Dennou Coil

In the near future, augmented reality has become a key part of daily life. A gentle middle school girl named Yuuko "Yasako" Okonogi and her family have just moved to Daikoku City despite rumors of people disappearing. There, her grandmother, nicknamed "Mega-baa," runs a shop called Megasia that specializes in illegal tools which interact with parts of the virtual world.

Mega-baa also hosts an unofficial detective agency called "Coil," a group of children around Yasako's age who find and handle corruption of the virtual world. Yasako gets involved with the group when Fumie Hashimoto, a playful member of Coil, helps rescue her cyberdog Densuke after getting trapped in virtual space while chasing a mysterious virus. Also investigating these corruptions and viruses is an abrasive hacker named Yuuko Amasawa, who the others take to calling Isako.

Can Coil discover the truths behind the mysterious viruses and corruption, and if they can, at what cost?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Amasawa, Yuuko Main

Kuwashima, Houko Japanese

Okonogi, Yuuko Main

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Harakawa, Kenichi Main

Park, Romi Japanese

Hashimoto, Fumie Main

Kojima, Sachiko Japanese

Sawaguchi, Daichi Main

Saitou, Rie Japanese

Densuke Supporting

Asou, Tomohisa Japanese

Oyaji Supporting

Yada, Kouji Japanese

Sacchi Supporting

Megabaa Supporting

Suzuki, Reiko Japanese

Mojos Supporting

Maruyama, Masao Producer

Matsumoto, Hisako Producer

Kunisaki, Hisanori Assistant Producer

Shioura, Masakazu Assistant Producer

Reviews

Jul 28, 2009

Venneh

Recommended

TITLE: Dennou Coil

ANIME: Dennou Coil was directed by Mitsuo Iso (well known for his key animation work on early Ghibli movies and Neon Genesis Evangelion) and was produced by Madhouse (well-known for their work on Death Note and Paranoia Agent). It ran on Japanese TV from May 12th, 2007 till December 1st, 2007 and, as of the time of this writing, has not been licensed Stateside.

STORY: The year is 2026, eleven years after the technology to turn the internet into augmented reality by the use of immersive "cyberglasses" was developed. Yuko "Yasako" Okonogi, a young girl in sixth grade, moves to Daikoku City, ... the center of the technology behind the glasses, and is strongarmed by her grandmother into joining her "investigation agency", composed of children with powerful illegal software codes and tools. On her first day in town, she runs into Yuko "Isako" Amasawa, a cold, aloof master hacker chasing a mystery in Daikoku City, that will soon involve both Yukos and their friends...

Dennou Coil is probably one of the best shows I've watched in a good long time. This show has been in development for about ten years, and with the incredible subtlety of this entire show, I can believe it. Every aspect of the technology, how the world works, and every tiny detail that one can think of for this blends together to make the world seem incredibly believable, if not possible in just a few years' time. It's just futuristic enough to seem amazing, yet grounded enough in reality to seem incredibly possible.

The plot and characters in this are incredibly well-constructed as well. Characters are slowly developed through various interactions and their relationships to others in episodes, and even though characters may not take a prominent role for a few episodes, they're always there in the background. And the plot itself is intricately woven; the smallest details from the earliest episodes, which seem like throwaways, come back to play in full force in the last half of the show. The first third of the show establishes the basics of the world and characters, then comes a brief filler arc that slowly brings things to the fore, and then the last third of the show takes everything that's come before and takes it into far darker places than everything up until this point would have you believe was possible. The final episodes of the show are probably some of the darkest I've seen in a show aimed towards a younger audience to date, but, regardless, resolve amazingly well.

ART: Dennou Coil has a bit simpler character design than other shows that Madhouse has done; the kids and adults are a bit more angular, and are a bit less intricately designed than, say, characters from Death Note. However, their traditional realism shows through in the interaction of the virtual environment and the real environment; incredible amounts of detail are put into the various software codes and tools that the children use, along with how they manifest (and yes, some will call similarities on some of the patterns that show in the hackers' codings and the arrays in Fullmetal Alchemist, but really, let's not be nitpicky here).

MUSIC: The background music for this series doesn't particularly stand out, but, regardless, is a well-done score, and worth a listen to. The OP and ED are done by the same singer, Ayako Ikeda, and are some of the best opening and ending songs I've heard in a long while, the OP and its eerieness in general especially.

SEIYUU: Fumiko Orikasa (well-known for her roles in Hellsing as Seras and in Saikano as Chise) takes a starring role in this as Yasako and does an incredible job in the role. Otherwise, all the other seiyuu in this production do a solid job.

LENGTH: Dennou Coil was meticulously planned, I think, to be just the right length; not too long, so that it wouldn't drag, but not too short, so that there wouldn't be information overload. No complaints here, in general, a wonderful job in planning - then again, ten years in development does that to a show.

OVERALL: One of the best shows that I've seen in a good long time, with incredible amounts of detail, and well-constructed plots and characters, and solid background music, art, and seiyuu.

