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.
The first main character, Clain, is introduced by showing him having a meal with the doppels of his parents – a meal consisting of him sucking a liquid out of a packet while being lectured on the need for families to get together for dinner. The irony is deliberately heavy here as none of them live together in a contentedly alienated society. Clain appears to be in his early teens and there are signs of mild discontent as he talks with his virtual parents before leaving for a junk market in town. As he bikes to town through an idylic countryside, Clain listens to a song about the Daystar. You will hear this song again throughout the series many times and it turns out to be very important to the series.
In town, he meets up with an online friend’s doppel to check out the antique technology for sale. The police arrive at the crowded market and everyone but three men vanish as they disconnect in a panic. Unable to pay for the memory card he was looking at, Clain bicycles home after pocketing it. Along the way, he stops to insert it into his portable computer that looks like an iPod. The data turns out to be a text book from the 22nd Century on the newly created Fractale system. It expounds on how it would end war, bring about peace, and provide everything anyone needs as long as they upload themselves to the system on a regular basis.
Clain reflects on this and agrees it all came true. Though there is little contact with other humans and it is a little boring, it is for the best he muses. Then an announcement from system tells him it is time to find a “star,” one of the Fractale system’s satellites for him to pray to. Over the millennia, a religion has formed around Fractale and the data upload is couched in religious terms. Little does Clain know that his life is about to get a lot less boring. As he stares toward the satellite, something appears in the sky…
A Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind moment occurs as a girl on a flying machine closes in on our surprised protagonist. She isn’t alone as a rocket powered twin dirigible is chasing her. Bullets fly as Clain tries to follow on bicycle. But cycling while watching an aerial battle isn’t easy and Clain wipes out with his iPod-like computer goes flying. When the head phones are pulled out, a certain song plays again and is heard by the girl who looks surprised.
She turns back toward Clain and strips her goggles off before giving the boy a sad smile then throwing herself off the glider in an apparent suicide bid. Shocked, Clain thinks for a moment that she will fly.
Right there Fractale went from being a standard adventure story into darker territory, though just how dark isn’t fully telegraphed. Having a girl fall into your life literally is something of a trope in manga and anime, but here is where I detected things were more complicated than usual.
Cue the opening credits, which consist of a memorably melancholy techno song backed by stunning visuals of fractal animations. It ends on a wistful note and a Mandelbrot version of a young girl in a fetal position. She is made of an outline of many smaller versions of her, which makes for a striking, if mysterious, image.
What follows is Clain rescuing the fallen girl, the first real one he’s seen. Touching the bottom of her dress with hesitation, the sound of the other airship startles the embarrassed boy and he hides her. Battered and bruised, the girl awakens and they exchange painfully awkward greetings. Eventually, Clain gets the girl, Phryne, into his house while having to dismiss his parents’ dopples who are there for supper. That scores some negative points with the girl but he fails to notice it as his social experience is clearly nil.
Not that her social skills are much better. When presented with a first aid kit after refusing hospital services, Phryne strips down to her underwear without thought or warning. I remember on first viewing thinking, “Oy vey, fan service already…” but then realizing there was something going on with the character, signs of something that disturbed me. All of which would be verified in later episodes.
Poor Clain. This is the beginning of him being mortally embarrassed by the actions of others and he retreats to his upstairs bedroom. This embarrassment gets compounded when she shows up topless (discreetly placed hair keeps it from nudity) to ask for help in reaching wounds on her back. Being the innocent and inexperienced good kid he is, Clain just about short circuits. What follows can only be described as a trust building exercise between the two that leads to her falling asleep into his arms.
Upon awakening, Phryne finds Clain typing away at his console and fails to get his attention at first. Noticing an old projector, she turns it on to see Clain as a baby back when he and his real parents were physically together. This has a profound effect on the girl as she apologizes that she misunderstood his feelings towards his parents. Then tears begin to stream down her face as she sees something that upsets her.
Phryne is terribly upset that Clain doesn’t have the same smile he had as a baby. After attempting to force him to smile, she breaks into laughter at how silly his face looks. Asking his name, she sings a familiar song to him with a change of lyrics. The strange older girl then tries to give Clain her brooch, which is the thing most precious to her.
This rather sweet moment doesn’t last as a knock at the door reveals that the pursuit of the strange girl hasn’t ended. A classic anime loli (underage girl) flanked by Jake and Elwood Blues have shown up in disguise. Suddenly, a series of ridiculous disguises as full on comic relief has entered the show. No it isn’t really the Blues Brothers, but they do look the part.
Eventually they tire of trickery and force their way in to search the house. Phryne is not to be found, but her dress is and the twin tailed girl immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion. With that, Clain’s undeserved reputation as a pervert or player begins as a reoccurring joke. Mild shenanigans follow and the odd trio are sent their merry way in an unexpected way.
Alone again at last, Clain escorts Phryne to an ancient ruined church that strangely has the same symbol as Phryne’s brooch. Under the full moon, the two teens talk and Clain refuses to push for too much information from the mystery girl. He does admit that he recognizes her as wearing the garb of a priestess of the Temple. As he gets cold, Phryne slides next to him for warmth as she talks about how the moon always gave her comfort no matter where she was. This falls on deaf ears as the day’s events have caught up to Clain and he’s out like a light. Phryne pins the brooch on him and says it will protect him, then leaves.
