THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS Texhnolyze is a cyberpunk series that showcases humanity both at its best as well as at its worst oftentimes seamlessly blending the two together in the same moment. Taking place in the dreary underground city of Lux saturated with a suffocating and oppressive atmosphere the viewer is soon introduced to several major characters over the course of the first few episodes. Among them are a stoic young man who survives as an entertainment fighter the resolute leader of a mafialike organization known as The Organo a girl with increasingly accurate precognitive abilities that allow her to catch glimpses of the future an ironwilled group that holds idealistic beliefs a twisted doctor a gang of rash hedonists and perhaps most importantly a stranger not from the underground city but rather from the surface above who begins a slow descent into this dark dystopian society soon igniting a series of events that will determine the course of the future of humanity forever. Among those who worked on Texhnolyze were Chiaki J. Konaka Yoshitoshi ABe and Yasuyuki Ueda who had previously collaborated on the strange and bizarre Serial Experiments Lain. Chiaki J. Konaka has over the course of his career acquired a reputation for being involved in writing some of the most peculiar pieces of work within the medium with Texhnolyze being among the series that demonstrates his talents strikingly well. ABes art tends to favor a more realistic design than what is found in most other series and frequently has a gloomy sense of melancholy to it. Within Texhnolyze the creators manage to work a lot into the twentytwo episode run. So what is the point of this series what value can be found in it? Well in essence what the creators want to express is something from within something beautifully human. Texhnolyze is frequently treated as series that is all about nihilism. This is not the case though it is not about pure nihilism. Rather to me it seems to acknowledge and explore it but ultimately it clearly and wholly rejects it. Texhnolyze is dark and remorseless in the pursuit of its message but fundamentally inspiring and rife with an optimistic outlook. A series from Studio Madhouse made in the early 2000s Texhnolyze begins with an episode that has almost no dialogue. Following after that episode are even more episodes that may at times feel very slowpaced. This is a deliberate attempt to demonstrate the nature of the slowly crumbling monotonous lives led by the people within this series. In order to have the viewer to feel and understand this it is structured such that it will feel like a brutal and suffocating trek across a wasteland. Now being slow does not mean it is bad by any means slowpacing is not an inherently bad thing as some people may have you believe. As slow as Texhnolyze can be there is almost always something of import occurring during that time. Texhnolyze is a series that relishes in letting its audience draw conclusions for themselves and oftentimes focuses more on showing rather than telling. I suppose I should emphasize this since from my perspective it is one of the most interesting aspects of the show: it loves to show and will rarely if ever tell the viewer what it is actually saying. The creators also wanted the viewers of Texhnolyze to feel and understand the pain the characters experienced in the series they wanted it conveyed as clearly as possibleanother reason for the slow pacing early on in the seriesand so when characters are injured or events transpire we are readily able to glimpse into their feelings via their facial expressions their displayed behaviors and the actions they take. Additionally I suppose it may require mentioning that this series lacks likable characters which is probably bound to turn some away. The main character will also not be the primary focus of the story in its entirety. Its more like everyone in the story is equally important. Likable and/or relatable characters are not a necessity for a series to be good anyway and so the value of the characters will not be evaluated upon such a belief. What matters is whether or not the characters within are handled well. This is the case with Texhnolyze none of them are neglected and each one serves a purpose within the story. There are no good guys or bad guys which is quite gratifying. Classifying a person as just good or just bad is a naive way of thinking instead of doing so characters within Texhnolyze are treated as though they were an actual human and behave as one might in such a society as the one seen here. The characters in Texhnolyze seem almost like a symbolic representation for a characteristic of humanity at times. Even so they will still maintain their own identity. From here I will begin to discuss spoilers which will continue all the way until the end of this review. Read at your own risk. BEWARE: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD Ichise is an individual that I can see as being a representation of the human will to survive. This is demonstrated by the way he can always be seen crawling around and struggling but never giving up as he tries desperately to cling to life. He loses an arm and a leg yet continues to grapple and fight to survive. Once we consider him to be the human will to live his days