Dimension W

Episodes 1-2

Now this is a blast from the past. Once upon a time, narratives about grizzled old-timers (who are probably bounty hunters) forced to take in young women (who are probably robots) and find their frigid hearts being warmed were staples of sci-fi anime. Just off the top of my head, there's Solty Rei, Outlaw Star, and The Big O. It's enough of a cliché that Space Dandy dedicated an episode to gently making fun of the idea. There are also related anime that take place in this same general setting – gritty urban cyberpunk set in the slums of worlds dominated by ominous corporations. These include classics like Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop. In the past few years, however, this style has largely been subsumed by cleaner fantasies. It's all about the magical high schools, “you're in the game!”s, and teens-with-powers. So to a fan of (relatively) old-school anime sci-fi like me, Dimension W arrives like a breath of fresh air. It's probably in this mold intentionally, since this show is an experimental Funimation co-production, and this style has been disproportionately popular with Western audiences.

As someone who's fond of this genre, Dimension W is one of the most exciting new shows this season. Although it's done little to separate itself from its predecessors so far, the specifics of its setting are promising and the writing is competent. Its world is built on the idea that humanity discovered a fourth dimension – the titular Dimension W – sometime in the early 21st century. This discovery solved the energy crisis, since this dimension serves as a seemingly infinite source of fuel. However, the technology for harvesting energy from Dimension W – known as “coils” – came under the control of a megacorporation, New Tesla. Having a monopoly on such a crucial resource, New Tesla rapidly came to hold immense power over society. They criminalized non-Tesla coils and employed freelancers – known as "collectors" – to track them down. Despite their efforts, illegal coils continue to infiltrate society from some mysterious source.

The year is now 2072. Kyouma Mabuchi is one of those collectors, but he's also a luddite. He refuses to use coils, instead driving a classic gasoline-fueled car and chasing down criminals through sheer physical prowess, whereas most other collectors employ coil-powered weaponry or cyborgization. But one day, Kyouma encounters Mira Yurizaki, a robot who claims to be the daughter of New Tesla's renegade founder, Shidou Yurizaki. Seeing that she's powered by an illegal coil, Kyouma tries to apprehend her. The ensuing scuffle delays Mira long enough that Shidou is forced to detonate his coil-powered artificial heart to avoid capture by New Tesla. Realizing that her father is dead, Mira begs Kyouma to take her in as a fellow repo agent so that she can honor Shidou's posthumous instructions to “follow the illegal coils.” Although puzzled to encounter such a human-like robot, Kyouma eventually relents, taking her in as a partner.

Kyouma takes Mira to Mary, who is a sort of underground coil madame. She reveals that Mira is some sort of ridiculously advanced robot created by Shidou's deceased wife. Shidou's wife and daughter were murdered by New Tesla for some unspecified reason, leading to his renegade status. Later, Kyouma takes Mira on their first assignment – collecting coils from a famous art thief under the alias Loser. Although Loser has never succeeding at stealing the art he's after, his showmanship and flamboyant appearance have made him a cultural icon. Over the course of their showdown, Kyouma and Loser develop a repertoire. Loser speculates that Kyouma had previously been part of an anti-coil military group, Grendel. He also reveals his own motivation: revenge against New Tesla, who murdered his family and horrifically disfigured his face. His art thief persona is also a front – he's actually after special “numbered coils” contained in the art pieces, and he's made off with them every time. Kyouma and Loser are then forced to team up against a pair of robot bodyguards. After the battle, the robots' illegal coils malfunction, enveloping the room (and their human owner) in a dimensional explosion. This gives us our first glimpse of the coils' dark potential. When the coils fail, the resulting explosion causes a fractal-ization of space, where the robots and their owner's still-living body are torn, reconfigured, and multiplied into a gruesome structure. Mira, meanwhile, has used her robot powers to track down Loser's accomplice. She meets Loser, who says that revealing knowledge regarding the source of illegal coils is a deeply-held taboo.

Much like the rest of the show, Dimension W's art style blends the new and the old. Mira is a revised moe take on the “mysterious robot partner” girl, but still retains traits from previous versions of the archetype like Melfina and Solty. Kyouma's design feels straight out of Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo, with the emphasis on his footwork and delicately animated acrobatics. Albert Schumann, a probably-villainous New Tesla agent, also looks totally 90s, most likely due to his resemblance to Escaflowne's Allen Schezar. The rest of the character designs feature the variety of body types, fashion, and facial designs that I admire in heterogeneous urban sci-fi.

The production values varies a lot within each episode. One scene will contain impressively fluid and dynamic animation only for the next to struggle to stay on-model. Fortunately for the show, I'm a fan of its overall art style and thus more lenient toward occasional dips in quality. Series director Kanta Kamei isn't an experienced action director, and it shows. Dimension W's directorial style is rife with tricks native to the slice-of-life comedies he's used to working with (Bunny Drop, Saekano) but not so much action-adventure. This is most evident in the frequent cutaways to someone's face with a solid-color background and a sort of silhouette effect behind the character model. While I could see this technique effectively punctuating a joke in something like Saekano, it only disrupts the flow in the middle of an action scene. Action is reliant on a very delicate sense of continuously-occupied space and movement, so eliminating the background so often totally annihilates that. I'm hoping for this sense of flow to improve, but as of the second episode, the action's still weak for this genre. Some viewers may also be turned off by the fanservice (the camera sure loves Mira's bottom), but I didn't mind it so much. It seemed like par for the course anime sex appeal to me, but I'll note if it starts to get unusually creepy.

Right now, my biggest question is what direction Dimension W will take with its overall narrative. Will it consist mostly of episodic adventures or dive headfirst into a longer storyline? So far, the writing has been mostly competent. Exposition (the eternal bane of science fiction) has been brisk and mostly woven naturally into the dialogue. The worst occurrence came up during Kyouma's encounter with Loser, who decided to just explain both of their backstories in the middle of a heist. If the “numbered coils” are so special, I'd also like some explanation as to why they're blithely stored in pieces of fine art. From its first episode, Dimension W has skirted the line between the potential to succeed tremendously or fail catastrophically, and the second episode only maintains this balance. I'm a sucker for its particular quirks, so I remain optimistic, although this story could go in a number of different directions. For now, Dimension W is Dimension Watchable, and only time can tell whether it ends up Dimension Worthwhile.

Grade: B+

Dimension W is currently streaming on Funimation.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.