English Dub Review: Clockwork Planet “Steel Weight”

You know, this episode was actually over at the halfway point…

Spoilers Below

With the 75-minute deadline fast approaching, AnchoR leaps into action. She transforms into a never-before-seen angelic form and begins tearing up the reactors inside the Yastukahagi. All multiple thousand of them. As the weapon of destruction continues her assault, the electrical bursts from the reactors cause her to become immobilized with pain. In the meantime, the battle raging outside the Pillar of Heaven has reached a tipping point, and the military no longer cares about saving civilians or protecting the Pillar, just killing our heroes. The damage done to the Pillar has made a bad situation worse, and the two mechanics are going to have to start all over again! They redouble their effort, hoping to still make it in time.

AnchoR, for some unseen reason, is able to move again but is losing power. She throws her giant sword to damage one reactor, but now no longer has the power to maintain her angel form. So, she drops it, turning into her black, demonic form. That proves no match for the immobile, defenseless generators. Wow, really? The form she used to menace the heroes for two episodes can’t break a reactor? Okay, let’s run with it. So, she uses the last bit of her strength to air dash through a whole bunch of them. On the other side, she reverts to her normal form and limps to the control console. She gets shot for her trouble. The bad guy, whose name escapes me right now, was waiting for her. All she’s done doesn’t even matter. The remaining reactors will complete the charge any minute. As he is about to finish her off, RyuZU appears to her rescue, cutting off his hand. But, it’s too late. The countdown has reached zero… and the gun doesn’t fire. Between the two automatons, they were able to buy enough time for Naoto and Marie to rebuild the Pillar of Heaven and… wait, what is it they’re doing that is destroying the Yatsukahagi? They’re heating it up with what exactly… You know what, I give up. I give up trying to understand what is going on. They won. They beat the bad guy that has ominous but ill-defined reasons for his actions. What do they get for their troubles? They’re still outlaws, living on the run. They take off on a boat. On an ocean. That is situated ON TOP OF A GEAR. That gear only goes so far, and they can just be waiting for you on the edge. Never mind. Never mind. The show is over. Let’s just leave it at that.

Oh, and with the exception of the last few sentences, that summary was the first half of the episode. They took the other half of the episode talking here and there. It was an attempt at a wrap-up, but it was grossly unsatisfying. Just like this episode. And this series. It felt like this was the point where everyone involved with the project realized that they were working on a crap anime, and phoned it in. They tried at the end to bring talk about philosophy, about whether there is such a thing as fate. But the timing, the way the lines were written and delivered, they were all so forced that it was funny… then it got worse until it wasn’t funny anymore. I just felt bad for the voice actors. You could hear it in their voices: “What the heck am I even saying? Why is this character doing this?” In general, this episode’s plot was a mad dash to the end, throwing away all semblance of character continuity or even logic (which was forgotten by this show a long time ago). Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if AnchoR had another transformation? Shove that in there. Then, they realized that they had finished it too fast, and threw a bunch of filler content in to pad it out. In the last few seconds, some writer working on the script thought it would be cool to end on a thought-provoking note, so they shoved a question about fate in there because it’s all about clocks in this show.

Art? Animation? Well, there was a couple of shots in there where I was actually wowed by the art on Marie. The lineart was full of expression, and there was good detail in the eyes and the blush. Um… Yup, that was it. The rest of the show was mainstream in its art, and the only effort put into the animation was in the CG. I didn’t say it was much effort, just that it was the only effort. As I already stated, the voice actors themselves seem to have lost what was going on here. Every line in this episode was forced and unnatural. This got progressively worse as we got closer to the end. Vermouth, from the voice of Trina Nishimura, was the worst of these, shouting her final lines in the monotonous tone. This suggests one thing, everyone on the localization crew gave up. If the director didn’t catch the lackluster acting going on here, he didn’t care. And with that, I don’t care either. I give this episode three crappy useless gears out of ten.