Review: Dimension W “The Wind of Africa.”

Overview.

This episode is largely setup for events to come. It’s one part a Kyoma character study where we watch him trying to be nice to a very important kid that latches on to him. The other half is showing exactly who or what that kid might be and what it means for his, and his brothers, appearance in the country. In fact, this episode is so Kyoma focused that Mira doesn’t even appear until very late in the episode.

Writing-wise, Dimension W’s biggest problem continues to be the repartee between its two leads. They’ve just had very few interactions at all. I don’t think there have been any developments in how they relate to one another since the third episode, and even that one was frustratingly opaque. Kyoma’s feelings towards Mira still seem to be limited to resentment and indifference. Rather than softening up, he’s gotten even meaner to her, telling her to go away and even punching her in the last episode. (This also makes his continued willingness to serve as her guardian increasingly inexplicable. If it’s just because Mary asked him to, then between this and Lwai, he’s starting to seem like an enormous pushover for no reason.) The show is not building a sense of camaraderie between these two. This might make sense of it were doing something atypical for the genre – say, building towards a status quo where they’re enemies rather than friends – but Dimension W has otherwise been so generic in its storytelling that I doubt it will play such a strange hand. This feels like a genuine mistake of character development. Oh well.

This episode even introduces a new, likely disposable character to take over the “irritating child who Kyoma begrudgingly becomes attached to” role. C’mon, Dimension W, that needed to be Mira like three episodes ago. You don’t have time to waste. Also, please let Kyoma express an emotion other than stone-faced indifference. The generic hints of a dead woman in his past would’ve been much more tolerable if there were at least some pathos, but he continues to have the emotional range of a brick wall.

It’s also clear that Kyoma’s frustrations towards Mira could extend beyond her being a Coil-Powered Robot since he wasn’t so dickish towards Lwai but let’s hope that gets answered too.

The direction remains clumsy. I gave them the benefit of the doubt for a while, but I’ve finally decided that those cut-out background jump cuts are irritating as all hell. They’re used to poor effect here, not as punch lines to jokes, but as an attempt to highlight cool, sexy, or otherwise tense moments. The effect fails because impact shots like those usually benefit more from visual context. For example, the brief moment of action between Mary’s robot and Lwai would have been much more effective if the shots made use of the background to create cool compositions. I mean, speed lines exist for a reason. They create a sense of dynamism when you can’t afford to show the real thing through animation. In this case, isolating the characters just destroys their sense of movement and interaction. Another instance occurred when Salva used some sort of power to bind/arouse his assistant, Lashithi. She appears in a cut-out shot to emphasize how her body contorts. I could see this shot being more informative or even sexy if it included evocative elements from its environment – for example, the implication that she’s being caged by the car, or even a reminder of Salva’s gaze. These cutouts are a needless restriction of film’s expressive power. My eyes also keep getting bored every time one of them comes up. When the viewer is asking “okay when is this over” in the middle of something that lasts five seconds at most, something has gone wrong. With its art design and action-adventure premise, Dimension W had the potential to be visually exciting. But the direction – while making an effort to be distinct – has consistently dropped the ball.

Six episodes in and I’m confident in saying that Dimension W is nowhere near as good as it could have been, but also nowhere near as bad. Of all possible outcomes, but it still remains interesting, at least from the perspective of critical dissection. There’s still plenty for opportunity for the show to improve – or get worse, if it wants to go that way. Dimension W remains mostly potential, both positive and negative, and that in itself can feel disappointing now that we’re already at the halfway mark.

What starts off as a weird diversion quickly turns into a gathering of all the characters introduced thus far. As if New Tesla was sketchy enough, Islero is a mega corp giving them a run for their money in the ethics department. Prince Salva puts on a good public face but he’s got megalomaniac written all over him. The introduction of the Islero cooperation and their robots heralds in a new conflict, a competition for robotic resources and a threat to everyone we’ve met so far. What his goal might be remains unknown. More importantly, we’re slowly starting to learn about Kyoma’s past and it looks like we’re about to find out what drives him.

While the last two episodes was a fairly convoluted ghost story, this one indulges in some clumsy and overlong setup for a “Battle Royale” scenario. (And No, I won’t reference or quote Hunger Games because I never seen any of the films because 1. they ripped off Battle Royale’s basic concept, and 2. I think Jennifer Laurence is an overrated bland actress.) At least I think that’s where it’s going – it’s hard to tell what else Kyoma and Mira going to an island fight meetup as arranged by an African prince character could possibly mean.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what this will lead to and it was both refreshing and interesting for this Anime to get more diversity. 🙂