English Dub Review: Clockwork Planet “Imaginary Gear”

There’s a whole bunch of screws loose, and only some of them are on the gears.

Spoilers Below

Naoto and Co. arrive at Kyoto Core Tower, floor 24, where all the trouble stems from. Marie’s team somehow already arrived, and are hard at work, but can’t diagnose the problem. This being the boy’s first time in such a building, he’s a bit smitten with the craftsmanship, hurting RyuZU’s feelings and causing scene that makes everyone in the room (including me) to yell out “GET ON WITH IT!” At least internally. The kid takes off his headphones and listens in for irregularities. Oh, there’s a whole bunch, but only twelve or so are related to the gravity drive. Everyone pitches in to fix a gear, and before long, it’s all A-OK in the Kyoto Tower. One slight problem, though. Driven to hide their criminal activities, the military initiates the purge of the grid anyways! With no time to take direct control of the gravity drive system, there is only one choice to save the 20 million living in this grid: Remove RyuZU’s physics defying Imaginary Gear and use it to reverse the purge. This means that the very heart of her, that which keeps her “alive”, has to come out. Understandably, Naoto ain’t pleased none about this development. He forbids it.

But RyuZU has other plans. Using her own scythe arms, she pushes the heart-shaped mechanism out of herself. Robo-seppuku, if you will. Marie plugs the gear into a machine, and the core begins rising again! Unwilling to accept this defeat, the military sends a bunch of automatons. While Holster came armed for bear, he is joined by an aging meister armed with nothing but screwdrivers. He uses them to great effect, loosening gears and disassembling automatons at range, with no concern for thermodynamics or leverage. Between the two of them, the several dozen tank-like robots are all put down. After some repair work to RyuZU, the episode ends, leaving us with a stinger of an evil-looking version of RyuZU in a lab.

I’m still not much of a fan of this series. While they’ve done away with the fanservice that substituted for their lack of plot, they still haven’t really replaced it with plot. Or logic. Or character development. Nah, just throw in more melodrama, anime tropes, and rule of cool. That should keep it together. What is it that has destroyed my suspension of disbelief and put my proverbial panties in a twist? Was it all the hundreds of electric-screwdriver-cum-kunai that were thrown about, somehow screwing and unscrewing things despite the fact that they should just bounce off? Was it that Marie somehow knew how to operate a complicated, reality-warping contraption that magically had a port available nearby for her to use? What about the fact that said reality warping gizmo is made up entirely of clockwork gears? Nah. It was the fact that literally every problem gear that caused this situation only needed its screw tightened. So, let me get this straight: Y is a brilliant clocksmith who invents metal gears that haven’t worn down at all in over a thousand years, and mechanisms that can stop time. He can’t, however, invent a gear where the screw that holds it on won’t slip. Way to prioritize, bro.

Animation was… not bad. There just wasn’t anything there that made me feel that it was good. Same with the voice acting. Characters were so busy shouting at and to each other, that there wasn’t any room for a real acting in there. I just, in general, felt that this episode tried for an epic ending to its story arc, but it fell flat due to too much rule of cool. I give it five loose screws out of ten.