Dimension W - General Discussion

[Meredith Quill]

A place to discuss particular episodes, arcs and moments from the show's run. Please remember this isn't a complete catch-all topic -- check out the forum for character topics and other places for show-related talk.

[weyrbunny]

Alright, I'm in. The pilot episode smacks of Cowboy Bebop, but as Coyote Ragtime proved, copying Cowboy Bebop en masse can turn out really well. (Even this guy's hair is Spike-y, and don't get me started on the "he lives and dies in the past" flashback with the rain.)

 

The dancing in the opening credits made me laugh out loud. I'm kind've hoping Kyouma breaks into dance throughout the series.

 

I do wish the pilot were better written in places. It's ultimately entertaining and does its job introducing the characters, but the ending in particular is rushed. Other scenes seem pieced together, too. It's just not cohesive, yet.

 

Bonus points for the reference to the blimp from Blade Runner. Though, it was so sunny and well-lit, they sucked every ounce of Noir out of it.

[Sandman87]

Well, that was...an episode...that I watched...for a half hour. Generic hyper-competent protagonist who looks like Kiba from Naruto, generic android girl-in-distress, generic evil-ish world dominating corporation making dangerous technology, inventor with a doctorate in exposition who does an info-dump and then unleashes the plot in a suicidal manner. Gratuitous fanservice and gore-less violence involving sharp objects ensues.

 

I'm pretty sure that while the intro was explaining the science gobbledygook, I could hear my old physics textbooks weeping in the next room. Someone involved with this show's writing needs to read Flatland.

[ZoqFotPik]

Yeah, pretty generic. I can ignore technobable as very little of it ever actually makes sense. I'll give it another few episodes. I did think the "Sorry we killed your family. We just wanted your research. It was an accident and the people responsible have been punished. That totally makes us good right?" was funny.

[weyrbunny]

The fanservice was absurd, not just because of the quantity, but also because some of it was so zoomed in, it was practically a disembodied body part. Some of the images of the robot's butt were edited in so randomly too, I kept thinking "Garth Merenghi would make fun of this." And I don't know if the show was trying to be punny by repeatedly showing Mira's "tail," but the fact that it resembled a computer charging cord at times stripped it of sex appeal.

 

Yeah, so, I'm saying the fanservice was half-assed. 

[lathspel]

I like the idea of a guy living in the past and not trusting modern technology. What's up with his jacket having the 1/0 symbol that's not the coil Q though?

But the girl is going to have to grow up a bit. Those parts (no pun intended) were over the top. It felt like "this is the pilot so we have to fill in enough of that to get it made". (Also, if she runs off if coils, then it's probably not a charging cord?)

Dead scientist guy appeared to have a triple coil, if I saw it right. Please don't let the plot be that NT has even better energy sources but is sitting on the tech.

Edited February 29, 2016 by lathspel

[Lantern7]

Interesting premise. I'm probably going to refer to Kyouma as "Zoriccolo" because Christopher Sabat voices him. He seems no-nonsense, but guy can move like Space Dandy. Dunno what to think about the robot girl. What's up with the tail? It seems weird and off-putting, even for anime.

 

Sandman87 . . . man, Kyouma does look like Kiba. Good catch.

[SmithW6079]

Was the actor voicing the hero the same one who voiced Space Dandy?

I don't watch a lot of anime, but I'm intrigued enough to give this a shot for a while.

[Lantern7]

No. Different guy who's going to pop up on One Piece in a few weeks. I just thought Kyouma (always copy-and-paste) had some of Dandy's moves.

[the fresh maker]

 Dunno what to think about the robot girl. What's up with the tail? It seems weird and off-putting, even for anime.

 

With the appendages sticking out of the sides or her head and the tail, the character design puts me in mind of a cat...cuz, you know, gotta have a cat girl--even if she's a robot.

