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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Buy | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 10 | 10 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:1617#1552] |
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Boy, this was an engaging series. Denno Coil may seem like a simple children's sci-fi anime when you first see it featuring children having fun with computers and the virtual world. But, looks are deceiving and as you watch the series, you'll come to realize that there are many mysteries to Daikoku City within this series. More details and mysteries come up as you watch the series knowing of character motivations and the true nature of the virtual world that the children see with their glasses. Enough "techno-babble" is thrown around by the characters throughout the series. While the dialogue may seem tough to know at first, you get a sense of what characters are talking about as you continue to watch the series. Another notable aspect of the series is the blurring between the virtual and real worlds. The children of Denno Coil wear their glasses all the time thus accepting the virtual world as a major part of their daily lives. Children tend to easily latch onto things to be the truth rather easily which serves as a counterpoint to the adults of the series who think all of the activities with the glasses by their children as nothing but fun and games. In the case of a few of the main protagonists, this blurring of reality and fantasy affects their sense of the truth due to some serious situations that children aren't accustomed to handling as easily as adults, such examples being what we learn of Isako and Haraken later in the series. Other characters get a good amount of development as we get a sense of who they are and what they are persuing. Even with all the plot development, there are some scenes of humor to get off the series. The children's use of the virtual world for battles, pulling off pranks, and confronting various types of Illegals made for some funny moments in this anime, especially when Daichi becomes involved with them. Artwork and character designs had some decent detail, though nothing noteworthy stood out for me with visuals. Animation was top-notch in many episodes making use of CG-effects to render areas of the virtual world like glitched or damaged data and the virtual battles that took place with the characters. Denno Coil has been one of the better titles I've seen out of the 2007 anime lineup in terms of plot concept and development. The series reminds me of Serial Experiments Lain in some ways with its virtual and real world blurrings with children. But, there is more fun and intrigue to get out of this series. Last updated Tuesday, January 13 2009. Created Tuesday, November 04 2008. | ||||||||
| Buy | 8 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
 Dreamer
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[series:1617#2279] |
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My God, I love this anime! In Dennou Coil, you've got the virtual world (internet) that literally exists outside of the computer and monitor. People interact, play, cause trouble and battle it out in this virtual world that exists and is part of the real world by specialized glassed... that look like a typical pair of reading glasses. These glasses and the constant interaction with the virtual-real world is the norm... a part of everyday living. What a brilliant concept! There's some scenes that had me busting a kidney laughing so hard. One scene that comes to mind is where "megabaa" is chasing after the fluffy fur-balls (of Amasawa)... who intern where going after Yuko's pet, "Densuke". All of a sudden she throws her back out and is frozen in midstep. You just have to see it for the good laugh. By the way, if you aren't too familiar with computers, and internet, or "geek" language, then I'd suggest you learn a few things before delving into this one. Words such as "proxies", "firewalls" & "cyberspace" are tossed around like everyday lingos.... hahaha! I love it! Episode 5 is probably my favorite "fighting" scene i've seen in any anime. Okay, so it's not a fight with swords or knives or the usual weapons of war..... not even a fist. No, this all-out brawl is with blazing fingers, a keyboard, few monitors, virtual weapons and a butt-load of super hacking! Wow! An all out battle between 3 parties! The characters were great and well developed. I couldn't help but love Yasako's bratty little sister, Kyoko.... the "Poop" girl... hahaha! Amasawa.. whom appear to be the protagonist, turns out to be likeable. And Daichi was a fun character with his mean antics even though they don't usually amount to anything. Among the handful, these were my fav. The animation sequences and this particular style of art is not your "traditional" japanese art. It looks more like a western style if anything. You can tell alot about a character by their facial expressions, and some of those expressions are funny as heck. As an example, I think I was in pain from laughing so hard in episode 12.... the beard, the beard, the talking beard!! Hahahaha! When Kyoko (Yasako's kid sis), grew a beard and how she was growling at everyone in the room. The facial expressions were just timeless. I was literally on the floor with tears in my eyes cracking up so hard at the scene where Yasako's beard had developed nuclear warfare and these tiny little missiles would be launched from her bearded face, do an orbit around her head and impact the opposite side. You have to see it to understand. However, as funny as it was, there was a profound lesson to be learned in that incident or sequence of events. A lesson of how fallable and stubborn man is, but how we somehow find a way to overcome & move on. About half way through the episodes, it got less funny and more serious. The plot became more involved and things were slowly revealing itself.... up to the very end, where everything got wrapped up nice and neat with a happy ending. Overall, great series to buy and watch. I did a marathon that took me about 3 days to watch all 26 episodes. Last updated Saturday, June 14 2008. Created Saturday, June 14 2008. | ||||||||
| Rent |
 Stretch
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[series:1617#628] | ||||||
