What’s this?
The world population has started to shrink after peaking. The “Supernatural Renovation Project” divides Tokyo with towering walls into several Cluster neighborhoods, each with their own unique genetically modified populations, governed by artificial intelligence. Most people live their lives in their own unique Clusters, blissfully unconcerned about the life beyond. However, there are some who seek to escape to the other Clusters. A team called Nigashiya helps those who want to escape.
Estab-Life: Great Escape is an original anime and airs on Crunchyroll.
How was the first episode?
Nicholas Dupree
Classification:
you have to give it to goro taniguchi. In an industry that is always hesitant to launch original projects, he has capitalized on the success of Code Geass in nearly a decade of making original sci-fi television series. Of course, none of those creations have managed to get better than “just okay,” a streak that seems to continue with ESTAB LIFE, but you have to respect the hustle and bustle. And while I probably won’t see any more of this one, I can at least say I had fun with these introductory episodes.
In a word, ESTAB LIFE is busy. Busy in its aesthetic, with the hodgepodge of colors and designs that make up our main characters, the design of the sci-fi world they inhabit, and the occasionally well-executed but largely professional CG animation. Busy in its world building as it throws concepts like slime girls and werewolves and “Gun Wizards” at the audience without a second of exposition to give you a clue, while barely communicating its core concept of closed post-apocalypse cities. let our heroes help traffic people in between. Busy in tone, as these opening episodes try to balance stylish spy action, goofy comedy, and poignant silence in ways that work more than you might expect, but still not often enough to be effective. There’s a lot going on here, and the show is never quite as elegant as one would hope.
That said, I’m a fan of offbeat sci-fi series, and that’s very much the vibe I get from this premiere. The characters are simple archetypes with just enough personality to be likable, and they flit between high-flying sci-fi action settings with just the right amount of energy. That’s good for what’s likely to be an episodic series of quests and character pieces, and if the writing can deliver interesting individual stories, it may be worth keeping up. I actually loved episode two, featuring the grizzled yakuza boss who longs to escape the criminal underbelly of Shinjuku and achieve his dream of becoming a magical girl. He’s dumb and he knows it, but there’s a serious feel to the comedy that invites you to cheer him and the other characters up instead of trying to make fun of him. There’s a core idea that it’s okay, even important, to run away when you need to in order to live a better life, and that compassion is a big part of what makes this whole scenario work so far. It’s not deep, but it’s sincere.
In all this it is still a fairly light watch. There’s nothing quite as compelling, but it has the potential to be a fun weekly distraction at least. Its biggest sin is the CG character animation, which isn’t terrible but leaves a lot to be desired, especially for any character outside of the main cast. I can’t decide if the yakuza characters in episode two being identical in sunglasses and suits is funny on purpose or by accident, but it definitely saved production resources. But at a time when he thins like rusty armor can go out, I’m not going to complain about largely competent CG. Still, it’s enough of a problem that I doubt I’ll stick around for any more of this.
Rebecca Silverman
Classification:
I feel like Stab-Life it is the very definition of “good”. The plot is contrived and silly but good enough to follow, the characters are basically cliches but good enough to pay attention to, and the animation isn’t. EX-ARM Bad levels, but good enough to look at. Not good enough to be in the middle of the road, but good enough to be a relatively harmless display. The problem is, of course, that his swagger is on the weirder side of things and that it’s animated in the kind of CGI that sends some people running for hills, especially since “better than EX-ARM and rusty armor” is not exactly a resounding endorsement. Personally, I’m more annoyed by Feles’ character design; I’d love to use a pair of scissors for that strand of hair hanging over her eye. (Or possibly hedge trimmers; it looks awfully thick.)
While not much is explained about the world of the story, it’s pretty easy to put the pieces together, and I like that we’re not overwhelmed with a lot of exposition. We don’t know what happened to divide Tokyo into “clusters”, but it seems to be similar to each district becoming its own little town, with the difference being that in the dystopian world of the story, moving between them isn’t easy and can be totally illegal. That has created the work our heroines do, extracting people from their current lives and moving them into a new one in a different group. As a concept it’s good enough to work, and other parts of the world building give it a touch of fantasy from other dystopias, although I hope I’m not the only one who thought of half dragon when it is revealed that Tuesday is half the slime. I’m not sure what to make of Ulula, the bipedal/furry wolf, or some of the other weird details, like the client in the second episode who wants to become a magical girl despite being an old man. Some of them feel like they were simply included because they sounded like fun to someone rather than having a clear purpose to serve. (The boss of the girls doing inconspicuous dance moves to give them coded messages is another one of those moments.)
