To all it may concern,
I have reviewed your recent work, Dimension W , and was highly disturbed by what I saw. I do not wish to take drastic measures, lest the many suffer for the sins of the few, but in light of recent events I have no choice. Henceforth, the word “possibility” is banned from anime, effective immediately.
Possibility is a staple of the human psyche, the desire to know what the future may hold, or what avenues have been closed by past decisions. Thus the wealth of fiction revolving around unexplored possibility, the potential for decisions to give birth to ultimate good, ultimate evil, or anything in between, is unsurprising. Sometimes it runs in tandem with time travel, exploring if an altered means can bring about a greater ultimate end. Anime is no exception, and exploring this timeless theme has produced some of the absolute greatest works in the history of the medium, from Steins;Gate to Higurashi no Naku Koroni to The Tatami Galaxy . But sometimes the notion of time is left out of the equation, and “possibility” is explored as a statement on the crossroads we face each and every moment of our lives, for better or for worse. This is where things get dangerous. Aside from philosophical musing, where can this lead?
One possibility is that of Dimension W , where possibility is quantified, layered on top of our world in a so-called fourth dimension, invisible but ever-present, unreachable but limitless. And so upon discovering this dimension, it would seem natural for humans to harness this power in a tangible way, or in other words, convert it into energy to power the world. It would seem convenient to allow the universe limitless power, and one could argue that “possibility” does the trick just fine, as it is well within our imagination, and possibly even our suspension of disbelief. Coming up with an equation to model it—the famous “WE = pmc2” where W = power from the W dimension on left hand side is proportional to p = possibility on the right—as well as visualizing the W dimension as simply the negative x-axis are both acceptable and quite hilarious, although the physics and mathematics departments would like a word when we are through.
It was my express hope then that “possibility” would fall to the backdrop. Limitless energy packed into coils fuels the world, but with the chance that they would go out of control or be fabricated there is a need for people to monitor their usage, and in the worst case collect them for disposal. Choosing the gruff Kyouma, who himself never uses coils and seems to have a loathing for their place in society, and saddling him with the incredibly human-like robot Mira, is a commendable setup, and I particularly wish to thank you for choosing characters that are clearly adults with a reasonable place in society and an excuse to have heightened physical capacities. I would also take this opportunity to reproach you for your dismissive and demeaning treatment of Mira herself, as she functions as little more than a constant plot device and beating stick for Kyouma’s verbal abuse in one, but I will drop this issue in favor of getting to my central points.
Spending many episodes following their adventures collecting coils, introducing possible antagonists such as the aptly-named phantom thief Loser and old prototype coils labeled with numbers that somehow bypass limitations of their commercial-grade descendants, is all good fun. That you started to stray into absurdism with ghosts and hidden treasures in a lake is permissible.
But as the show turned the corner into the latter half, suddenly there is an island in the middle of the ocean where literal dead spots of possibility exist, an impenetrable technological graveyard with stormy seas, killer defense robots, and a mysterious link to Kyouma’s past, and I began to get nervous. When it was established that nothing can live in areas without the W dimension due to their lack of possibility, I was downright frightened. It was when talk emerged of secret research on an ultimate coil called Genesis that could theoretically give birth to possibility from nothing, when accidents and amnesia of the past began to play a central role conflated with alternate dimensions, teleportation, and the realization of possibility and choice, I frankly feared the worst.
Ultimately the worst is what you have delivered me. Technobabble blends seamlessly with philosophical nonsense and uselessly contrived fatal choices meant to validate Kyouma and Mira’s very existence, leading to the physical and hyperbolic abstract planes of existence being merged without any reasonable explanation. It commits the ultimate sin of removing physical actions from the equation at all, instead defeating the key antagonists and moving into the brilliant shining future ahead simply by way of wordplay and mental fortitude, the coward’s way out of bringing deus ex machina to the world and attributing it all to the protagonist himself.
And so it is with a heavy heart that I not only assign your project a failing grade, something I have genuinely been determined not to do since the beginning, but I also am placing a moratorium on “possibility” as a mechanic for anime. That it could divert the focus and enjoyment of an otherwise reasonable production to such a high degree, as well as rendering minutes upon minutes of dialogue, exposition, and climactic showdown completely incomprehensible, is simply inexcusable. For a show about possibilities, you certainly squelched your own.
Sincerely,