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「アドラステアの鍵」 (Adorasutea no Kagi)
“The Key to Adrastea”
Sometimes, anime does not do enough explain itself, and ends up garbled. Sometimes, anime explains itself too much, and becomes a boring slab of exposition. But sometimes, an anime goes out of the way to explain itself, and then just ends up more confusing than before it began. Such was my experience with this week’s Dimension W, which had a revelation moment that I could not quite get my head around. Something something MEMORIES OF THE UNIVERSE something. It could just be me though; I’m trapped in an awkward position of having a mediocre level of science knowledge to parse it all. If I knew more, I could probably wrangle together a plausible theoretical explanation, and if I knew less I’d be free to let it go over my head. This is not really a concrete complaint, mind you, because I can’t really work out a good reason why all the technobabble sounded like bollocks to me. Perhaps it’s because the first thing I thought of was Kara no Kyoukai which had a similar idea about THE ORIGIN, but that was powered by mystical mumbo jumbo that doesn’t gel well with a science fiction setting. Still, no good reason.
I was actually thinking that Dimension W was going in an entirely straightforward direction up to that point, though. We get more flashbacks thanks to convenient dream sequences, but those keep in line with what we know of each character’s backstories (for those with backstories anyway). Salva (I’m beginning to remember his name now, but don’t ask me for the rest of it) in particular was our newest major addition and had something of vague motivations, so more development for him is welcome. The coup (or ‘popular uprising’, depending on how you spin it) is tragically par for the course for central Africa, but it’s Salva’s role in it that’s the important part. I know we’re supposed to be sympathetic for him, but I can’t help but be coloured against him, considering how he’s has a worse relationship with his loyal retainer than Kyouma has with Mira. So while he calls the coup an instigation of foreign labourers, I saw it as his slave economy needing the requisite crackdown. I don’t think any number of dead siblings would swayed me over at this point. Maybe he’s supposed to be ‘complex’ rather than outright sympathetic, but I suppose I can wait for him to speak for himself if and when he wakes up.
Loser gets some backstory as well, and nothing unpredictable as well. Ex-scientist, dead wife; it’s all very standard fare. In fact, wives die a lot in Dimension W; for all the guys and gals with commitment issues out there, I’ve got good news for you. Of course, Loser’s story isn’t quite complete yet, and he’s yet to explain his burning hate for Kyouma, so there’s still some material left for next week. I’ve been enjoying how Dimension W has been tying up all its characters’ backstories together, and would like to see the results of that. Sure, it’s a more impressive trick when it’s down with the lines of a longer form story, but getting the plots to converge properly is one thing anime doesn’t always do well—plots tend to split and bloat instead—so it’ll be good to see Dimension W actually wrap things up for this arc so the series can end neatly.
All that said, here’s yet another new character (Kaji Yuki), who seems poised to be our main antagonist. He’s got far too much going on all at once—scientist, agent provocateur, trippy dream ghost, when I’m having trouble even remembering his name (he’s ‘frog-face’ until further notice, by the way). Sure, his weirdness is keeping the plot from being too straightforward at this point, but I almost like the predictability of Dimension W. Sure, having characters confront literal shadow-selves is a bit too cheesy, I think Dimension W has some degree of self-awareness—I got a genuine chuckle when Kyouma, after punching his shadow in the face (because Kyouma), is surprised that that wasn’t the part where he wakes up. Predictability isn’t necessarily bad; conventions are conventions because they work. Of course Miyabi pops up again; I’d be offended if she didn’t.
So yeah, while this was a good episode, enough of this quantum physics being powered by the memories of elementary particles or whatever. Let’s just go back to fighting giant robots next week. That, I get.
Nope. Not just you. It jumps into abstract into the world of possibility, and left me dazzled. Not completely unexpected for this to happen, because Dimension W is about the world of speculation, but still quite dazzling and leaves me to wonder for more.
I’m loving it all.
I am trying to ‘get’ how Dimension W works. We established that Dimension W is a realm of possibility in the previous episodes. In this one, we receive the revelation that memories is what fuels possibilities in Dimension W. If that is the case then…
Whose memory was it that birthed the Universe?
As a matter of fact, does time even work in Dimension W the same way it does in the material Universe?
Is this a close-loop system?
Is Dimension W, in fact, the Chaos Realm?
Is the evil scientist dude actually Tzeentch incarnate?
Adding to the point…
Is Dimension W series set several centuries before the Dark Ages of Technology?
