English Dub Series Review: 18if

What could have been an incredible trip into Jungian psychology becomes an angsty teen Twilight Zone.

Overview

Courtesy: Funimation

Haruto is not able to wake up. He is stuck in a perpetual lucid dream. He also isn’t alone. Others can willingly enter dreams, and some can even warp the reality of the dreams to their wishes. Those in the last category are called Witches, and in the real world, they are stuck in a mysterious coma resulting from a strong desire to leave their world behind. Haruto pulls a Dr. Sam Becket and leaps through their dreams to help them resolve their anguish and return to reality. Along the way, he is helped by Dr. Katsumi Kanzaki, a dream diver who studies the dream world, along with a bunch of other researchers we never see or hear from. He is also followed around by a mysterious girl named Lily, who apparently only he can see or hear. So, basically, his version of Al if we are to keep up the Quantum Leap analogy.

18if is part of a multimedia franchise. If you hop on your mobile phone right now, you can pick up the game [18], which is kinda like Candy Crush with a few added mechanics. The game and the show share the main three characters, and the basic concepts of the universe. The rest of the show went in a completely different direct. Character design is heavily simplified from the game, the plot is incredibly different, and… honestly, I like the game better. There. I said it. I still play the game from time to time. I am not likely to pick this show up again and let me tell you why.

Our Take

Haruto. He’s nobody. He’s nothing. He’s that guy that keeps showing up as the main character of every harem anime, but for the life of you, you can’t figure out why these girls like him so much. He’s flat, boring, lacks resolve, and is completely inconsistent. One episode, he’s a mysterious loner who pokes holes in your arguments. The next, he’s a sadistic slacker who’s content to watch as a girl brutally tortures three men to death. To be fair, they deserved it, and that’s saying something. Jump ahead, Haruto is a sweet, caring man that gives a dying girl the life she wished she had. Fast forward, and we see that he is a masochistic fetishist who is utterly obsessed enough with a pop star that he’s totally okay with his dream body being hijacked and put through the ringer just so he can be near her. Oh, and at the end, he’s an afterthought. There is a massive amount of mystery built up about who Haruto is, why he’s able to do what he’s doing and whether he’s alive or dead. The series never answers these questions. In fact, right at the point where he could find out the answers to these questions, he nopes out of the series instead.

Courtesy: Funimation

What this leaves us with is a series of ten episodes that are effectively unrelated, and could be in any order. They touch on different themes, and several are quite dark. Murder, suicide, bullying, eating disorders, the danger of being a despotic ruler… how did that one fit in? The only tie that binds them is that they are in the dream world, and Haruto witnesses them. But, whenever you see Haruto, he doesn’t even act like the same guy. So, why is he even there? The final three episodes bring up an overarching plot and introduce antagonists. Problem is, one of these antagonists is pointless. They present no challenge to anybody, and any information they present is also given, simultaneously, by another character. The other antagonist is really just another Witch, but one that Haruto can’t save alone, because he’s a boy and boys are icky. More on that later. The separation present in the episodes’ plotlines is made obvious by the animators because every single one of them has a different art style. This was a choice in the direction, and there were even rumors that each episode was going to have a different director. In some episodes, this works well, and we get a gorgeous, psychedelic dream world rich with symbolism and graphical metaphors. Others, however, are dull, shoddily made heaps of visual garbage that only barely beat out The Reflection for the Worst Animation Award.

Courtesy: Funimation

So, with its wildly varying art styles representative of each person’s dream world, and episodes touching on dark themes of the human psyche, you would think that this show is steeped in the mysteries of that ancient study: Psychology (AKA the Science of Why You’re So Crazy). I am saddened, disappointed, and mildly irked to inform you that you are wrong. Hey, Carl Jung over here spent a huge amount of his life talking about dream theory and the collective subconscious. You know, the content of this show? No? You writers are just gonna do your own thing, huh? Okay, nevermind. The theme song of the show is called Enter the Red Doors, and Jung’s greatest masterpiece about his own self-analysis into his dreams and its symbols is colloquially called The Red Book, and you don’t think there’s a connection to be had there? Oh, you want to make episode nine into an homage to fetish porn the likes of which haven’t been seen on national television since Puni Puni Poemi? Well, I guess that’s what I get for expecting culture from you people. Yeah, watch out for that, by the way. Episode nine is not safe for work, and should probably be skipped entirely since it had terrible writing anyways. Despite this, the witch from that episode ended up doing the most of the work in the last two episodes, so you can tell where the staff’s attention is. It certainly isn’t about empowering women. Even though the final episode attempts to look like it’s about a feminist agenda, it is deeply misogynistic in the worldview it promotes, and deeply misanthropic in its delivery. You can tell the writing staff is all male, because only men would think that women’s true power lies in controlling men with their looks.

So, voice acting? Is that a thing here? Nope. The characters are so flat, there isn’t any room for the voice actors to emote. Everyone is just one note until they suddenly reach their ending. Now, there is a couple exception to that rule. Episodes three and ten have some great performances from their respective Witches. Witch of First Love got me in the feels, actually, and seeing that Witch later in the series only ripped off the band-aid.

In the end, this series was given a metric ton of possibilities and a blank check for the writers and director. They bought a stick of gum and a porno mag with it and totally squandered every ounce of win that this show could have been. They chucked out the plot from the game, burned a bunch of the concepts mid-season, and took a steep turn in the final episode into parts unknown. Nothing gets explained. Most of the plot gets invalidated. Logic gets left in a ditch to cry itself to sleep.

SCORE

Summary

This probably would have ended up with a sub-5 average score, except a few of the episodes saved it by being truly wonderful by themselves. As a series, however, this show has earned six out of ten. That makes it only slightly better than Clockwork Planet. Le Sigh.

6.0/10