as an underground prize fighter take on a new meaning. He has always been placed in a situation where he must forcefully struggle just to scrape by in life. He is constantly wrestling with and making efforts to push onward to the point that he seems like a wild animala stray dog as the series puts itbut at the same time much like a human. Ichise frequently makes grunting noises...a lot but the grunting sounds he makes often do an impeccable job of separating him from other characters and demonstrating that he is an individual who wants to live and will fight to do so. He may have nothing in the world but he still refuses to passively die being a perfect representation of human perseverance. He is often shown being at the mercy of another controlled by factors he cannot repel whether as a prize fighter as one of Docs subjects as a member of the Organo as one who suffers his own fate he seems to have very little control over his own life and seeks only his own survival. However I would say that he does have control over his life and his fate. His desire to survive is his choice thus it is by his own will that he survives. As the will to live should he not have had control over his survival he would not have allowed himself to be subjected to such control to begin with as it would not be in his nature to do so. It must be his choice and no one elses. I would not call him a tragic existence since he has truly lived and this is expressed most convincingly when he smiles and then subsequently dies at the end. Ran can seen as a prophet a guide an oracle in a metaphorical manner Ran is a character that I can see as representing the future of humanity itself in a sense at least. She has the ability to see the future because she is the manifestation of humanitys future. She wants to protect the future of humanity and prevent its extinction a future she has prophesied will occur. It is shown that her visions are not necessarily always going to be correct and they can be changed something that has to do with fatefate as written by the individual. Fate can be loved as fate is controlled by whomsoever it refers to not the other way around. It is ones own life and ones life every aspect of itthe happiness the pain and the sufferingall of it is their own and it is by their own choices that their fate exists. Fate in Texhnolyze is not the result of something beyond ones control but rather as something that is dictated by ones choices and by extension ones choices cannot be dictated by fate. Why does Rans prophecy about the extinction of humanity come true or why is Ran able to predict the future? It may be due to the concept of the eternal recurrence of the same note that philosophical concepts are at times integrated into the series but it is important to acknowledge that they do not define it which is alluded to a few times in the series. Everything will play out the same way every time no matter how times and it cannot be fought. Ran may not be seeing the future she may be seeing something that has already occurred many times before. When the future of humanity is effectively gone she asks Oonishi to destroy her she is The Voice of the City and during the course of the series Oonishi can listen to her without losing his sanity as she is the cause of the madness in Lux after having shown the residents her visions. The last remaining humans in the city have been consumed by insanity due to these visions. If she represents the future it would be a good reason as to why she wanted to protect and help Ichise who represents the will to survive. With no future Ran there can be no will to live Ichise and with no will to live there can be no future. The actions and lines spoken between these two throughout the series seemed to indicate such an idea to me at least. These two characters have a very siblinglike relationship within the series and perhaps the best way to describe the relationship between the human will to survive and the future of humanity is siblinglike as well. In a way they would both be like the children of humanity. Within the series Ichise or humanitys will to live wants to know his future and the answer he ends up getting from Ran is one he rejects saying he would not let it come to pass. Once Ichise returns to Lux after seeing the surface world of the Theonormals he said something along the lines of What choice have I got? I have to protect you to a vision of Ran that he spoke to upon his arrival back in the city The quote was something like that it may not be entirely accurate. I think it was in episode 21.. This would also seem like a good indication to me that the will to survive and the future need to protect each other if humanity is to truly survive. Ichise has come to that realization that he must protect Ran the same way she has been protecting him throughout the series. The flowers that Ran is frequently shown carrying selling and dropping at points in the series are meant to represent the hope for the future. In episode five she drops them into the maze of a sewer that Ichise aimlessly wanders and uses them to guide him the human will to survive to her. After he manages to escape his unwilling predicament in this labyrinth he falls unconscious and she leaves a white flower by him. The idea of this flower becomes central to Ichises character for the