The Relative Worlds

There's just not that much to say about Soutai Sekai. It's a vanishingly brief title that conceptually harbors some interesting potential, but it fails to really capitalize on much of it, and it's unclear if it even would live up to that potential if it were given the chance. Beginning with the story, which is this anime's strongest aspect, it does a good job of setting the scene quickly and getting right into the narrative and its various concepts. However, many of these themes are simply too big for such a short little production, with things like inter-dimensional travel and cyborg telekinesis playing a centralrole. As such, while it does a good job getting right to the meat of things, it ultimately fails to give its concepts time to breathe, and ends up feeling somewhat confused and uninteresting by the end. However, this sense of dullness is due in most part to the art, as this anime is pretty much entirely CG, and it is glaringly bad throughout. While things like combat choreography is crisp and fast-paced, everything else feels downright robotic. The whole production, outside of combat, just feels very packaged and artificial. Perhaps it is because the fights are largely between two robots that the combat is the only area in which this doesn't feel out of place. In any case, everything here feels flat and dull, even with decent fight scenes and a competent sense of color. The CG really is just that terrible, and makes for a very dry and uninteresting watch. The sound is unremarkable, as it meets the basic standards of quality for the time, however the J-Pop group they brought on to do the music can kind of feel out of place, especially in the fantastical other-dimension version of Japan, as it steals any sense of grounded reality or stakes, exchanging it instead for an almost goofy concert vibe. The characters are absolutely boilerplate, and do not rise above their archetypes or even fulfill them particularly well. All in all, they're hardly worth talking about, though it is worth noting that the people behind this anime felt the need to make the two main characters cousins, which definitely changes the vibe of their romance throughout this show's brief runtime. Overall, Soutai Sekai, despite having some glimmers of quality in regards to its basic concepts and fight choreography, ends up being held back by a crowded story and stiff, unsightly CG throughout. As such, it's not really a title that's worth anyone's time.