「消えたジェネシス」 (Kieta Jeneshisu)
“The Lost Genesis”

It’s a good indication of how short Dimension W is for time that the big Loser vs Some Guy fight happened off-screen. Loser more or less has superpowers and Chrysler seems to fancy himself something of a caped crusader, so it was bound to be a match worth watching. Instead, we jump to a close Loser victory (yeah, I know) and him shoving yet another dangerous prototype device into his body (because four sources of nigh infinite energy was not enough, but five was just right). It’s a shame because now we’ll never find out what Chrysler actually does except for fly around, dress stupidly, and sell cars.

Was the fight actually shown? I don’t know. But I also make a point not to care. I know some in the comments have been clamouring about cuts to the manga, but we have to accept that the anime is necessarily a remixed version of the story, so let’s judge it as it is. Evidently, the anime has made the decision that this particular fight is simply not important. Loser’s not the protagonist, so arbitrary obstacles in his way simply do not get as much attention. Still, it’d have been nice to give him some focus, even if it’s a fight against a throwaway antagonist like Chrysler. It’d have given the audience an opportunity to root for him and be more invested in whatever cause he has. As Lose is right now, it’s still entirely clear what kind of stance we’re supposed to take about him and his motivations. He’s sometimes hated Kyouma for whatever reasons, he’s sometime had this thing with finding/rescuing/avenging/whatever his wife, but mostly he’s just an exposition creation machine. Since he has an equal stake in this game for the the Macguffin (with everyone playing against the dealer, Mr Toad), it feels like he should really have near equal standing with Kyouma in terms of development. Same goes for the other player, the smarmy prince. Sure, it’s good to know that he’s in it for his little brother, but that’s not enough for me to really root for him either. In my books, still a bit of a tosser. But I suppose we now have a guy to dislike more so all is forgiven.

I do admit that I’ve got a thing for antagonists; my belief is that they need to have as much development as the protagonist, if not more, to make them more than just a cartoon villain. And to be fair, Loser is still much more interesting than the actual villain, who’s just crazy and evil. Yeah, sure, he’s got the excuse of, ‘it’s for science!’ but it’s mad science. Other, minor characters? I can forgive brushing aside. If the rest of the bounty hunters were simply there to volunteer to go first and trigger all the traps, I’m fine with that. The cast is large enough already, I can use less people to care about. With full understanding that I sound like a sociopath.

In the end, I don’t necessarily blame Dimension W for skimping on the fights; we still have good quota of robots and explosions (which has worked well for Hollywood), and there was a lot to explain this episode. This is the 11th hour infodump, where all the sci-fi is supposed to start making sense. I admit, I don’t get it. They gave a lecture, and I still don’t get it. Thankfully, I don’t think it’s really necessary that one fully gets all the technobabble of Dimension W to follow the story. My takeaways are this:

It’s great how anime is colour coded. It’s gold, it’s shiny, it’s important. That, I can understand. And really, what else is there to know? We don’t really have much time to worry about the details, because Loser’s wife has been turned into an eldritch abomination. Because, hey, why not? Perhaps we didn’t need Loser vs Chrysler, because this is his big fight. Kyouma had to put down him zombie friend, Loser will have to do the same for his Lovecraftian wife. I’m looking forward to it. And to how Dimension W is going to wrap up all in one episode next week.

 

34 Comments

  1. This episode felt like Watchmen. What was all this building up to regarding Loser’s wife? Giant Squid!

    Also yeah I’m with you Passerby. They keep going into flashbacks to try to “explain” things but it’s “explained” in such a way I just think “whatever, there’s a thing, it’s important, it can do things, move on.”

    I’m not disappointed in the lack of fights, or that this doesn’t treat fights like Dragon Ball or One-Punch Man. Fight scenes are second nature to this sort of show and are just not the focus, the focus is clearly on the world and characters.

    1. To be fair, a lot of those flashbacks were important for explaining the characters’ motivations. Their relationship with each other seems more critical than their relationship with whatever strange science phenomenon is going on. And so it is with the ‘giant squid’. Normally it’d just be another monster, like zombies, but if it’s Loser’s wife it’s bound to make him upset.

      1. I agree. What I got out of the flashbacks wasn’t the explaining; It was that they had connections to the “event” that happened. Also it is good to see what actually happened.

        As for giant squid wife I’m not sure how to feel about it. Yeah it means more if the squid is Loser’s wife, and we’ve seen the Dimension do some pretty weird things to people like in the first few episodes, but for some reason I don’t feel much for Loser or if he gets his wife back or not. I probably feel a little more for his daughter getting her mama back. I dunno maybe it’s just me or Loser’s not a character I’ve grown to like over the episodes. I care a lot for Mira since she seems like the only normal person there, and I don’t like Kyouma much even though he’s the “main” character.