Is Yurizaki Mira the first clear instance of a Machine Spirit?
*ramble ramble*
Dimension W explained
Fullmetal Alchemist = Dimension W
Alchemy = Science
Philosopher Stone = Supreme coil
Fake philosopher stones = Numbers
Scar = Loser, antagonistic ally with own motivations and goals whose family member is lost in a tragic accident trying to save them
Edward Elric = Mira, the little one with the secret power
Alphonse = Kyouma, both lose memories and are the stronger fighters
State Alchemists = New Tesla, secretive organization with some honorable people working to change it from the inside, and some corrupt leaders
Master = Mary
Science is based off of Shrodinger’s cat principle, but the story about fighting over an object that can teleport living materials, and therefore change the probability of living things with free will is a far stretch from real science
hmm well… actually i felt like this was like the plot finally getting somewhere… (if you discount the bizarre cutaways to DimW’s resident pseudosurgeon.. wtf is that subplotting to?)
I’d presonally always thought it was bizarre that much of the intro waffle tried to pin the origin of the new energy from DimW on another direction on the cartesian co-orinate system.. that idea is fundamentally flawed… (and not consistent with the sort “truth hidden just beyond the gate.. touka kouka” stuff that seems to be prevalent…)
anyway.. what i took out of here is that somehow..(and i’m willing to be a full Hawking sized dimension out..) coils tap into the energy that exists in the latent energy of memories… (or perhaps more simply) into the heterotopic space where memories might reside.. essentially if you could tap into that sort of environment you could harness vast quantity of potential..
but..
and here’s the butt bigger than Miras.. all these people and places are clearly wrapped in a quantum entanglement…
the sort of concequenses of bringing that potential into the common world seems to have resulted in quantum destablisation.. consuming memories removes their existence from reality… creating nothingness.. I dunno.. there are pieces missing certainly..
but i’m reserving judgement…
most of the main pieces are now in play… we may be approaching a penultimate act.. don;t let em down now DimW..
I do wonder if some of the disjointness of this episode was because they’re probably burning through source material (see first and second arcs that had a lot removed compared to the source).
I didn’t feel that the episode was disjointed, per se. While there were many parts, sure, I think Dimension W did a good enough job showing that they were all connected. Except for I guess the fate of the Russian, which was more to show that, meanwhile, stuff is still happening.
This is very true. I read through the first 28 chapters if the anime (episode 1-4.5) and they have skipped quite a lot of the source material. They also skip a lot of the world building and explaining just how the world works and the characters motivations & backstory. A couple the characters in the anime are less likable because of this
There was very little science involved in this episode so lack of a background in it should not be a problem. Dimension W had already been explained as holding all the possibilities that did not occur in the universe. This episode merely added that it also contained copies of the possibilities that actually occurred as well. Which means Dimension W contains everything that might have or actually did happen in the universe and I bet it does not come with an index.
Seameyer seems to have gotten himself trapped in Dimension W because of what happened on the island. He and Loser both want to know what happened, probably to try to do it again to control what possibilities end up in the real world. Seameyer was looking for Kyouma because of his links to the event and seems to be using him to find the info he needs in Dimension W. People have a connection to their possibilities in Dimension W which is how Kyouma ended up reliving his old possibilities and then popped into Salva’s because of their connections, it seems likely that his brother’s body was based on the one made for Kyouma’s wife. So Seameyer wants to keep Kyouma in Dimension W until he relives his last mission.
So Show Spoiler ▼
right? I put it in spoilers because I’m guessing, but I don’t know if it’s suppose to be so obvious or if there’s more to it. If it’s not true then I’ll be confused why it feels like that’s the direction it’s going, or why Kyouma can’t put it together or even have the thought cross his mind.
If you ask me, it’s an adaptional thing.
Show Spoiler ▼
That said, even this interpretation makes sense. I mean, it’s kind of reasonable for someone who has to endure the walking ghost of her lost love. Perhaps even worse; Mira is essentially a showcase how well Miyabi could have been. I can well see Kyoma being angered by the mere sight of her.
It’s going to be really fun if that theory comes to pass, though.
Show Spoiler ▼
Well ok. I’m glad I’m not going crazy because it’s like the anime can’t make up it’s mind: we want to say it’s her…but not really….but it’s very similar, but it would also be impossible, but we don’t want Kyoma to come to that conclusion yet because we want to save it for the last episode, ect.
Show Spoiler ▼
Oh, there’s definitely some truth to that. It’s been stated in episode 2 that Mira has a brain structure unlike robots; Cricket called it analog, more akin to a human brain.
