Yurei Deco impressions: A candy-colored coming-of-age thriller anime set in a surveillance state

Love is all over the place on the planet of Yurei Deco, the most recent anime from celebrated Japanese animation studio Science Saru — or a minimum of that’s what the thought police would have you ever imagine. “Love is approval. Love is worth,” an aged instructor tells an internet classroom of animal-like avatars at first of the sequence. “And so, with love approximated as a rating, it serves as a foreign money required for public providers.” On this world, “love” shouldn’t be a lot a sense as it’s a means to reward or punish those that uphold or oppose the authority of the state.

Directed by Tomohisa Shimoyama (Tremendous Shiro) and primarily based on a narrative conceived by former Science Saru president Masaaki Yuasa (Devilman Crybaby, Preserve Your Palms Off Eizouken!) and screenwriter Dai Sato (Eureka Seven, Cowboy Bebop), Yurei Deco is a sci-fi coming-of-age thriller loosely impressed by Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The sequence follows Berry, a mischievous however common woman dwelling within the utopian “information metropolis” of Tom Sawyer Island, a “benevolent” surveillance state the place actuality and our on-line world intersect.

Picture: Science Saru

After taking part in hooky from class, Berry unexpectedly crosses paths with Hack, a proficient hacker and routine prankster who lives between the margins of Tom Sawyer’s society as a “yurei” (aka undocumented citizen). After Hack is captured by the island’s police pressure and falsely implicated as a nefarious hacker recognized solely as Phantom Zero, Berry groups up with Hack’s fellow yurei Finn to assist Hack escape whereas uncovering the darkish reality behind Tom Sawyer’s supposedly “excellent” world.

Dai Sato isn’t any stranger to dystopian premises full of allegory-laden imagery — see his work on 2006’s Ergo Proxy. What is going to instantly leap out at any viewer — and the place Yurei Deco differs most dramatically from Ergo — is its visible design. The world of Tom Sawyer Island is an odd and bewildering one, the place garish augmented actuality billboards disguise dilapidated concrete buildings with scrupulous precision and flesh-and-blood people reside alongside subservient robotic companions. The residents of Tom Sawyer are required to undertake “Decos,” visible information gadgets that are both worn as visors or surgically implanted into their eyes by the age of 4, which flood their imaginative and prescient with a wash of euphoric colours and pictures which are solely bought with “love” whereas stern-faced “content material moderators” delete any sights or sensations that may trigger them unease or misery.

Picture: Science Saru

Akira Honma’s character designs really feel paying homage to Naoyuki Asano’s work on Preserve Your Palms Off Eizouken! with their clear and simplified outlines, stable shade palettes, and exaggerated expressions. There’s a spread of implausible designs on this sequence, from Jimi Hendrix lookalikes to pill-shaped robots to massive anthropomorphic cats in enterprise fits. Past these eccentricities, a lot of the personalities of the solid come throughout as skinny in the intervening time — although this doesn’t preclude the potential of their characterizations turning into extra fleshed out because the sequence progresses.

The concept of “love” being abstracted and commodified right into a device of oppression is a provocative and promising one. And the potential for the story to rise above “we reside in a society” sophistry to inform an entertaining story about rising up in a world of knowledge overload is clear from the beginning. If it’s in a position to observe by way of on the potential (past the primary three episodes, which Crunchyroll offered to Polygon forward of the premiere), and stick the touchdown, Yurei Deco appears prefer it may very well be a stable contender for one among this season’s greatest anime. And even when it doesn’t, there’s nonetheless lots to like.

Yurei Deco streams Sundays on Crunchyroll.