      2. I don’t think the technobabble in Dimension W is really the point, so much as the characters’ motives. My feeling with sci-fi like this is that it doesn’t matter whether the tech it sets up is realistic as long as it’s referenced consistently within the mythology, and events in the plot conform to the rules the series has set up.

        By that standard, I think Dimension W passes, no problem. And the tech itself is sort of interesting – a melding of science, metaphysics and philosophy.

  2. How is it that Kyoma is dandy with Loo being a robot because he’s a kid inside somewhere, yet he’s still all tsundere with Mira?

    Hell, at this point he’s almost nicer to Loo than Mira.

    Gah.

    Regarding the mess this anime tries to sell as a story, it’s really twisting my heart. This adaption will give everyone the impression that Dimension W is a barely coherent mess, when in reality all the anime needed was 3x as much episodes or not trying to adapt the whole source material. Sad panda. 🙁

    Ravenlord
      1. His memories are coming back…

        and perhaps he remember how gave the order to build a Robot body for his Wife… also perhaps some scenes where he see his Wife then switch to her, began to change him…

        Worldwidedepp
    1. I haven’t really found Dimension W to be incoherent. Rushed at times, sure, but everything has proceeded in a logical manner. At the very least, it’s easy enough to understand why people do stuff, which is the most important part in the end.

    1. No, her tail is highly sensitive equipment. Considering that she uses it to interface with anything with a coil, it has to be highly conductive and very sensitive to anything that produces statics and etc.

      Mincemaker
    2. To give Dimension W the benefit of the doubt, they wouldn’t draw our attention to such details without a purpose. It just could be, as Mincemaker says, to stress that the tail is sensitive equipment, but whatever it may be I can’t really see it as just some sort of fanservice.

  3. Seyrmyer turn into full hatred because..

    he belive, that the Dr. took al fruits of their or his research and for himself and take all from him away, selling as its own discovering. So he see the Dr. now as an betrayer that stole all from him. and all humans became enemies

    an genius that total jump of the cliff into the Dark side

    Worldwidedepp
  4. I now had a feeling that Dr. Yurizaki’s double-coil is actually a stable teleporter.

    Also, I had suspected Loo to still be in Isla pulling a Capsuleer (Eve Online) on robot bodies. Turns out I was right!

    Mincemaker
  5. I dig dimension w but some of the stuff i found that it skipped was important to the world building, but i do agree with you passerby that im all for content being skipped if it doesnt affect the grabd scheme of things like loser’s fight with chrysler (even tho it would have been awesome to see the whole thing animated..sigh). In regards to the fight sequences, it’s not so much the lack of them (i was never under the impression this series was a full on action flick) more than it is the uninspired action directing. I wish the action scenes where as well directed as the car chase scene in the opening (i mean just look at the care put into that scene….LOOK AT IT!!)

    sonicsenryaku
    1. Unfortunately, I don’t think that a regular single cour anime can really afford that much time for world building at all. If one enjoys that kind of thing (and I do), an epic fantasy or somesuch of twice the length is required.

  6. What i missed is the illegal Coils arc…

    Where they come from?
    Where they get the materials to build them?
    Why they are swamp into the market now?

    Are not the Country of the Prince the only one with the element they need to build these Coils? Or they found another country that has this?

    Worldwidedepp
    1. in the end, this illegal coils could be born out of thin air. Yes, they are created through this genesis coil thing. But for what reason?

      there is still story hidden in this part

      Worldwidedepp
  7. On ANN this Show get not so good replys. Even the official reviewer are like Enzo doing Gundam here. oh well, i begin to get a gist why now the US releases of Games and such become late. They trow to much mud on these things

    Worldwidedepp
    1. The localisation of Dimension W is already a done thing, given the involvement of Funimation. And always remember that a reviewer, ‘official’ or not, is only just one person, and need not reflect your opinion, or even the popular opinion (which is far more important if we’re talking about marketing decisions). Whether they do or not, take their criticism in good faith. Disagreement is not a form of malice.

      1. i have not so much problems with ones review. the thing i see here is the reply postings done in the fairway in the forum. men, they like to have shitstorms over there.

        Worldwidedepp
    2. Which, when you think about it, could then be used as energy for Dimension W if you include the possibility that Dimension W is able to harness emotions, feelings and sensations as energy. The mere thought makes me sick… Blegh… 😛

      Mihashi Nishizawa
  8. i forgot to mention one thing i found really neat about the whole dimension w energy equation, WE=pmc^2. I like how iwahara took into consideration that he couldnt just tamper with an equation as highly regarded as Einstein’s equation of special relativity so put in set up the equation in a way that the extra variables would cancel each other out and you would attain the value for the speed of light. Iwahara could have easily fucked that up and he didnt, which goes to show the thought put into this wonderful supernatural-ish sci-fi-ish series

    sonicsenryaku
    1. The formula given is correct, the left side doesn’t read as W times E, but “WE” is a new type of energy. If we would discover Dimension W tomorrow, it is reasonable to describe it with the given formula.

      Enan84

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