Edited March 1, 2016 by the fresh maker

[Sandman87]

In tonight's episode, one of the people in the crowd of "Loser" mask wearers looked like Emperor Charles from Code Geass with a mask.

 

During Loser's maneuvers the "9 Hit Combo" graphic looked like it said "Shit Combo." I had to rewind & pause to see what it actually said.

 

The exposition about Kyouma's backstory reminded me of the Marshall Law comic.

[lathspel]

Nice to see there's a reason that illegal coils are forbidden - apparently they can unleash some Hellraiser-style consequences. Although in that case you'd think NT wouldn't mind the publicity, if it makes their "legit" coils appear safer. But maybe the thought of carrying that many potential dimensional portals on your person would make the average person a bit squeamish.

I'm not excited about the idea of Loser and Son collecting all the Key Coils. Here's hoping there isn't too much of a linear "quest" thing going on.

It's ok with me that we toned down the fan service for ep two. Last week had enough for a couple at least.

[SmithW6079]

I'm confused. Is Loser the doctor who invented the coils? If not, why does he have the same backstory as the doctor (dead wife)?

I'm not sure I'm in for the long haul.

[weyrbunny]

Hello, Black Butler.
 
Still a ton of details and designs referencing others shows in this episode. Kyouma gets the requisite military background, just like Spike, and Loser looks an awful lot like Darkman, of all things. (Kyouma needs more personality ASAP to keep up with Loser, by the way.)

I’m glad the story is diving right into the mysteries about dimension W and coils and showing, not telling, why they’re dangerous. I find myself thinking about Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster more and more and wondering if the show is building the allegory. The dimension W “power plant” looms over the city in so many shots…
 
I liked that the flesh-robot-prism-coil-nightmare sculpture, as I think of it, resembled the sculpture that Loser was stealing the Numbers from.
 

What's up with his jacket having the 1/0 symbol that's not the coil Q though? ... (Also, if she runs off of coils, then it's probably not a charging cord?)

I saw it as just a power button, with the on/off. The coil Q then was symbolically inverted power, since it was the other direction. Is 1/0 symbolic of something else? Also, you're right. It's unlikely that Mira's tail is a power cord. It just looks like one in some scenes.

Mira’s markings and robot accessories have reminded me of something. I finally realized it was Aya from Green Lantern. I’m guessing Aya was influenced by anime, not the other way around, though.


Fan art source: http://comicvine.gamespot.com/images/1300-2932325

[Lantern7]

I'm not seeing Aya/Mira.  Maybe because Aya didn't have any hair. If Mira winds up taking over Dimension W and runs amok? I'll change my view.  Loser/Darkman is rather apt, weyrbunny.

[Sandman87]

Hello, Black Butler.

I missed that connection. What is it?

[weyrbunny]

Oh, sorry. Loser is played by J. Michael Tatum, who is also the voice of Sebastian Michaelis, the Black Butler. I instantly associate Tatum's voice with Black Butler, regardless of which show or role he's in. Except for [C]-Control. Tatum's performance in [C]-Control was excellent, and so it managed to push out all thoughts of Black Butler.

Edited March 9, 2016 by weyrbunny

[lathspel]

The doctor is hiding in Dimension W, isn't he?

[ZoqFotPik]

That never occurred to me, but yes you are probably correct.

[Lantern7]

I'm guessing that the world's use of Dimension W directly affects the Earth from another universe. Or would that be too obvious? In other news, Mira knows how to keep her head even after losing it.

[Sandman87]

It's nice that the kids are cool about people's heads falling off. I guess that the little girl would be familiar with androids because of who her grandmother is. And speaking of Grandma; she doesn't look a day over 25. Makeup? Cosmetic surgery? Clone replacement parts?

 

I started trying to read a book last night, and damned if the backstory doesn't sound exactly like it could have inspired Dimension W: A large-scale disaster occurs because mankind tried to tap into the free energy available from another dimension. Unfortunately it had me yawning after only about 20 pages, so I doubt I'll be finishing it.