An underappreciated gem of the 2007 season; watch it.

STORY: 10/10
ART: 9/10
MUSIC: 9/10
SEIYUU: 9/10
LENGTH: 10/10

OVERALL: 47/50; 94% (A)

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Dec 18, 2013

ktulu007

Mixed Feelings

Dennou Coil is a sci-fi series from that particular studio I have a love-hate relationship with, Madhouse. It's one of those uncommon anime that's not based on anything and was entirely studio created. It did get manga and light novel adaptations, however. I can't even give a good guess as to its quality since Madhouse has made both some of the best and the very worst anime I've ever seen. Let's take a look.

Dennou Coil takes place in a futuristic world where people can use glasses to view and interact with a world of cyberspace. Our protagonist is the young Okonogi Yuuko. Her family moves ... to Daikoku City. Yuko quickly encounters a strange black being from cyberspace called an “illegal.” The story revolves around the mystery of illegals, obsolete space, and a young encoder named Amasawa Yuuko who seems to have plans for the illegals. The series has some interesting ideas, but it also has its problems. There are some really clunky exposition moments. The most prominent happens towards the end of the series when the main antagonist explains their motivation to their accomplice... who already knows the information... for no good reason. It's just awkward and stilted. To be fair, most of the dialogue sounds perfectly natural, but there are occasional moments like that. Another issue is that there's quite a bit of filler that doesn't tie into the main narrative and just serves to pad the series. There are some episodes that don't have a single important event, most notably the mustache and Nessie ones. There are other episodes where roughly five minutes will be important and the rest won't be. The biggest issue is the emphasis on romance. Most of the characters are 6th graders, forcing romance into their dynamics isn't just nonsensical (since kids that young are, at most, just starting to understand what love is in a very shallow and simplistic way not having real romances and certainly not having romances that are treated as serious) but it's not relevant to the plot nor organic. It's pretty forced and everything would have worked better if the relationships had been left as friendships. On the positive side, there are some really good emotional moments, when they aren't shoehorning in romance, the world is developed and interesting and the narrative itself, when they dispense with the filler, is really engaging.

The characters, putting aside the very stupid romantic elements, are mostly well done. They have some interesting dynamics and the major ones do get some good development. There is one major exception, Yuuko's younger sister, Kyoko. She is one of the most obnoxious, pointless characters I've ever seen. Her role mostly consists of getting into trouble and having to get rescued, tormenting Yuuko's cyberdog, Densuke, and pointing at things while saying “poop.” They could have replaced her with a Labrador wearing cyberglasses and it would've been an improvement, as the Labrador would have been cute and not said “poop” constantly.

The art is pretty bland. The characters and backgrounds are really minimalistic. It wouldn't bother me too much, except that the cyberspace elements tend to be really boring. You've got spheres, cubes, robots that look like inflatable toys and vague blobs. You'd think cyberspace would be more interesting, but it is supposed to be fairly new so I guess it makes some sense that it's not quite there yet. It's also entirely possible that the artist team was just lazy or that Madhouse thought the minimalistic aesthetic would be the best for this type of story. On the positive side, Madhouse does almost entirely refrain from their usual fan-service, probably because most of the characters are children, although they do have a little bit with the older Tamako.

The voice acting is pretty good. Kuwashima Houko, Orikasa Fumiko and Paku Romi all give good performances. The major weakness is Yajima Akiko, not because she's a bad actor. She was actually stellar in Blue Drop and good in both Berserk and Gundam Wing, in spite of playing an annoying character in Wing too, The problem here is that she doesn't have much to work with. She says “poop” in an over-excited voice a lot. The music is subdued and quiet for most of the series, but it's pretty effective.
The Ho-yay factor is a 2/10. There are some scenes that do lean a little towards the homo-erotic, but nothing substantial.

And that's Dennou Coil. It has some things it does really well and some really annoying aspects. In the end, I did like more about it than I disliked. My final rating is a 6/10. It's a decent piece that could have been much better with some more effort. Next week I'll end my December reviews with a look at Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 24, 2008

thefunkhunter

Not Recommended

Denno Coil in my opinion is not a good anime and I cannot recommend the series so therefore it gets a very low 4 rating.

The story borrows heavily from full metal alchemists and the collection of kirabugs to open up to the "otherside" is completely unoriginal.

The art is great in the way it combines cg and cartoon seamlessly however, the colors are not vibrant and the drawings are a bit 2d looking and plain.

Sound is nothing special voice acting is average and the soundtrack is poor despite a great opening theme song.

Characterization has some depth and it tries to be complex, however, one of ... the main characters is the dog, densuke. He is a great character but unfortunately is hardly in the tv-series, he plays a major part later on, but the tv series would of been much better if he played a bigger role throughout.

Overall, I found the series to drag throughout its slow pace and uneventful tv series. The final 3 episiodes are good and emotional, but the characterization is so undercooked that the impact is significantly less impactful than it should have been. I would recommend the final 3 episodes, but the rest of the series was a bore.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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