Texhnolyze (テクノライズ, Tekunoraizu) is a Japanese anime television series directed by Hiroshi Hamasaki, from a screenplay by Chiaki J. Konaka, and produced by Yasuyuki Ueda, with original character design by Yoshitoshi ABe.
Texhnolyze aired on Fuji Television from April 16, 2003 to September 24, 2003 and aired twenty episodes. Two un-aired episodes were included in the DVD release. Geneon USA's English dub of the series aired in the United States on STARZ!/Encore's Action channel in 2006, then aired again on Funimation Channel and Funimation Channel on Demand when Funimation licensed the series from Geneon Entertainment. It also aired in Canada on G4techTV Canada's Anime Current block in the mid-2000s. Japanese visual kei singer Gackt's song Tsuki no Uta was selected as its ending theme.
Plot[]
The events take place in the vibrant yet dilapidated underground city of Lux. Denizens of Lux have come to call it "The City" and treat it as a sentient force. Three factions vie for control of the city: the Organo, a strictly professional conglomerate with ties to the criminal underworld in the prostheses business ("Texhnolyze"); the Salvation Alliance, a fanatical populist group interfering with the Organo's affairs; and the Racan, a marauding group of Texhnolyzed youths. The series has an ensemble cast, but events particularly focus on Ichise, a stoic prize fighter who loses a leg and an arm to satisfy an enraged promoter; Keigo Onishi, a young but level-headed executive of the Organo who has many enemies; and Ran, a little girl who has a very important gift that affects the entire city. As they struggle to accept the challenges that they are dealt, the characters bear witness to major events that determine the survival and fate of the city.
Ichise, an orphan turned prize fighter, loses a leg and an arm to satisfy an enraged fight promoter. On the brink of death he is taken in by a young woman doctor, Eriko Kamata, and used as a guinea pig for the next evolution of Texhnolyze. With his new limbs, Ichise is taken under the wing of Onishi. As Ichise is drawn deeper into a war for territorial control of the city, he learns of his possible future from the young girl prophet Ran, who guides him from the shadows in his darkest times. With the explosion of open warfare, Ichise must uncover the truth about Lux and fight for his survival as he realizes his destiny.
Interpretations[]
The series generally maintains an extremely dark and depressing atmosphere throughout the show, but the ending still manages to be impressively sad. Essentially, everyone dies, Ran's prophecy is fullfilled despite everything, the Shapes are left immortal and immobile, meaning everything that happened was for naught. It's telling how depressing this ending is that most viewers will actually be kind of glad Ichise is dead, because the absolute hell that was his short life is finally over.
Given the nature of the series, it's difficult to assess the motives of the characters, particularly since many of the characters, Ichise and Ran in particular, are given to introversion, and the show's style means that we get little insight into the characters' thought processes except when they interact with each other.
There's some theory among fandom holds that Kano is telling the truth when he claims that Lux exists only within his mind. By the end, the series is so heavily saturated in Gnostic symbolism and ideology that you can hardly move for the paranoia, philosophical debate (or maybe "dog fight" would be a better word), and archetypal parallels. The fact that Kano actually thinks he's the demiurge does not help things.
Whether we live being free or having a meaning Texhnolyze seems to tell us that in the end humanity as a whole is doomed. Kano in this sense is indeed the sanest person and many people in the city adhered to his ideology and plans for humanity. If we change our nature we’ll finish like the theonormals but if we don’t it’ll be the reason we die out. Extinction seems to be the only outcome. Fundamentally changing our species and casting aside our humanity like Kano did is probably the only way to continue existing.
But we can look at it all in a slightly different way. The series examines a number of topics related to the extinction of the human race and nihilism. While the series seems to imply that humans are nothing but senseless animals at the beginning, it slowly begins to flip this premise on it's head by the end. As the show draws to a close, it ends on the absolute worst outcome for the cast, with literally everyone dead, including Ichise and Ran. Most will attest that the shows' ending is very emotionally affecting, even considering the extremely dire scenario painted for the viewer which likely drained all hope of a happy ending long before the final episode. This is because, unlike most nihilistic works that simply say that humanity is hopeless and we have no future (and thus, why even bothering doing anything), Texhnolyze actually discusses the second half of nihilism. That being, if life has no inherent purpose, then you need to make your own. Even if everyone failed in their goals, their desire to live allows them some form of peace, unlike the Shapes who are stuck as essentially immortal statues until the end of time. And even if their struggle was in vain, their struggle was real, and ultimately that's what matters. This is likely why most viewers find the ending so sad- with a situation as hopeless as this, you can only hope for an ending where everyone moves on in peace. Ironically enough, for an ending so depressing, it can actually make a person believe their life does have meaning.
The anime is little known on account of being one of the grimmest examples of anime, let alone fiction, ever put to screen, but it has remained a well appreciated series by those who have watched it precisely because it is so dark and unusual, and the unlikelihood of something similar appearing in the near future.