[lathspel]

I was happy to let Lantern7 get ahead of me on that pun.

"Claire Skyheart" is such a fake name. She might as well be a stripper or a character in Final Fantasy.

[nobodyyoucare]

 

. Although in that case you'd think NT wouldn't mind the publicity, if it makes their "legit" coils appear safer.

But the reason why the illegal coils are bad would make people question the legit coils. NT was shown to have already done some nasty stuff that it had hidden so having people question the coils would not be a good idea. 

[Sandman87]

Now that you've got me thinking about it, I wonder where the illegal coils are coming from, and why. Are legitimate coils so expensive that there's a market for cheap knock-offs that might kill the user? Is the supply of legit coils restricted in some way? Are they being made in basement labs? Is someone at the factory secretly repackaging rejects to sell on the black market?

 

 

I was happy to let Lantern7 get ahead of me on that pun.
"Claire Skyheart" is such a fake name. She might as well be a stripper or a character in Final Fantasy.

There's a lot of stripperific "English" names in anime and manga. Some of them are downright porn-y sounding, such as:

 

Sergay ("ser-gay") Wang - Mai Otome

Jacuzzi Splot - Baccano!

Brandon Heat - Gungrave

Rock Lee - Naruto

Jamitov Hymen - Mobile Suit Gundam Z

Sailor Uranus and Sailor Moon - Sailor Moon

Backyard Bottomslash - Another Note

[nobodyyoucare]

Legit coils have legit ie restricted law abiding functions. Notice how in the first episode the guy puts an illegal coil into a water gun and turns it into a powerful weapon. A legit coil for civilian sale wouldn't be able to do that. One made for military use may do so but that would be a restricted market. 

 

The illegal coils seem to be expensive or hard to come by hence why collectors are paid a small fortune to acquire them on behalf of fixers such as Mary who then sell the illegal coils to New Tesla. 

Edited March 17, 2016 by nobodyyoucare

[Terrafamilia]

Hmm, legit coils have some sort of capacity to report their doings back to NTE? And NTE has a total monopoly on legit coils? Sounds like another reason for wanting some illegal ones.

Lot's of fanservice this ep.

Oh, Kiyoma, Albert, get a room already. :-)

[Sandman87]

I got distracted by Elizabeth Greenhouse Smith's bat costume. It kept giving me flashbacks to Diva's costume in the finale of Blood+.

 

The technobabble about why androids can't remember the dimensional weirdness was unconvincing.

 

You could tell that those three people lurking around the table in the hotel lobby were bad news. Anyone who seems that overtly hostile to the Good Guy without saying anything is obviously up to no good.

 

Tragic accidents involving a dam? Seemingly hallucinogenic sequences? Mysterious deaths? What is this, Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni? All we need now is someone going nuts with butcher's cleaver and shouting "LIAR!"

[SmithW6079]

I read the Wikipedia entry to try and figure out what was going on, but I'm still confused.

[lathspel]

Strong silent type, driving out to the countryside by a lake, investigating something the locals are ambivalent or hostile about, with your android partner, and the electric power is questionable?

This is soo an episode of The Big O! Here's hoping Batgirl turns out to be Angel in part 2.

[Sandman87]

Come to think of it, wasn't there an episode of Big O that involved a dam?

[Lantern7]

Mira is kind of cute when she's scared. She's a nice contrast to Dorothy over on The Big O. Now . . . shots of Mira naked? Not so good. Or maybe I'm not in the fanservice fandom. It's weird to see a robot shower, especially when she has a "tail."

[lathspel]

Actually it was that same ep of Big O, I forgot about the dam.

I don't mind the fan service, but this show makes it pretty over the top. If it's getting awkward (and not just falling down in the shower awkward).

[nobodyyoucare]

Did toonami show the ending scene after the credits in which the maid reveals she was the one that put the lake water in the dispenser? She was the daughter of the dam worker. 

