English Dub Season Review: Your Forma Season One

With technology becoming so pervasive in our lives each and every year, science fiction kinda feels like it needs to push more and more outlandish in order to feel like it’s actually taking place in a possible future and not our depressing present. Well, what if you got a show that really just felt like a gumbo of the same, safe, and decades old science fiction tropes that reminded you of when things didn’t need to be super complicated? Then you’re in luck, because that’s where Your Forma comes in! Based on a Light Novel series, Your Forma takes place in an alternate future where, in 1992 (hey my birth year!) a “viral encephalitis pandemic led to the creation of ‘Your Forma,’ an invasive brain-implanted device that records all sensory data.” I’m quoting from the Prime Video page here because the show itself doesn’t explain it well and the wikipedia article for the show is not filled out well at all, but all you really need to know is that there was a big societal change that led to the use of more tech integration into humans, to the point that there are even means to investigate a person’s mind for evidence of a crime. On top of that, there are fully sentient robots called Amicus Robots who follow a version of the Three Laws from Asimov.

Among these are Cyber Inspector Echika Hieda and her Amicus Robot assistant Harold W. Lucraft who are paired up to fight crime and protect the innocent, these are their stories, yadda yadda yadda. Like any opposite match odd couple, the two start out not on great terms, with Echika not taking to Harold at all, but Harold’s general curiosity about her and desire for them to be equals wins her over in the end and they start as great friends, but could lean into something more. Being only thirteen episodes, the series is broken down into three arcs, most likely adapting the first three volumes of its light novel source material. The first is pretty much just there for the establishment of this new status quo and to first forge the bond between our two leads, the second involves Echika’s data processing threatened as they investigate a possibly cult leader known only as “E”, and the third and longest arc focuses on Harold’s past and long standing vendetta against a killer who murdered a police officer who took him in off the street. That one is definitely the darkest of the three too, so it’s kinda fitting to have it at the end of the season.

But for all Your Forma manages to pull off successfully or sufficiently, it really just ends up reminding me of better, already existing versions of what it has to offer. If you like any part of this show, you’ll probably also get just as much, if not MORE enjoyment out of the classic Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series, or the slightly more recent Psycho Pass, or hell, even outside of anime, just crack open an Isaac Asimov novel and reconnect with the genre’s roots. My point being that there are simply a lot of other better uses of your time than watching this, even if you have nothing better to do for four hours or however long it takes for you to finish this. Hell, we’re getting closer to this kind of future all the time anyway, so maybe just sit for five minutes and we’ll already be there. Hopefully without the serial killers but probably not without the cults. Anyway, this show is really bland and there are better ones.