English Dub Review: Dimension W “Collector”

 

Overview.

First off, the show itself is obviously playing off of Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star and older sci-fi shows. Our protagonist, Kyoma Mabuchi, is a Collector – someone who hunts down illegal power coils – who hates the coils themselves for reasons yet to be revealed. He lives in an old, rundown garage which he shares with his car (A Toyota 2000 GT, now that I got a second look) and falls into the character of “grumpy old man”. Opposite of him is Mira, a female cyborg. As the Protagonist hates coils and avoids using them, it will be interesting to see the dynamic between these two since she literally requires them to survive.

If this series takes scientific theories into consideration and comes up with something coherent, then that’s wonderful. A lesser series would only give a vague explanation – or maybe even none at all – so I can always appreciate when a show can explain its thought process. That’s the best kind of science fiction.

I was quick to point this out but Kyoma’s detestable attitude towards “Coil Energy” and the modern technological advancements of the world he’s living in are eerily similar to Will Smith’s character “Del Spooner” from the 2004 film iRobot.

While Spooner’s attitude & prejudice towards Robots & Futuristic technology is properly explained in the film, Dimension W has yet to flesh out this piece of info about Kyoma’s past or why he’s so casual about his proverbial “Hate-Boner” towards Coils in general at the time of this review. (Let’s hope they actually flesh this out in later episodes.)

For the high-tech Anime fans out there, there’s a lot in this that will tickle your no-no zone. 😛

-Dystopian sci-fi cyberpunk setting where a mega corporation rules the world.

-Strong contrast between high tech life and gritty and poor slums/ghetto low life.

-Heavy incorporation between technology and everyday life.

-Bad ass Protagonist who abides by his own set of principles.

-Hints at conspiracies surrounding the creation of this world.

-Great visuals.

As for the main two characters, Kyoma is potentially interesting and it is nice to see Christopher Sabat in a main role even if he sounds like a gravely-toned Ian Sinclair. As for Mira we have very little to go off of as yet but it looks as if her dynamic with Kyoma will be the progression of her as the episodes go on.

The climactic sequence where Shido sacrifices his own life in defiance of New Tesla and its Dimension Administration Bureau reveals a major incident in New Tesla’s dealings with illegal coil – Shido’s wife and daughter were murdered by New Tesla operatives, a very tragic consequence of New Tesla’s desire to maintain its control of coil manufacture and distribution. Shido dies an honorable man – he would sacrifice himself in order to allow Mira to continue his work and explicitly show the moral divide between himself and the DAB. Albert Schumann, the DAB’s chief investigator, initially comes across as someone willing to negotiate, but he cannot erase the past; in fact, his discussion with Shido shows him trying to cover up for New Tesla, as he knows such an incident would be severely damaging to New Tesla’s reputation.

This whole ordeal speaks to an ongoing conflict between New Tesla and illegal coil distributors; New Tesla likely believes that those who engage in illegal coils are detritus, criminals through and through, but we see with Shido that honorable people use them for positive goals, and his life’s work (Mira) bears him out. Shido treats Mira like his own child; he looks beyond her android identity to see the human within her. This brings Mira to Kyoma’s organization, where an ace engineer (Korogi) discovers how advanced she truly is; she is as human as can be, with a constructed body, bringing the group face-to-face with the “new wave” of androids who have their own independent action not dictated by any sort of programming. The sci-fi influences of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick are strongly present as forebears for this development in science-fiction – as ruminations on human identity remain within the public consciousness, science fiction (when it’s smartly written) exists to propagate a discussion on a possible future where the field of robotics eventually reaches a point where the android becomes indistinguishable from the human.

If I had two problems with the first episode would be the following:

1.) Aside from some clunky exposition, was that the professor clearly did something impactful & destructive but we saw none of the repercussions of it afterwards even though one would assume it had a major impact. The show suddenly cuts back to the microcosm of the two main characters, which felt rather jarring, especially as Kyoma barely reacted other than staring at the green pillar of light for a moment. One would assume that we will see the effect of whatever the professor did in the next episode and in the long-run it may as well become a non-issue but it felt less impactful than it perhaps should have done.

And 2.) Arguably it has some of the most predictable anime cliches through this pilot which is the young robot girl that is potentially capable of human emotions, paired with a brooding conflicted character who is the polar-opposite of her like it’s a buddy-cop comedy and the subject of jokes when he’s bitch-slapped by her and and not getting any comeuppance for it because of the “double standard” bullshit of her gender. This lowers the rating from me by a slight margin but the pilot was just interesting enough that I’ll continue. hopefully in later episodes it’ll reward us with a good story.

These more grounded sci-fi concepts focusing on more practical advancements (at least in the next couple of decades) like the betterment of life on earth (at least for humans) makes me more immersed in this world, which is something I greatly appreciate. My only qualm so far is that I am not really invested in the characters as of yet.

Let’s hope the upcoming episodes take us on a wild ride. 😉