The Winter 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Technoroid Overmind

The story of "wretched, beautiful androids" is set on the entertainment tower Babel, the new source of hope for humanity after climate change has submerged the world underwater. Several unique musical units compete to rise to the top of Babel, by moving the hearts of both humans and androids with their performances.

Technoroid Overmind is the television anime portion of Noriyasu Agematsu, RUCCA, and Elements Garden's Technoroid multimedia project and streams on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

So let me see if I have this right: in the future, after global warming has resulted in the decimation of the human population and the submersion of many major cities, androids have been developed in order to help out with day-to-day tasks. There's also a singing contest that involves moving up levels in a tower called Babel, one that androids may or may not be forbidden from entering. Also, some robots appear to be rebelling against their human overlords? One thing's for sure, this show has no shortage of ambition.

What's less certain is whether or not they can manage to put all of these disparate pieces together into something that makes sense. Right now, it feels like there are a few too many pieces in play, as if the episode is torn between being a semiserious dystopian show or a candy-colored boy idol show. For most of the episode, it leans pretty hard into the latter – our protagonists appear to be a ready-made idol group consisting of four unusually humanoid androids in desperate need of cash to pay the electric bill, and the fastest way to get some is to enter the amateur song competition that takes place in the tower of Babel. Our boys only look human of course; in terms of acting human, they've got a bit of improvement ahead of them. In one of the more nonsensical moments, we see that they are capable of that improvement in astounding leaps and bounds; from their first disjointed and discordant performance towards the beginning of the episode to their ludicrously polished one (complete with lyrics to a tune they could previously only hum with choreographed dance moves), there's basically an entire season's worth of any other idol show. In between all of this, the gang befriends lonely orphan child Esora, with whom they may have interacted in a past life as actual humans? There also has to be something more to that opening scene of a group of five people watching fireworks before we saw four of them in what was either cold sleep or their rebirth as androids.

I can't say that this doesn't have some potential. Behind its loud colors and nonsensical plot progression, there may actually be an interesting dystopian story. But this episode doesn't give me a whole lot of hope that we'll see it, and this may turn out to be a curiosity more than anything else.

Nicholas Dupree
Rating:

“Not as bad as it should be” is a rude way to compliment something, but that's all I can think of to describe this premiere. Doing preview guide has made me sit through some truly interminable idol fodder in the past (any other poor souls remember Vazzrock?), so the fact I made it through most of this episode without wishing Crunchyroll had a fast-forward button is kind of a win. This show isn't good, mind, but it at least has some identifiable features that help me separate it from a million indistinguishable shows about CG dudes dancing and singing to sell me on a Gacha game that will never get localized here.

For one, the setting is actually pretty unique for the genre – a far future where climate change has drastically reduced the human population, and advances in robotics have made androids a staple of everyday life. It's not just background noise either – throughout the episode there are plot points about humans needing special heat-resistant clothes to spend time under direct sunlight, and even a key scene revolving around a now-flooded park that used to be dry land. By the end there's even a surprise murder mystery where it looks like a robot has intentionally killed a human! It's not enough to make me watch more of this show, but it's weird enough that I could see somebody else being curious enough to give this another episode.

But for me, it's not enough to outweigh how bland and boring everything else is. Our four android protagonists are flat, singular personalities that they hammer into what little ground is left above sea level. The designs are simultaneously gaudy and generic, hitting well-worn character archetypes but never actually sticking in your memory. 2D animation is kept to an absolute minimum, and the CG dance sequence just barely manage enough competency to be forgettable rather than embarrassing. It all screams “disposable” in a way that tells you the folks making this put as little thought or interest into things as possible.

Though shout out for the goofy visual of the android gang riding tandem on a hover-scooter like they're the most bishounen Hanna-Barbera cartoon ever. I spent like half the episode just imagining them having a crossover episode with Jabber Jaw, which made this all a lot easier to get through. So there's that.

