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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avoid | 8 | 8 | 7 | 5 | 3 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:4272#1552] | |
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Human Lost is meant to be an adaptation of Osamu Dazai's novel, No Longer Human, whom some may be familiar with from its earlier animated adaptation from the 2009 anthology series, Aoi Bungaku Series. However, this film only has faint resemblances to the classic psychological novel as it instead dabbles into a dystopian sci-fi world where advances in technology and health have led to certain "chosen" members of society being able to dabble into these benefits at the expense of the majority of the populace. There is resistance from some in the populace against those benefiting from these advances, but they are all being manipulated by the nihilistic Masao Horiki who has his own chaotic plans in place to cause the dystopian society to fall through the use of monstrous beings he can create from humans called Lost, and a troubled young man named Yozo Oba possibly being the only one who can stop Horiki's plans. There are enough issues with what Human Lost decides to do with the premise to No Longer Human. Instead of the mentality of a societal outcast being a monster being viewed as a psychological one like from the original novel, Human Lost chooses to go with this more literally as humans not among the "chosen" find themselves becoming Losts through Horiki's manipulations. While exploring No Longer Human's themes in this way may have some storytelling potential, Human Lost instead wastes this opportunity by focusing more on the spectacle of Lost wrecking havoc in violent ways and dabbling too heavily into dystopian sci-fi tropes, with the characters largely being archetypes. Whatever philosophical dabbling that the film seemingly attempts to spin is largely window dressing and the series doesn't dabble too deeply into exploring why its society is set up as it is and what a good deal of its title's jargon even means. In essence, its story is largely hollow and feels like a waste with what its original source material offered up. With Polygon Pictures at the helm of animating this, their typical 3DCG animation style is employed. Human Lost is among the studio's more ambitious works with the great amount of animation depicted with humans, the Lost, and vehicles. However, the rendering of human characters is still as rough as when I seen a few of Polygon Picture's TV anime with Knights of Sidonia and Ajin in that the designs still have an artificial look and facial expressions still look a bit rough to see in close camera shots. In short, Human Lost is largely a creative mess that gets too focused on its spectacle at the cost of a potentially intriguing premise coming from Osamu Dazai's well-known masterpiece. If you want a more closer adaptation of No Longer Human, I'd strongly suggest trying to track down Aoi Bungaku Series as its first four episodes depict No Longer Human within the anthology series. Last updated Sunday, March 14 2021. Created Sunday, March 14 2021. | ||||||||
