First Look: Winter 2024 Anime Overview: Metallic Rouge (Patreon)

Premise: There are a robot-alien-whatever race called Neans and they're really oppressed and all that, you've heard about Detroit Become Human you know how it is. Rouge is a Nean who's been tasked by her brother with killing the Immortal Nine, super powerful Neans who want to not be oppressed and maybe kill humans who deserve it. Rouge's partner is Naomi Orthman and she's pretty fun. Eventually, Rouge sort of starts to wonder if ruthlessly killing her own people who are fighting oppression might be a bad thing actually.

Man what a mess. Kind of a fascinating, ambitious mess, but it's so bad.

I was attracted to this because like, it's focused on two women with really cool character designs! And they get to fight and be cool and have a vitriolic best buds kind of partner ship. Naomi is pretty charming.

The show does often LOOK good, and there's some genuinely cool animation moments, I'll give it that.

However, Imrealized fairly quickly that the story was a hodgepodge that didn't seem to have much of a grasp on even the basics of writing, but by that point I wanted to see what stupid plot twist it'd pull next. I don't know if it was a good decision but it sure was a decision I made. It means I get to write a review where I can be mean which is always weirdly easier than trying to convey how good a show I like it, I guess because less pressure.

The story starts in media res in a very confusing way. It does (attempt to) explain things a bit in later eps, but you never really stop having the feeling you've just been plopped in the middle of an ongoing story. I think it's very likely, that like so many shows, this was supposed to be a 26 episode show but it was cut down to 13 because original anime doesn't get to be that long anymore. I don't think a longer runtime would have made the plot less stupid and frustrating, but it probably would have made the show a little better and some events have more impact. But rather than cut some events to let the story breathe, the show insisted on cramming a ridiculous amount of plot twists into a short runtime, meaning they never had time to land and you had not reason to care about most of the characters.

The approach to the Neans was a total mess especially. Very badly written for the most part. The Neans are literally slaves. Because the Asimov Code (literally naming it that in universe is pretty funny I'll admit) they have to do whatever humans say, and most of the humans ruthlessly abuse them, use them as shields when there's danger, often steal their life giving nectar for kicks and leave them to die horribly, the police gun them down all the time, and also a huge amount of them are in a forced labor camp on Venus where they either die from the horrible conditions, (often falling directly in lava or being irradiated) or whatever or they just work until their bodies give out. (It definitely doesn't help that two of the Neans we see killed most horribly are Black-coded.)

DESPITE ALL THIS, the story tries to both sides it for most of the anime. Some of the Neans are actually really evil because they'll do violence to escape their oppression! That's so bad, they're just as bad as the humans, they're really mean and randomly murder their own allies! Rouge is genuinely presented with the dilemma of "you can free the Neans and maybe they'll rightfully want revenge and kill some humans and society will ~be in chaos~ or you can just let your own people continue to be enslaved and horribly killed and abused every day. And she's like "hmm I dunno. yeah I think freeing them could be bad". Incredible. (Granted it does come around a little in its conclusion when some characters randomly change their minds, but it's way too little too late)

If you couldn't tell, Rouge is a really nothing character who it's hard to find sympathetic with her baffling choices, except for in a couple episodes that were genuinely charming and fun and made you think hmm maybe it would have been fun to see those characters get into some shenanigans, if you ignore how horrible the stories' thesis is. Naomi at least has a fun personality, and I had a little bit of crush before her character mostly went down the tubes with everyone else.

Naomi and Rouge's dynamic was kind of fun and the best thing about the show (and the only times Rouge showed any personality was with Naomi and a spoiler character), but the show insisted on speedrunning their conflicts and separating them constantly despite that dynamic supposedly being so central to show, so.

But really, as I said, the most entertaining part of the end of the show was seeing how many ridic plot twists it could cram in, most of which had no impact because you didn't care about the characters, they didn't make much sense, and there was very little to set them up. EVIL ALIENS, EVIL FAMILIES, THAT CHARACTER WHO DOESN'T DO ANYTHING IS BEHIND EVERYTHING BECAUSE REASONS, that kind of stuff.

But I have to leave off one plot twist in the final episode is undone LITERALLY 30 SECONDS LATER because of something a character did off screen. It's so funny I have to tell you.

SPOILERS

Rouge pressed the button that frees all the Neans. Then a character who hadn't done much but I guess is the big bad now pops up and is like "Rouge you freeing the Neans was all part of my plan because you activating the device actually infected them with an EVIL PROGRAM AND NOW THEY WILL FIGHT FOR THE EVIL ALIENS". Rouge was like "wha?" but then the Neans glowing red evil eyes immediately turned off and the brother was like "actually I anticipated it and hacked it offscreen they're actually free." And the villain just leaves without really reacting. Amaaaazing.

So yes, wouldn't recommend this show unless you really like watching tranwrecks, and despite how amazing a trainwreck it is, there are stretches where it's just a slog.

(God, this review ended up longer than I thought. So much carnage and crumpled metal to describe. But now I'm officially free.)