyway, as you can see, the story is not that difficult to understand. The only thing that makes it a bit difficult to follow is the abrupt cut/editing. But after a while, you'll get used to it. And although the early half of the first episode doesn't have any dialogue whatsoever, it's definitely not undecipherable as some people have suggested. And in general, the characters are quite interesting. I sympathise with Ichise's plight for a better life and I do hope that he can get himself out of this 'Hell on Earth' city. And I'm also curious to find out more about Ran and Yoshii's purpose in the story.

© memento 2003