That is only the beginning of his problems for he is in for an even bigger surprise before the episode ends.
Thoughts
Departure is quite an intro to a series. The setting is introduced effectively with just enough exposition and we get a definite feel for Clain’s personality. That trope of anime, the strange girl falling onto a protagonist has a completely more realistic implementation here and she stays mysterious throughout. Better yet, the episode ends on one of the best cliffhangers I have seen in a first entry to a series. It is a moment that makes you want to see the second episode now.
I’ll be upfront and say that I really liked the first episode when I first watched it on Hulu. Eventually, I grew to love this series because of the social criticism in it and the very well developed main characters. The show is definitely not for kids or early teens because of the very adult and heavy themes that get appear as the series progresses. That said, this is beautifully drawn and animated with a top notch voice cast and story.
Sadly, it bombed badly in Japan both in television ratings and DVD/BD sales. So the grand plans for an entire franchise based on the property went up in smoke and some careers may have ended over the show’s failure. This month (April 2011) it was something of a shock to find out that Funimation will be putting it out on DVD and BD next year here in the USA. Apparently, it was very well received in streaming at their website and Hulu’s.
It can be viewed here at Hulu at the time this was written.
And now over a year after originally writing that, I can report that the box set of Fractale is superb and more than worth the wait.
The show is rated TV-14 for good reason, but this episode does not hint at it. But later on in the series the rating is well earned and the story is not meant for kids at all. This is a thinking science fiction series heavily laced with social commentary and emotionally upsetting scenes. Comedy is used to lighten things initially, but soon becomes scarce. You would not think that after watching this first episode, for it is heavy on the comedy and charm.
BEWARE! HERE BE SPOILERS!!!
Awakening at dawn, Clain returns home while being very upset that Phryne has vanished. He rants to himself about her doing whatever she wanted just like everyone else in the world and then wonders why he is so angry. Sorry, kiddo – many a guy has gone through the same thing in real life!
Anger turns into curiosity as Clain examines the brooch and discovers that it isn’t just jewelry but some kind of data storage device. Being a hacker of old computers, what to do, what to do? The data is ancient he finds and pushing a little deeper reveals more. A lot more.
Yeah, that would be my reaction too if a ten year girl popped out of my computer. I thought firewalls were supposed to prevent that kind of thing.
Cue the end credits featuring the new girl and a Japanese accented rendition of “Down By the Salley Gardens.”
And so Fractale begins.
MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES
Read at your own risk, you have been warned.
Watching this episode again after seeing the final episode really impressed me how much everything tied together in the end. From the seagull flying overhead to open and close the series, the attention to detail was deep. This was really well plotted out and so much directly linked to the final scene that it increased the emotional weight greatly. I’ll be commenting on how individual episodes tie into the overall story in these spoiler sections.
The main theme “Hedgehog” is sadly not translated in the streaming dub (but is on the box set), but the lyrics can be found here. The song is clearly Phryne’s theme and the main refrain is very poignant:
Don’t hug me, the spines on my back will hurt you
Nevertheless, my overflowing feelings are searching for you
Don’t hug me, I’ll go carry you on the heartbeats in my chest
Don’t give up, because I’ll recover the torn tomorrow
Right there was a major clue to the series for Japanese viewers that we didn’t get. This is an insight into her emotional state, which was also shown to be fragile by her suicide attempt. The lack of care about undressing and the general stoic attitude shown tripped warning flags to me that the character had been abused and most likely sexually. Later on that was made explicitly clear and it shows they were dropping hints from the beginning.
Phryne isn’t the only emotionally damaged one here. Clain is something of a riff on otaku’s and their social maladjustments, while also being a critique of how we’ve used technology to isolate ourselves. The boy is utterly unprepared for the world, having lived in isolation his entire life. It is also something of a trope for male leads to be wimpy and helpless in anime’s these days, but at least in Clain’s case he has reason to be.
In this setup, his actions (and inactions) come from his naiveté and inexperience rather than a defect in character. From the beginning, he goes outside his comfort zone to rescue Phryne and deal with all the weirdness to come. The closing theme is really Clain’s and perhaps Nessa’s. The lyrics are about a man looking back on his life when he lost the young woman he loved. There is an air of doom about the romance in Fractale that becomes palpable in the final episodes and this song didn’t help me feel any better about the odds. If you are literal, the “death” of Nessa is telegraphed by the end credits. Of course, she is actually merged with Phryne -- but that little girl won’t be ever seen again.
Then there is Nessa who just popped out of the brooch. The opening credits give away one major thing and that is that she is Fractale itself. Or at least partially, as we find out later. Some people complained when the character hair color of purple was changed from preproduction, but having her and Phryne having the same hair would have been too much of a giveaway of them being the same being far too early.
There are two things that tie very strongly into the last scene that must be noted. The first is Clain’s smile as a baby becoming so important to Phryne. That is where the baby comment in the finale becomes important. The second is the way Phryne lightened up with Clain, both in his room and at the chapel. She fell in love with him then and it was one of the few times she looked happy in the series. Hence her confession of love at the end shows the Phryne we met is still the main personality in her body at the end.
My favorite screen capture from the episode was an accident, but conveys the real star of this story and what her life has been like up until meeting Clain.
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