Usually, whenever one of these “Idol Boys Anime That is Very Obviously Based on a Predatorily Monetized Mobile Game” shows comes along, I have to adjust my review process a little bit, because I have too many ingrained biases against pretty much everything a show in this specific subgenre is going for. I dislike the cheap and purposefully bland character designs and scripts, I am annoyed by their lack of interest in all of the drama and chaos that makes actual stories about musicianship so compelling, and I still have yet to hear a single one of these idol boy pop songs that sound, you know…good. Obviously, a literal commercial for a chintzy phone game is probably not going to be interested in providing a character-focused exposé on all of the ways that being a musician can shape and/or destroy an artist's life, so instead what we get is a weekly music video or two that is “contextualized” with a bunch of cheap comedy or sappy melodrama that truly does not matter, in the grand scheme of things.

Technoroid Overmind does all of that, except its gimmick is that all of the idol boys are actually robots in a dystopian hellscape where most of human civilization has been flooded by climate change, not to mention the fact that the robots in charge of everything may or may not be incinerating any humans that don't conform to societal expectations. Now, you'd think that this would make for a much more interesting take of that usual idol anime setup, but in reality, this is still basically identical to every other version of this show they've been making for years, now, except you can swap out some of the “Oh no, however will we learn X skill in time for the big show!?” conversations with “Oh no, however will we protect this random orphan from the secret horrors of our machine overlords!?”. It's still the same old song and dance, at the end of the day, just with a vaguely sci-fi themed coat of paint slapped on top of the crappy musical numbers.

So, since I was basically predisposed to disliking everything about this show from the start, I'm going to use my tried-and-true “How Many Times Did My Eyes Glaze Over For Long Enough That I Had to Rewind Several Minutes' Worth of The Episode to Even Know What Is Happening” rubric. The good news is that my brain only switched off out of existentially dreadful boredom, like, two or three times during the premiere of Technoroid Overmind, and believe it or not, that's not too shabby! For folks that are much more in tune with this genre and its trappings than I am, the fact that I was able to mostly follow along with this episode for at least a few minutes at a time before getting up from my desk to do some random chores around the house means that it is probably going to be worth checking out, for at least an episode or two.

I have to admit, I'm a bit baffled by this show. On one hand, this is a cookie-cutter boy band show (complete with a music competition plotline). On the other, it's couched in a surprisingly high-concept setting: a post-global warming world where a major decline in the human population has led to the need for autonomous AI androids to keep society running. You can tell a lot of thought went into this by the countless background details like waterways instead of streets, and the need for special hoods to regulate body temperature while out in the sun; yet, it doesn't quite come together into a believable world.

This is mainly due to the androids themselves. It's not exactly clear how they work. They have things they are programmed to want and need but anything outside of that demands a direct order—one which they must obey. Moreover, it seems that these orders can be given by other AI, which opens a whole other can of worms entirely.

Given these facts and their obvious segregation within society, it's safe to say that androids are slaves without anything even close to human rights. But even worse is that they are slaves that are left to run out of power and "die" after their masters pass away (which is what I am assuming happened to our four main heroes). And while they seem to have no programmed drive for self-preservation, they seem to be programmed to put human lives above all other concerns—as they go out of their way to help humans in need when they won't even help each other normally. All this makes for an odd way for androids to act given that they're both expensive and vital for keeping society running.

Speaking of said troubled humans, we have the orphaned kid subplot where the androids help the young boy to remember the good times with his adoptive father and learn to sing a song in the process. But what exactly is the message here? The only one I could think of is that it's okay if your parents are neglectful as long as they said they love you that one time a decade ago, which is a pretty terrible moral as it basically excuses abuse as long as love was involved—however briefly.

And if that weird tonal detour wasn't enough, there's the ending where things suddenly go full I, Robot as our heroes witness a drunk man pushed into a pit of molten steel by a robot. It left me feeling like I had no idea what I was watching. And frankly, I'm not invested enough to come back and find out.