The mangling of science for a good story is no great crime. Something like Jurassic Park is just feasible enough for you to nod and get on with the story. If I’m watching comedy, it really doesn’t bother me when parallel universes, temporal paradoxes and time travel are used to make an entertaining story – Back to the Future, Bill and Ted, Red Dwarf, Day of the Tentacle, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books…they all deal with similar ground to Noein. But the trouble is that Noein sets itself up so seriously, tries to make itself look so clever, that its basis in Quantum Theory really irked me.
Noein tells the story of when soldiers from a possible future invade our time to retrieve the great MacGuffin, in this case the Dragon Torque (I don’t know if the physics pun is intentional, but it IS a necklace), which is embodied in a normal young girl named Haruka.
Perhaps fifty years ago, the incompatibility of quantum with a probabilistic, uncertain, chaotic macroscopic universe being solved by the idea of infinite possible worlds was new and exciting, but by now it’s a total sci-fi cliché. And Noein really makes things worse by oversimplifying, picking and choosing buzzwords from the Many-Worlds AND Copenhagen Interpretations, and showing a fundamental misunderstanding of most of the concepts it drew upon - from seeming to think that Schrödinger’s Cat would start disappearing in its box until its being acknowledged by an observer made it solid again to falling into the usual (perhaps inevitable) pitfalls of storytellers working within infinite spacetimes. These would be placing too much emphasis on a central, coherent timeframe (as if it wouldn’t diverge infinitely over the course of the series), thinking that a person can be unique in spacetime for more than a frozen moment (infinite divergences happen at infinite moments, so our central character’s powers cannot be unique to one version of her) and thinking a threat to time, space and causality can appear and become a slowly-unfolding threat, constraining to time what is supposed to be disrupting it.
I know that I’m watching anime to be entertained, not for Quantum Theory to be faithfully represented, but when I see gadgets mapping an infinity of infinities or random mysterious old men who can push the story forward when the writers can’t think of any consequential manner to make it happen, I have to fight the urge to get madder than Ming the Merciless. What the writers really wanted was a classic comic book parallel universes story, but had to try and be all smug and knowing with scientific theories, and it just detracted from what was otherwise a great story.
Because, yes, Noein was an excellent series, absolutely outstanding in many aspects. It had a quirky style of art and animation that reminded me of Mahou Shoujotai: Arusu and character designs with a similar retro feel to Fantastic Children, two series I very much enjoyed. Animation was some of the most remarkable I’ve ever seen in a TV anime, with incredibly strange CG weapon-creatures and smooth body animations, especially on the kids, that were absolutely superlative. The fight scenes deserve mention, too, for taking such risks – the art would simplify and the camera would pan and swoop around the fighters with such dynamism that it makes most other anime fights look extremely lazy. Occasionally it goes too far, and the art is too noticeably simplified, at one point just looking like a couple of shaking storyboard images, but usually these sequences are incredible, and unlike anything else.
The design of some of the characters didn’t work for me, though. Atori, with his crescent moon of hair on his Wicked Witch face, looked too much like a hastily-conceived caricature and had a 2-D personality to match until he lost his memories and became zomboid. The best-friend character, Fujiwara, suffers in early episodes because he’s the comic relief, but his big chattering square teeth and funny face often look TOO daft; while he develops well later, his catchphrase (‘Ariane!’ – impossible) just about worked as a catchphrase in ultra-cute Pretty Cure, but not here. And then there’s the capitalist pig minor bad-guy, who just looks like he was lifted from a primary school doodle pad.
The positives far outweigh the negatives, though. Rousing choral music and some deliciously crackling electrical sound effects seduce the ears while Haruka’s cute round pacman eyes (and voice – Hagu from Hachikuro), Tobi’s ethereal prettiness and Karasu’s undeniable coolness (assisted by a great performance (or two!) from Nakai Kazuya, Zoro from One Piece), keep the eyes sated even between the incredible fight scenes. The characters are likeable and some soap opera scenes of puppy love really bring you closer to the characters. Far from a perfect anime, but one that indeed does overcome its flaws to be entertaining, impressive and yes, perhaps a little groundbreaking too.
(Originally written 9.1.07)
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