An ambitious anime aimed at an older and worldwide audience hints at its many layers in a very Studio Ghibli like first episode. A remarkable amount of story is presented and set up, but just how much can only be fully appreciated after having watched the entire series. What appears to be an innocent and light hearted series, Fractale is a much more complicated and multilayered journey into darkness. July 2012 – The Fractale: Reiterated project begins with here with new HD screen captures and revisions.
Having younger friends much into anime and being a Studio Ghibli fan myself, I decided to check out what the state of Japanese cartoons is these days. I can’t say I’m impressed since most of what I found was childish, sleazy, mindless, or a combination of all three. But I did unearth a few gems and this recently completed but commercially unsuccessful series is a crown jewel. It reached for the stars and fell just short, all the while criticizing its own main audience, otaku’s (obsessive anime/manga fans) -- which was ratings and sales suicide. That alone would have made it interesting to me, but the complexity and depth of emotion contained within Fractale’s storyline pulled me completely in.
Fractale is a science fiction story set on an unnamed island that appears to be Ireland roughly around the 32nd Century. Society is peaceful and people rarely directly interact with each other since they all have cybernetic terminals that links them through the Fractale system, that era’s version of the Internet. Holographic doppels (doppelgangers) that are the equivalent of current day avatars are the way people socialize, get around, and do everything without having to do anything.