Dennou Coil is, for me, a sign of Madhouse’s real maturity. Now that they’re second only to Ghibli in making large-scale and well-plotted feature animations, their regular TV anime is going from strength to strength. Paranoia Agent was no one-off, and Dennou Coil finally scratched my itch for something more mature and challenging left after I finished Kaiba – one that has recurred since watching Monster. All these impressive efforts have, yes, been Madhouse.
And Dennou Coil, like Kaiba, was one I was introduced to by the anime club well over a year ago now. I put off watching it for quite some time, saving it as something I knew was good until I needed just that, and I have since worked my way through the 24 episodes I had left to watch more quickly than any series in a long while.
The world of Dennou Coil is a great one: in the near future, everyone uses glasses to see a virtual world overlaid on top of ours. It’s similar to those apps on phones that use the camera and then overlay information about restaurants and shops, but taken to a greater extent – and perceived directly as though the objects really existed. After a commercial boom, there are now virtual pets, virtual weapons and, here and there, bugs and hacks. A group of schoolkids begin to investigate various types of anomaly in this virtual world, but of course, things get ever more complicated, and at least two of the kids are interested in ‘the other side’, a virtual place your consciousness can go, detached from your body, but just maybe will not be able to return from. Delivered with great seriousness and considerably less cryptic cheesiness than I just gave it, everything is plausible, presented extremely well (I love the ‘tags’ thrown like ninja paper talisman) and, crucially, rooted in the lives and personalities of a series of likeable kids.
There’s something very like Mei from Totoro about Yasako’s sister Kyoko, too. That can only be a good thing.
Centred on the naïve, likeable Yasako and the taciturn and highly skilled Isako, the number of coincidences that fuel the final twists, mostly things family members happen to have done, is just about acceptable. One great thing about the series is that it’s given time to develop, with whole episodes dedicated to side characters interacting with various ‘illegals’ and making for a greatly entertaining ensemble cast. Dennou Coil is also defined by well-known voice actresses delivering performances that are far more subdued than their usual. It seems strange that gentle Yasako is voiced by Orikasa Fumiko, so forceful and mature as Seras in Hellsing, or that Isako was the formidable Clare in Claymore. Paku Romi as Haraken tones herself down so much that her extremely distinctive voice is hard to identify at first, and somehow that makes her performance seem so much more mature. Then there’s Kobayashi Yumiko, in her usual bratty kid role, but going back through the necessary exaggeration of Black Star or near-miss of Azuma Kazuma and to her best performance – Tetsu in Peacemaker Kurogane.
As immersive and as attention-grabbing as the world it represents, Dennou Coil does everything it aims for just right – gives a strong sci-fi plot, some great action and a clever twist or two, but adds on top a loveable cast, some very cute, idiosyncratic mascot characters and great human drama. Easily amongst the best anime of the 2000s.
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