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Fractale
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Would you choose between peace and freedom? Would you choose for all of humanity?
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:CreationDate: 2014-03-19 12:03:19
:Id: anime/review/fractale
:tags: - anime
- review
:rating: 4
:original: http://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/fractale-complete-series-collection
It's about a thousand years in our future. There is no poverty, no
hunger. Everyone lives wherever they want, doing whatever they
want. Most social interaction happen via stylised tele-presence
holograms called "doppels". To be part of this idyllic world, you just
have to sync, once or twice a day, the wireless terminal in your head
with the planet-wide computer system called Fractale.
This is the setting of this series, sketched in just a few scenes of
Clain's daily life.
Things start getting complicated for him when we sees a girl (Phryne)
on a flying contraption, running away from some people with clearly
bad intentions. He helps her hide and evade her pursuers, but she soon
disappears leaving only a brooch. Clain, being a bit technologically
inclined, manages to activate the self-aware doppel stored in the
brooch, who calls herself Nessa. They then get captured by the same
people who were trying to get Phryne. These are part of a group of
rebels who call themselves "Lost Millennium", whose main objective is
to disable Fractale and bring people back to the good old days when
everyone's life was not micro-managed by a vast artificial
intelligence.
There follows escapes, reveals, double-crossing, friendship and love,
and a mostly satisfying resolution to the whole plot.
At first, Fractale felt to me to be simple and derivative: Dennou Coil
had done the whole "augmented reality" setting four years before, and
the echoes of Ghibli in the first few episodes are hard to ignore
(Phryne dressed in blue flying atop a white wing; three flying "bad
guys" who turn out to be not that bad at all). But what is really
interesting, and what makes the series stand on its own, is how the
authors avoided the cut-and-dried good-vs-bad characterisation, making
sure that we see both sides: the creators of the Fractale system aimed
for world peace and stability, Lost Millennium wants to scrap it all
to take back self-determination. Both are well intentioned, but both
have problems grasping all the consequences of their decisions and
actions. I won't spoil the ending for you, but I think that, short of
a "Deus ex machina", it's the only sensible solution to that world's
problems.
If you can stand some slightly abused tropes, and a bit of excessive
cuteness, Fractale will make you think about profound questions, and
how to save the world. Or you could always ignore half the plot and
just enjoy the chases and the pretty girls…
