Owen has seen through Dennou Coil as one would read and comprehend a research paper. The verdict: rejected for not making a significant contribution to the exploration of those who would sooner run from their demons than exorcise them.
There is no scale for fear, but much like a scale it is used to lay the groundwork for a piece, which may one day be performed with different interpretations, in different venues, with varying degrees of execution. Confronting the past never gets old, being one of those stories that will be told as long as people start as kids and end up as adults.
My overviews are, in a sense, a tipping of my hat to the series, my own interpretation and only coincidentally a measure of convenience. They’re neither elaborate nor necessary. I think that one needs them as much as one needs Coles Notes/CliffNotes for classic literature, i.e. not at all.
Martin had his own methods for dealing with the nomenclature, but like most catchy names, they were just for marketing purposes and more important was the functionality behind the descriptor. What were the kids doing with all these metatags and encode patterns?
They were hexing each other, with metabugs and chalk as their mana source.
Beyond establishing a basic set of mechanics to govern the virtual overlay, there isn’t much world building. Actually, the world is quite simple, simpler than the false reality in The Matrix. There are some episodes dedicated to the fauna, but at the end of the day, our view of the world is shaped through the characters that exploit it.
And in the case of Imago kids, the world is literally constructed before our eyes.
There is this deep connection between the story and the world that predates the first episode, precisely because characters are in the driver’s seat. The casualties we hear about and witness, the sinister decisions made by Sousuke and Megamass alike: both stem from a twisted plane created by gamemasters who still have their part to play within the environment they helped create. The story doesn’t begin with the first episode - it merely continues it.
Some amount of re-watching is in order if one wants to develop their own understanding of Dennou Coil, but that should not be a front with which to attack it. A puzzle doesn’t automatically assemble itself. Piecing things together, to form hypothetical causes for the consequences that play out on screen, is an active process and one that should be regarded positively.
It is not unlike deciphering a paper that has been designed with page requirements in mind.
2 Comments
Without attempting to spoil too much, the first 14 episodes are almost like an explanation and the world, the characters and the technology that they are in right now. It familiarizes you with the situations that the kids of Dennou Coil has to face, and allows the viewer to fully appreciate it.
Shows that are slightly ambiguous at times, none more so than “Serial Experiment Lain” are an acquired taste. Dennou Coil clearly falls in this category because it seems so much like a kid’s show, when it gets deeper as you move in.
I second that, although the story was always kind of there in the background, even behind the scenes as the others went off discovering things leading up to 14.
Episode 14 is a good dividing line. The whimsical preview music got replaced with a cascading motif that drives toward a conclusion. They meant business.
But I don’t know if it should be considered a kid’s show, at least I never thought of it as such. Episode 14 again, where Akira has sentiments that seem a little strange for a fourth grader. Or have times just changed that much?