I think this may be one of those series that depends on the patience of the viewer during its first third before it really moves. The tonal differences between these two episodes, with the first being much more serious than the second, aren’t much of a sign that he knows what kind of story he wants to tell, and the characters really are pretty easy to use, so if you’re If you’re not fan of his guys, that could become a problem. But if you’re patient, I think this may be worth another episode or two just to see if he figures out where he’s going and what he wants to be, and if the answer to the second question turns out to be something other than “okay.”
James Beckett
Classification:
A quirk of technology caused me to accidentally watch the second episode of Estab-Life: Great Escape before the first one, and boy, you can probably guess how confused he was when the trio of weird anime girls, their robot, and their anthropomorphic wolf friend helped an aging yakuza boss shoot himself out of a cannon so he could fulfill his dream of lifetime. to become a magical girl. Even the actual premiere, though, is very much the kind of episode that’s happy to let its audience scramble for a while as it feeds off exposition and lore. This is not a bad thing at all; it just means that even after a double dose of episodes for its premiere, I still don’t really know what this show is about. However, it’s quite amusing to watch the strange antics unfold.
It also helps that, despite being a fully 3D production, polygon images has worked hard to ensure that Stab-Life it’s not the kind of unholy trash fire some recent CG anime has been. Facial animations are still pretty awkward, to be sure, and character animation suffers from a lack of in-betweens to smooth transitions between different poses, but it’s still a solid effort overall. The direction is efficient and suitably cinematic, and the series’ color palette is diverse and lush enough. Quality voice acting also livens up the proceedings; Ekua, Feles, and Martes are all nice and interesting, even if we barely know anything about them yet (except for the fact that Martes is apparently mostly made of slime, for some reason).
What remains to be seen is whether the writer shōji gatoh‘s absurd sense of humor is going to be mixed with the strange kind of pathos that Stab-Life is trying to get from the different clients that the extractors are helping. Neither the depressed philosophy professor nor the overzealous magical girl yakuza boss were terribly interesting, but there’s something about the show’s nebulous tone that I can’t help but find fascinating. I’m definitely willing to give the series another episode or two to see if it can hook me, but I won’t get my hopes up too much, just in case. Stab-Life he collapses under the weight of his own eccentric ambitions.
Richard Eisenbeis
Classification:
This first episode is a bit strange. It just throws us into the middle of things and is never really explained. And honestly, there’s an interesting thought experiment at the core of this: apparently, in the future, Japan will be divided into autonomous city-states, each with their own unique laws and varying levels of authoritarianism. In the more controlled states, you can’t even decide your own job, let alone leave the city-state to join another. Therefore, there are “extractors” who illegally help people to escape and start a new life elsewhere.
This show seems to be a framework for exploring feelings of entrapment in our daily lives: sometimes it’s in a job we hate. Other times it’s in a relationship that we know is wrong, but we just can’t seem to walk away. Hell, sometimes it’s being trapped in your own skin, feeling like the “you” inside doesn’t match the outside. … It’s a shame that it fails in every conceivable way to live up to its premise.
For this type of high-concept story, you need to make the viewer focus on the themes being explored. The bland, one-note, and frankly annoying characters only distract from this. There’s no one to really empathize with, not the main characters, not even our dispirited teacher turned fugitive. (Honestly, if his students aren’t taking in his lessons, maybe he needs to change the way he teaches!)
Then there are the images. I will not say that it looks terrible, we are in the era of EX-ARM and tesla note, after all, although they are certainly inferior to what can be done with 3D animation. The real problem is accidental visual storytelling. Our characters never take cover in firefights and just stand in the open, implying that they are either stupid or invincible. Later we see a 100 lbs. schoolgirl climbs 10-story vertical glass face with 150 lbs. man tied to his back using only his arms. Does he have super strength or is it just bad writing? In the end, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s a distraction from the themes the episode tries to explore.
To put it as simply as possible: great idea, terrible execution.