remainder of the series. Additionally note the way this scene where Ichise wanders the sewers mirrors the final scenes of the series as well. As Ichise wanders the sewers his confusion and anger at his inability to find the exit is reflective of his internal state at the time. When Ichise returns to Lux at the end of the series whereupon he begins his trek to find Ran and confront Kano he is calm and understands who he is at this point. He understands that he was capable of change though he also remained much the same person even if and when a person changes they are still the same person. Ran leads Ichise out of the sewer Ichise talks with a vision of Ran as he goes to find her in the final scenes. After Ichise escapes the sewer it is Ran who strokes his head in the end it is Ichise who carries Ran and returns her to the Raffia. Ran leaves the flower by Ichises head Ichises texhnolyze arm projects a flower. Within the sewers Ichise lies against a wall seemingly resigning himself and giving up at the end Ichise rests against a pillar and bleeds out as he accepts with satisfaction this time that he has lived and can die taking comfort in that fact. As the will to live it is significant that at the point in the sewers when he has resigned himself it was almost immediately after that point that Ran the future of humanity reignited his desire to survive by dropping the flowers into the sewer to lead him out. https://www..com/watch?v=6NszZ7JpqHc https://www..com/watch?v=Ohhx7KGNnmM If you wish to compare. I could not find a video that contains the scene where Ichise talks to the vision of Ran. Additionally Ichise lies against a wall/pillar many times besides the two notable times I mentioned above over the course of the series and each time he does this something of importance about him is being conveyed in that instant. This recurrent visual cue is meant to stimulate within the viewer an association between Ichise and what he is going through at this point in time. When he lies near a wall the series is asking the viewer to contemplate what is happening because it is often establishing something significant about him as a character. There was a time when I thought that the crude projection of the flower Ichises texhnolyze arm shows in the last scene was something that the doctor Eriko was responsible for because one would assume she is the one who would be responsible for it due to her being the person who gave him the texhnolyze limbs in the first place and repairs them when they are damaged. She knew he liked the flowers. There is a scene where they were walking on the surface and she took notice of him looking at them episode 19 or 20 I believe. Also of note about this scene is that when Ichise looks at the flower on the surface it immediately wilts and dies. He then looks back the way they came towards Lux and stares in that direction for a few seconds. The wilting flower is a sign that hope is dying that the future of humanity is soon to be no more. https://www..com/watch?v=SxHc4boKXhw Skip to 1:36 Eriko witnessed this and while she certainly had come to care about Ichise over the course of the series I have since wondered if Eriko being entirely responsible for the projection within his texhnolyze arm is not actually be the case actually I think it is more of dual effort at least in a way. Eriko put it there but perhaps it is actually Ran who made the projection appear in the last scene in this way the future and the will to live would die together then. She is the one who controls the texhnolyze limbs through the Obelisk. Am I remembering this right? Sorry it has been a while since Ive finished the series and I cant recall. This would also parallel the scene where Ichise wanders the sewers in episode five with the final scenes of the last episode rather well too. As for the reason why Ran is able to project the flower out of his texhnolyze arm despite or maybe in spite of killing her mind as Kano claimed is that Ichise is her last connection to the world. By this way of thinking the vision of her that walks alongside Ichise as he returns to Lux is not just something in Ichises headshe is actually there in a sense. Ichise does end up fulfilling the prophecy of Ran and dying alone but at the same time he wasnt truly alone because in a way Ran and the others who he met in his life are there with him and they also die with him. The thoughts that he truly lived his life and is grateful for this and for those he met along the way lets him die satisfied. The flower projection is a reminder of what he found in living. He smiles one of the only times he does so in the entire series and slowly fades away. Keigo Oonishi represents the order of humanity. He works to ensure that the order of the society of the city will be upheld since he believes that is to better Lux. So when the order diesas the people of Lux have gone madOonishi being the incarnation of that order soon dies as well by the very people he strove to help. In the series Oonishi serves as a mentor to Ichise and is almost like a father for him. Kazuho Yoshii is a bit like both the irrationality and rationality of humanity. The actions he takes seem extremely irrational to the other characters but at the time he is trying to prevent Lux from becoming like the terrifyingly bleak surface world. He