However, the duality you’re feeling is justified imo. I don’t believe that Mira would simply be Miyabi; if you recall to ep2 again, Mira’s earliest memories are of her being activated, just as Dr Serai was killed – thus, well after Miyabi has died herself. If Mira was (a 1:1 copy of) Miyabi, she would recall something; but she statedly doesn’t.
Show Spoiler ▼
I’m seeing the Mira-Miyabi relationship this way: Mira should be what could have been a replacement for Miyabi’s body. But the operation failed and that machine body no longer makes any use. So Dr.Yurisaki has put a cutting-edge artificial intelligence into it and made it an android.
Is there Miyabi’s memory sleeping somewhere inside of MIra’s “brain”? Or even Dr’s daughter’s? That remains to be seen, I guess.
Miyabi’s brain, or fragments of her brain, isn’t inside Mira though. More likely Mira might start having some kind of guilt issues and Kyouma will have to snap her out of her funk and remind her that she’s a piece of junk.
No brain, but just memory, maybe human memory is able to be stored somewhere outside of the brain, like we saw in SAO. And we also already saw pretty much anything could go in this world as far as Dimension W is concerned.
my gues here, She has an Human Brain inside. Thats from their Daughter, from an another Dimension. He succeed to find a dimension where she was still alive and not dead…
He must found a way to merge the Human biology Brain with the Robot body… Wait, for what purpose was this Body build in the first place? right just for that. they just needed an Human brain
As far as I understood it, memories are the energy source of dimension W. Because humans (animals to a degree also) produce memories consistently, it could be called an unending source of energy.
Frog-Face seems to have found a way to travel inside dimesion W to search for the key (for whatever it is).
Dimension W could be a real treasure chest if you could control the memories there (main goal?!).
SO enough speculating 😀
That the clinic and the research facility got hit at the same time, there’s sure a possibility (story-wise) that miyabi ist still somewhere, at least her memories or some kind of her “soul”.
I guees it’s me but I liked the reveals I thought they were easy to understand as I have said before just sonetimes you just take a step back and let it soak in. I am surprised they packed so much in an episode yet did a nice job of making sense of things.
Another review ( where I would least expect it ) loved the episode . No two people look at something the same way nowadays,
I am a little older and was a big fan of Outer Limits / Twilight Zone / even the franchise Star Trek has gone through wormholes / black star collaspes / and yes Space Odyessy. it;s been done before so I dont get the objections to it
Even a better example was the movie Contact. You talk about dimension jumps.
Ph yes it would have been nice to have a 2 cour but it is Funimation’s first time on a Production CMT so they will learn but not bad !
The Mira / Miyabi deal is really big and both explosions Miyabi’s operation / Easter Island.
at the same time / interesting!
And Kyoma holds the key to all of it!
Make no mistake, I liked the episode. It’s just the big reveal about the nature of Dimension W felt awfully fantastical all of a sudden. Of course, as I noted, it could well be just me.
In comparison, I managed to grok the Mira reveal a lot better, perhaps because it was so exhaustively set up (explaining all the attention put on her makeup and origins). I don’t know, though, if it’ll have more than a symbolic relevance at this point, which is why I decided not to talk about it this week; we’ll get more next week, I’m sure.
I made a comment a while back that dimension w is more psuedo-sci fi. It’s sci-fi mixed with psuedo-supernatural elements (lots of psuedos here. I was always of the impression that it takes the ground rules it has laid down about its science and makes fantastical elements out of them.
I think Dimension W is already fantastical since the ghost arc. You can’t assign a theory or design an experiment on something where ‘anything is possible’. Dimension W is fricking magic!
I do not mean to sound the party pooper here but….
… Adaptation issues render this episode (and this show as a whole) to a convoluted mess. I think this episode alone needs two episodes to be good but darn, it presented things too fast as they crammed it to a single one.
Not to mention the declining quality of the visuals.
Yeah, I just don’t understand anything about this show. Still watching it for Mira.