[lathspel]

They didn't show that scene, at least on my DVR.

[weyrbunny]

Catching up...

 

Ep. 1.3 – Chase the Numbers

 

Headless Mira saved this episode. Before that scene, it was seeming mundane. Even the slight A Room of One’s Own subtext while Mira was making herself a home in the trailer wasn’t holding my attention. My mind kept wandering to how it was the worst-kept secret that NT is covering up Dimension W disasters. Or, how the XYZW axis in the prologue is still only showing 3 dimensions.

 

Why does Mira talk to herself, out loud, when she has an inner monologue?

 

I’m hoping Kyouma’s traumatic backstory is more unique than the Giant Cactus/Coil Disaster that the flashbacks are revealing. So far, there’s nothing unexpected about his backstory, nothing we couldn’t have guessed. I want some spark of originality there.

[weyrbunny]

1.4 – The Mystery Hidden in Lake Yasogami
 
Was that… a giant, horned bird-head mounted on the wall? Please let that be relevant later.
 
This episode was such a discordant assemblage of details: part Nancy Drew mystery, part carpet from The Shining, part pratfalls, part…people sitting around reading a book titled Asbestos. Some of its attempt at ghost-story atmospherics reminded me of Hell Girl, but the rest was such a jumble.
 
I want to know why the sister (hotel owner) has to be asleep in order to connect to Dimension W. Unless the show is just going to copy Paprika or Inception or something. Then, never mind.
 

(and not just falling down in the shower awkward)

I did not care for either time that Mira fell over. She was standing still both times!? I suppose poor execution or poor direction could be to blame for why it seemed fake. Had some movement been shown—I'm noticing that the characters rarely move in the show as well as they do in the opening credits. And then of course there were the sexualized, "helpless female" poses that she was put in when she fell.
 
BTW, I switched back and forth between the SUB and DUB of this episode, and the SUB's dialogue is better at explaining some things, I think.

[Sandman87]

Heh. One of my favorite games with dubbed anime is to use the dub audio with the English subs to see what's different. Sometimes they have almost nothing in common.

 

The latest one just seemed so generic. Like bits and pieces of several different anime & visual novel games smooshed together.

 

 Or, how the XYZW axis in the prologue is still only showing 3 dimensions.

It's kinda hard to represent four dimensions with a single two dimensional graph. There's just so much one can do with perspective. Far easier to do it the way they did.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Sandman87

[Lantern7]

I keep expecting giant tomatoes to rain from the sky. Also . . . Mira in chains? Icky. I'll probably have to rewatch to fully "get" it.

[nobodyyoucare]

 

One of my favorite games with dubbed anime is to use the dub audio with the English subs to see what's different. Sometimes they have almost nothing in common.

Thats due to often jokes not translating so they do something different or it would sound bad if directly translated so they change it in English to convey the same concept. Deadman Wonderland for instance the english dialog was often better then the Japanese dialog such as the prisoner dialogs. 

 

Then you have anime like "ghost stories" in which the Japanese dialog was so stilted that when funimation got the rights the Japanese company said do whatever the hell you want with it so funimation decided to do a joke dub. 

[nobodyyoucare]

 

 

I’m hoping Kyouma’s traumatic backstory is more unique than the Giant Cactus/Coil Disaster that the flashbacks are revealing. So far, there’s nothing unexpected about his backstory, nothing we couldn’t have guessed. I want some spark of originality there.

Having watched up to episode 11 the backstory gets more fleshed out, why he has memory loss of certain events, why he hates androids, more explanation of what dimension x is, you see more unique characters, So it is worthwhile to see. Its a whole lot more coherent then Concrete Revolutio is. I am not Japanese I do not know your era system of dates. For a subbed broadcast put in the year date system the Western world uses. I do not want to go to wikipedia each time you mention a date to see what it translates especially when you have flashbacks and flash forwards with multiple eras and years in those eras.. 