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(All episodes watched): This technology might be slightly more complicated and confusing than even real-world, present-day computers! I delayed watching the first episode for awhile for fear that the show might have a creepy, deadly tone to it, but in fact the mood was more one of teenage curiousity. Going in, the character designs of the OP sequence reminded me of Bokurano, but later Abenobashi seemed a more appropriate match. The chief question to this episode was figuring out what is real and what is cybernetic. It did get exciting--not just computer geek exciting, but exciting exciting--towards the end. That is, even though I don't know exactly what's going on, I sense danger and am intrigued; well done. This seemed kind of a confusing show, and a fairly lengthy one, which made me reluctant to commit to it. For the time being I saved all episodes to watch them later if I wished. Since then I stumbled across a number of wildly enthusiastic reviews. THEM Anime Review's critic awarded it five stars, and Anime Insider Magazine declared it one of ten as yet unlicensed shows which most ought to be. So I decided I was missing out on something very good and began watching again. Episode one made a good deal more sense the second time around. It's not the whole damn city that's virtual (a conclusion I jumped to the first time around), just the stuff you see through your special glasses, which makes a lot more sense. The technology quickly left me behind; what, for example, are "Illegals", "Metabugs", "Kirabugs", "Obsolete Space", etc, etc? I had little idea what was going on during the fierce computer battle that took place in episode four (but enjoyed it anyhow). Presumably a person can't be physically injured, just their expensive software might be decimated(?). Episode five was a lot of fun, but some of the comments which were made makes it sound like people's own bodies are virtual, which makes me wonder what's really going on. What's real and what's virtual, that is. But Dennou Coil is intriguing and entertaining anyhow, and this isn't the sort of show that will make you take a test at the end, and if you fail it all seems frustratingly confusing. Indeed, the characters seem interesting and charismatic on their own. I guess when assessing the humor in anime, I tend to think in terms of ordinary comedy and out-of-the-ordinary comedy. We seldom see the latter, so most of the time what I'm doing is rating how well a show does at delivering the former, modest form. But Dennou Coil is definitely a show which sometimes produces the latter, superior type. I know this after watching the episode in which the kids--even the girls--find themselves growing virtual beards! I think I should make it clear, however, that drama, rather than comedy, is the main focus of Dennou Coil. For the most part it is handled well and is gripping; learning the true goal of the bitchy Amasawa makes her much more likeable, for example. In fact, it's refreshing that nobody is 100% evil or 100% good. On the other hand, I'm not sure what to make of the tendency to inject quasi-supernatural elements into this tale of high technology; this has become something like a cyber ghost story. A startling revelation seemed almost more confusing than shocking to me since I barely understood what was going on to begin with. I liked the humorous Dennou Coil early on better than this one, but that's just me. Make no mistake, this is a neat show nevertheless and I was anxious to see how things would work out for the likeable and well developed characters. Fortunately, the story starts making sense towards the end, even for those of us who are neither computer-savvy nor have photographic memories. Since in the meantime I had been largely bewildered by the fictional technology (stuff like "a radar device which collected pieces of souls"--even I know that that is ridiculous in a literal sense), I hadn't tried to remember much and it was far too late to completely understand what was going on. The one thing which most frustrates me is a lack of an explanation of the difference between a "cyber body" and an ordinary one; I was closely watching for this, and I'm certain it never happened. I thought it was a person's special glasses which acted as a link to the cyber world, so how does your entire body--or a cyber-duplicate of it--wind up there? (I know this won't be making sense to you). Is a person's consciousness "on the other side" some sort of clone of the original, or can it really be transferred there? If so, how? Anyway, I was following the story with a relatively vague idea of what was going on, but was still able to follow the general plot and be touched by the way things worked out. And it was fun; one thing that was clear was that this was an exceptional show which I'm proud to have watched. My favorite line: "Somehow this battle has gotten really cheap" --Fumie Last updated Monday, April 07 2008. Created Monday, July 09 2007. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 chibi
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[series:1617#2380] | ||||||
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This is a strange, off-beat series. It has a sort of Matrix-like feel to it, a world where cyberspace and real space exist side by side. The people in it wear special glasses in order to see cyber-objects, like "electronic pets". Yasako looses her electronic dog in "obsolete space" but meets Fumie Hashimoto who helps her recover it (for a price). Yasako is then recruited into the "Coil Cyberinvestigation Agency" which is run by her weird grandmother. Nicely drawn with mixed CG, and interesting characters, but there's a lot of technobabble that makes the action run a bit slow at times. Really good music, too.
Last updated Thursday, June 14 2007. Created Tuesday, June 12 2007. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Jan-Chan
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[series:1617#967] | ||||||
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No less than 3 fansub groups have picked up on this series. Having seen the first episode, it appears to be a fun-and-strange story. More later - the summary needs to be rewritten. Last updated Tuesday, May 22 2007. Created Tuesday, May 22 2007. | ||||||||
Other Sites
| Name | URL |
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| Japanese TV Series Web Site | http://www.tokuma.co.jp/coil/ |
| Wiki-entry (English) for this series | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennou_Coil |
