Clockwork Planet

tl;dr: A mixed bag of a manga with a unique world but equally strong and weak aspects in terms of plot and characters. Clockwork Planet is a manga that has a really interesting setting. It’s essentially a futuristic steampunk world. Steampunk is something that often has somewhat of a renaissance flare to it. It extends past that well enough I suppose, but even then, I would say only really as far as victorian. Clockwork Planet is one that basically has modern society with all its amenities, cars, cell phones, televisions, etc. but it’s functioning solely on the basis of gears. In terms of the science, itactually doesn’t make that much sense. It tries to explain how some things that shouldn’t be possible in such a world manage to function using only gears at times, but to be honest these explanations of some concepts just made the lack of explanation for other things stand out more. It isn’t a world that’s fleshed out all that well from a sci-fi point of view. Still, just in terms of atmosphere and visuals, it’s really cool and feels incredibly unique and a world that felt really easy to get pulled into and interested in. The overarching plot of this manga revolves around the nature of this world and Y who created it, but the smaller plotlines involved are more centered around various conflicts between factions that have a pretty heavy political bend. The overarching plot felt like it didn’t really move at all, or rather for most of the manga there doesn’t seem to be any sort of overarching goal. The cast learns things as they go on, with even a big overarching villain showing themselves at times that they’re slowly obtaining information on the identity of, and they also end up adding new Y-series automatons to the group, but that never really feels like the full goal. Rather, it just feels like the cast is going with the flow in regards to the smaller plots and occasionally some development occurs with the overarching plot. The manga ends before anything much is revealed about anything, and thus in the end, it didn’t really feel like it had much of an overarching plot at all. Furthermore, the manga actually does manage to adapt all the light novels, wherein the light novel series seems to have gone on an indefinite hiatus, and thus it’s pretty likely that the rest of the story will never be properly resolved in any medium, which is pretty disappointing. In terms of the smaller plotlines, these were pretty interesting and generally focused around various conspiracies that the cast end up getting involved in. These felt fleshed out well enough and were interesting in and of themselves, though the middle one felt like it dragged on for a bit too long. These smaller plotlines also often also have a lot of room to breath, as there are usually slice of life portions and comedic portions intermixed, arguably too finely intermixed as they suddenly appear in the middle of serious portions. Still they are good and even with them feeling pretty abrupt at times I do feel overall they help with the pacing. The cast of characters was a mixed bag. The Y-series automatons, RyuZU and AnchoR were really simple characters that felt like they were mostly just designed to be likable characters, but since they very much were really likable characters, I would consider them a wholehearted success. The first protagonist, Naoto, also felt like a simple character in that he just continued forward in a positive manner regardless of what was happening and it didn’t really feel like he had any character development, but was likable for what he was. The end seemed to try to reframe things in such a way as to make it feel like he was getting character development, but it didn’t really work. The second protagonist, Marie wasn’t all that likable at all, which mainly comes down to how she definitely needs character growth but doesn’t get any at all over the course of the series. Firstly, she’s a complete tsun without any dere. It felt like there may be some romantic development with her and Naoto at some point, but that never materialized. Her chemistry with her bodyguard Halter is also really weird. So her personality just felt kind of prickly to the point of not being that likable. Secondly, while the manga seems to try to show growth it really doesn’t at all and that gets kind of annoying. The basic way things flow for her is that she’s arrogant and thinks she can do anything, she hits some sort of wall where she completely loses confidence and begins sulking, she gets snapped out of it by Naoto and declares that she’ll never give up and will pull off the impossible, which she does, only for this whole cycle to repeat again in the future. The first time this happened it felt like a pretty solid part to a character arc and definitely had some impact. The second time it was okay with a lot less impact. After that it completely lost impact and actually got a little annoying as it felt like it made clear that she wasn’t growing as a character and never would. There are two other characters in the main group, Halter and eventually Vermouth. Their whole stick seems to be being the adults of the group to contrast with how Naoto and Miere are still essentially children, but it felt like this was overtly forced at times, especially in the final arc where things felt like they got overtly edgy suddenly, and it really didn’t feel like they meshed with the group all that well. The art style isn’t particularly unique but it’s pretty high quality which I would say is the more important aspect here as it portrays a lot of elements that need systematic precision in order to look good like gears. For the same reason, the world design stands out as really good, which is really important for works with unique worlds. The character design of the main automata was good too, though outside of that they felt somewhat dull.