Edited March 27, 2016 by nobodyyoucare

[lathspel]

Ok, the Lake Mystery part two was super confusing. I feel like we crammed a couple episodes of backsposition in there.

I like the idea of a split reality proceeding in parallel, with the guy killing his future self (and a nice joke about going to Hell). But if this is a key element of what numbers do, it seems like we ran through it really fast.

Also, how does Mira know so much about what numbers do in dimension W?

[weyrbunny]

Ep. 1.5 - The Potential of the Dead

Oh good grief, the falling over last episode was foreshadowing for the flashback?! At least Enamori’s fall was believable. It was so sudden and brutal—I found it and the ensuing moral dilemma compelling. The irony of the “ghosts” killing the person who had been enabling their existence was also well done. Frankly, this flashback was such better storytelling than ep. 4’s horror grab-bag.

The SPCR needs to form a Japanese chapter and sic itself on Kyoma. In ep. 3, he kicked Mira. Here, he punched and slapped her. (Glad he got a bruised hand for his efforts.) I’m guessing the show is trying to establish how “edgy” it and Kyoma are, or how damaged his backstory left him, but because Mira is so sexualized and anthropomorphized, Kyoma’s abuse of her is conspicuous. It hasn’t reached the titillation levels of the ghost torture scene, but it’s veering that way.
 

Did toonami show the ending scene after the credits in which the maid reveals she was the one that put the lake water in the dispenser? She was the daughter of the dam worker.

It was at the end of ep. 5.
 

Heh. One of my favorite games with dubbed anime is to use the dub audio with the English subs to see what's different. Sometimes they have almost nothing in common.

DW’s dialogue is similar in the two versions. I was actually surprised—I’ve seen a lot of disparity, as you say.  But there’s some weird stuff too, like a scene in ep. 4 where Mira inner-monologues over another character’s line in the DUB, but not the SUB.
 

I keep expecting giant tomatoes to rain from the sky.

An anime about giant tomatoes sounds completely like something anime would do. But you’re talking about that food-weather movie, [Googles…] Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs?

[Sandman87]

"The Wind of Africa"? He doesn't seem overly talkative, so maybe he has digestive difficulties.

 

Kyoma has "normal people" friends! I'm stunned!

[lathspel]

A lot of people with red eyes in this ep. I'm assuming that's not reay a thing in Japan, but is there a meaning to it? Or just a style thing?

[nobodyyoucare]

Red eyes with white hair is usually a style thing in anime. Like blond hair with brown or black skin its just there for contrast. Heterochromia is also common such as no irises or one eye being a different color then the rest.

 

Its to make characters stand out. Ever wonder why the vast majority of manga/anime characters are foreign looking? Its because Japanese or Asian characters all tend to look like one another when drawn. You can count the animes where the characters look Asian and are listed as being Asian on one hand.

[Sandman87]

Back when he was younger, Kyoma's girlfriend was both clumsy and a shutterbug, and had a camera that she inherited? And then got killed? Sounds like the main character from Tamayura went on to have a really tragic, short college career. Given that her head went AWOL, I predict that we'll be seeing it at some point, and in a not-dead condition.

[lathspel]

So wasn't their aircraft coil powered? That seems like a hole in the plan.

I like that Kiyoma will be the only one looking cool on wheels.

[nobodyyoucare]

So wasn't their aircraft coil powered? That seems like a hole in the plan.

I like that Kiyoma will be the only one looking cool on wheels.

Everything is coil powered to the point they forget it has coils.

[Matt K]

Everything is coil powered to the point they forget it has coils.

Or, they installed a hybrid system in it.  

 

Did anyone else notice the similarity of the CEO to Steve Jobs.  

[lathspel]

I like where this is headed. Although didn't we hear that the young prince has a cyborg body? Ground Zero may be tough for him.

I'm still really digging the end title.