believes Lux is a living world unlike the dead one on the surface and does everything he can to prevent it from reaching a similar outcome as that one has. He believes in the living human. He denies wanting to know his future when Ran asks him if he would like to know it. He doesnt need to know his future because he already knows his life and its meaning. More clearly though he is widely acknowledged by a majority of those I have talked about this series with to be the Ubermensch. So being the irrationality and rationality representation is somewhat related. Yoshii is a Man among Menthe Man of Men. Yoshii is the antithesis of the decadence of the surface world. Yoshii embraces his fate and loves his life and when he dies he does so with a smile. The doctor Eriko can represent the advancement of the human species. She believes the texhnolyze limbs are what can help to achieve this. When she returns to the surface she discovers that they have given up on the texhnolyze limbs she sees they are now ghosts apparently the perfection of the human species. She has lost her purpose and without that purpose she cannot live soon dying thereafter. Within the series Eriko is like a second mother to Ichise as well. To hammer in the fact that the surface world denizens are like ghosts the series goes out of its way to literally have some of them possess the translucent appearance commonly thought to be characteristic of a ghost. Shinji leader of the Racan is the naivety of humanity. He dreams of being one of The Class. When he eventually discovers their true form he proceeds to kill them. He is killing his dream in a literal sense and seeing as he is no longer that naive and trusting individual he is meant to represent he can no longer exist and is literally killed by his dreams blasting a whole through his chest. He is empty inside both literally and metaphorically. Kano is a representation of solipsism believing that he is the only thing that he is certain exists. Perhaps he can also even be insanity itself. Though his goals seem to be very sanehe wants to improve mankind or so he claimshis methods to do so are what many would agree insane. He improves humanity by destroying the very things that make them human. Humans are human because they can die and because they maintain their soul. By disregarding this and turning them into the immortal Shapes he has failed to help mankind ironically damning them instead. Tatsuya Sakimura is a character that Im not too confident in my description of but he is a fantasist. He is dead and resigned to his own end like the surface dwellers but he is captivated by Yoshii Yoshiis desires are enthralling to him. He dreams of the world Yoshii envisions. He too much like Shinji also kills his dreams Yoshii when he sees he has been mortally wounded episode 10 and with it he returns to the already dead and seemingly nihilistic surface dweller. Motoharu Kimata is the hypocrisy of humanity. He is a leader of a group known as the Salvation Union that rejects the texhnolyze despite being a texhnolyze himself. Haruhiko Tooyama is the oversight of humanity. He becomes one of the Shapes and ends up thanking Ichise when he kills him having come to realize that he has made a mistake. By becoming one of the Shapes he has forsaken his humanity. At the point when Ichise kills Tooyama Ichise has decided to return to Lux in order to protect Ran. Ichises oversight in this case was that he did not realize that he must protect Ran the future before and it has now been killed by his decision to return. Ichises other oversight was wrongfully blaming his father for the death of his mother and that is killed as well when he meets the ghost of his father and apologizes to him. Kohakura is a representation of the treachery of humanity. He does betray the leader of the Organo Oonishi but this is not the his biggest act of treachery. His greatest act of disloyalty is to himself. He betrays his own humanity in his decision to become one of The Shapes. He is permanently rooted to the ground facing downwards for an eternity with the rest of The Shapes who betrayed their humanity as well by the end of the series. Lux is meant to represent the Ninth Circle of Hell at this point. These Shapes who have altered themselves to an unrecognizable existence shaped humanitys end. They have inherited the Earth though it is ultimately meaningless now. The different factions within the series can also perhaps be representative of certain things. The Organo is a mafialike organization that is representative of opportunism the Salvation Union is fanaticism/idealism the Racan is hedonism those of Gabe are determinism Kanos beliefs are again solipsism with maybe some Social Darwinism in there as well the Theonormals surface world citizens are nihilism Kind of. They are meant to represent the Last Man and the Class represent a caste system. The name of the city Lux seems to be a rather deceitful title for the underground societyinitially at least. This name which means light is seemingly ironic. You may think it sounds strange calling the dark dismal city of Lux the city of light and hope however by the end of the series it is realized that it was. We are left with the understanding that the denizens of Lux were indeed the lucky ones when compared to the lives led by those on the