Even until now, I’m still surprised at how I went from “I don’t wanna watch this show, I don’t wanna” to “This show is interesting but it was ooookaaaaaaayyyy”, i.e, I have no idea I got roped into watching this thing. Oh wait, it was the opening sequence that’s why! Ahhh, now I remember… 😛
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, the point I made still stands, that this is show has interesting stuff that it intends to explore but that overall it was an oooooookaaaaaayyy experience. This show and many others have all kinds of problems but if I had to mention one at the tip of my tongue, it’s definitely gotta be the pacing yaw- the pacing *hiss*…
Nishizawa droppin’ into Dimension W, bachoooowvf~~~
Memories are the Key here, and our MC has Amnesia. But this Guy in this Sphere wanted to active it, but got pushed back because of some Light
https://randomc.net/image/Dimension%20W/Dimension%20W%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2033.jpg
So, our MC lost his Memories to hide the Key, he is stuck in the Dimension Nirvana…
I have more ideas, in what had happen.. “transportation failed”,”i still need 1 more nummber” and so on. but i am short on time now
My Mind project me this pictures and scenario:
Show Spoiler ▼
Inside this Spoiler are my conclusion and speculation. So read at your own risk
If anyone feel like getting a better grasp on the world an how dimension W works, go read the manga up until chapter 28. It will give you a better explanation about how dimension W works, and also flesh out the different characters more. They have really rushed the anime, since the first five episodes goes through more than 28 chapters and skips a lot of the world building and minor characters. The source material does a MUCH, MUCH better job in fleshing out the world and going deeper into explaining what’s going on.
A couple of important side characters in earlier episodes have basically been reduces to “bad guy X” and other characters are completely left out. They left out an side story that covered like 3 chapters, and it was pretty good.
It’s such a shame that they fuck up the source material like this.
This anime deserves two seasons, not 12 episodes. Giving only 12 episodes to a sci-fi worldbuilding-heavy series is a grave sin!
I’m actually feeling satisfied with the pacing of this arc.
I understand why people complain that the anime is skipping over chapters that would’ve actually explained the mechanisms of Dimension W better. However, from my point of view, if someone creates a Sci-Fi concept that is convoluted, they will have to take too much time to explain it. And with that comes a risk; the audience may not like how it’s explained and would prefer to instead stick to the other stuff the story does good.
Take Mahōka Kōkō no Rettōsei for example. That anime was 2-cour, enough time to explain the mechanisms of its magic. Look what resulted from that. The way it explained the mechanisms couldn’t be any more tedious.
Therefore, the producers of Dimension W anime must have taken a safer route and decided to skip over the exposition chapters, simply for the sake of avoiding boring the audience. Even though that resulted in the anime becoming an informercial, at least I understand why it happened this way. At the very least I can enjoy the anime for what it is. I understand if that’s not enough for other people, but for what it is, it’s enough for me personally, for now. I haven’t read the manga (I think I’ll do so later), so I wouldn’t know if the Sci-Fi concept of Dimension W is simpler or more complicated than that of Mahōka. But for the episode count this anime got, they made the more sensible choice.
Well, my beef with Mahouka was the topics were scatterbrained. We never got to know the principles of a certain skill. It’s just explained a bit, and byeeee.
Dimension W could have used the mystery episodes for a better world building and exposition in my opinion because it has an ambitious plot. This deserves more than this treatment. Not a manga reader but much of the details just flew all over mu head given than it was condensed for an episode that actually needs two to be good.
I entirely agree with you. In this case, I mainly blame the episode count. Like another comment right above mine said, this needs 24-25, not 12 episodes. With only 12, assuming the show won’t be getting a second season, much of the world building would have to be sacrificed, and world building is essential to Sci-Fi. Such is the price of low episode count. They did what they could to make a good show. With that low count, it would have to be either world building or major arc. And they made the more sensible choice.
Sorry, but there’s nothing “infomercial” about how the world is explained in the manga. The side-character and their backstory is woven into the plot to explain how the world works. Their actions and motivations explain things that are glazed over and skipped in the anime. It has nothing to do with “boring” the audience, and everything to do with it being cut down to a 12 episode anime. I’m not really a huge manga reader, in fact I rarely read manga at all, but looking at the dimension W manga I just get angry, cause the anime could have been so much more engaging. It’s just such a shame. It could have been fantastic. Now it’s just OK.
@Aegd
I personally wouldn’t let that bother me. Maybe it did get cut down, but at the end, the anime is the anime. If we always keep judging the anime by comparing it to its source material, then all anime would be mediocre. And it’s really not fair that way. Hell, by following this principle, I even enjoy Tokyo Ghoul even though I’m well aware that it’s deviated a lot for the its manga. But to each his own I guess. If that’s your style, then it’s style. But I don’t judge Dimension W by its manga, I judge it on its own. And it’s a really good anime for me.
ep 10:
The Story for me raised to AAA