surface. Having noticeably been able to maintain their human nature unlike those upon the surface they never sank into an outright nihilistic again not quite nihilism but it is close or fruitless existence. They had their humanity though life was tough brutal and cruel they remained alive although appearing lifeless. They never devolved into the lifestyle of those on the surface who merely live as ghosts awaiting their inevitable end unable to reproduce too tired to even do anything let alone die willingly which the series seems imply they would do if it was not for the effort. The Theonormals are the apparent perfection of humans they do not suffer from disease there is no war there is no struggle everything they could ever want has been obtained but they are not alive. They live a decadent life where their only desires are comfort and security until death finally arrives. The art/artstyle of Texhnolyze is bleak dull somber and gloomy. It is coupled with an emotionally evocative soundtrack that does an exceptional job of setting an appropriate tone for the series. Some of the tracks convey a deep sense of desolation others a great degree of urgency at other times a track produces a poignant melancholy and still at other times it provides a gentle tune to exude an air of fragile grace. https://www..com/watch?v=6mvdxhVZD90 Oftentimes rather than a soundtrack there are some ambient noises that are occurring insteadan effect that is often very prominent in the series directed by Hiroshi Hamasaki. There is a meticulous attention to detail in the series: from the outfits the characters wear saying something specific about them to the backgrounds which are often hidden with a subtle meaning themselvesit manages to capture the tone the series is aiming for. Characters designs had little room for symbolic elements to be implemented due to a desire to make the characters look as realistic as possible however there are certain little things there. For example Ichises eyes are bright blue brimming with life Ran wears a kitsune mask. There is an interaction between light and dark all throughout the course of the seriesanother trait shared in Hamasakis shows. There is recurrent usage of a train and train tracks meant to symbolize the progression of humanity within Lux specifically and indeed when we reach the end of those tracks we have also soon reached the end of the series and the end of Lux. Also recurring in the series are spinning fans which too served a purpose. Often simultaneously setting a tone or being used for atmospheric purposes also common in other Hamasaki series I believe they also served another purpose. There is an idea of cycles in the series. Humanity has run its course from beginning to end the characters have completed the cycle from life to deatheverything eventually completes its cycle and the cycle will repeat eternally if you wanted to apply a literal interpretation of the eternal recurrence which is occasionally referenced. Another thing I would like to note is the titles of each episode. From Episode 1s title Stranger where Yoshii the stranger to the city of Lux in this case descends into that underground setting to the tragic irony of Episode 19s Heavenward to the realization of Episode 20s title Hades referring to the surface once considered by the characters within the series to be a utopian paradise to the fact that humanity has indeed become a Myth by the end of Episode 22 each title was chosen with calculated and methodical contemplation by the writers. Texhnolyze managed to capitalize on all the potential it had in the greatest way possible making it a piece of work that I can wholeheartedly describe as a glorious triumph within the animated medium. Riveting and thematically rich psychologically intriguing and dramatic in remarkable ways Texhnolyze was a very rewarding experience. Yes Texhnolyze may seem like an absurdist series in ways but I also believe that it can be seen as a series about seeking meaning in that meaningless world with hopemeaning it eventually transitions into an existential series. While the series integrates the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche at times it never frames any of what he believes as the truth its just using some ideas not being defined by them. And it isnt even necessary to know what Nietzsches all about to enjoy the series anyway. Its merely interesting to note when some of his ideas come up. Texhnolyze ends with the extinction of humanityan empty age. The final scene is the slow fading away of the city and finally the slow fading away of Ichise the endling of the human speciesthe last living human. Perhaps this ending seems like a completely depressing soulcrushing conclusion to some but I disagree. When the ending is examined a little closer one will find perhaps the most inspiring and optimistic message within it in all of the animated medium. An ending that is nothing short of perfection. An ending that exemplifies what the series wants to express flawlessly. A necessary end. Despite the fact that all who live will inevitably someday meet their end there are still those who can find meaning in their livesas humans. Note: It has been quite a long while since I have actually watched this series so there may be a few inaccuracies within this review so my apologies if there are.