Oh boy, this show sure is… something. So the basic idea is actually one that sounds different and engaging: Shibuya (a city that’s normally a rather busy and famous ward of Tokyo) is transported to a post-apocalyptic future where the people must learn to survive both cut off from the rest of the world and against the new threats that have emerged: giant biomechanical horrors known as the Revisions. Helping them is a contact from human civilization of this time who grants a small group of special young people a set of mechas that only they can use, placing them on the front line of Shibuya’s defense.
Things get a little muddier with the other side of the pitch: the kids have met the future contact, Milo, before, during a kidnapping incident when they were in grade school (rather than high school) and one of them, Daisuke, was “Given a prophecy” that some day he would need to protect everyone and save his friends. Prophecies are… kind of sketchy. Less so with time travel, but the word still sets me on edge.
Then, it all falls apart in the first few minutes, before Shibuya is even transported, when we have to spend time with our main character.
Daisuke is, in a word, obnoxious. Allegedly because of the ‘prophecy’ he’s insanely overprotective of his friends, costing him basically all of his social relations, turning him into a pariah, and… I’ve got to say, he really isn’t very good. So he supposedly has this promise/warning that some great darkness is going to assail the people he cares about in the future and that the burden will be on his shoulders to defend them. Okay, I could get becoming protective out of that, and especially being something of a disaster prepper. What I don’t get is the need to chase down someone who bumped into your friend, drag them off their bike, and pretty much threaten to beat the tar out of them. That doesn’t make sense, it’s bloody insane. Yeah, Daisuke, one person got brushed by a dude on a bicycle, clearly this is the dreadful future that you were warned of and warrants this crazy overreaction that’s basically our introduction to your character.
In case you were wondering, that was sarcasm, it’s actually completely insane that Daisuke would react like that. He is insane. Things don’t get that much better after Shibuya is transported. You kind of think, in the first scenes, that they might just be over-correcting, showing us that Daisuke is a really horrible fit in his daily life to excuse what a messiah he’s going to be when disaster does strike. The thing is, he doesn’t even get that right. When Daisuke is brought to the horrible future and faced with lethal danger, I could excuse, even accept or like, some level of good feelings out of him. Relief that he wasn’t crazy, and that the way he’d been running his life into the ground wasn’t in vain. Daisuke, however, goes above and beyond the call of duty to absolutely revel in ‘his element’. No remorse, no hint that he might have some guilt about feeling so very good, he comes off as an obnoxious twit prattling on and on about his great destiny and how he is the amazing special chosen one, with a vast entitlement that wins him no friends in or out of character.
It’s hard to overstate how obnoxious Daisuke is. He has a serious mouthing off problem and an ego the size of the planet, and he can’t even back it up. Once he gets using the String Puppet (the special mecha that only he and his friends can use) it’s not as though he fails utterly, but neither is he actually particularly good at the technical aspects. And he is extremely bad at everything else that comes with being a soldier champion. Like following orders. Or fighting smart. Or not endangering a ton of people because you want a piece of the action like the self-important little twit you are. Every bloody scene with this kid he cannot shut up about how great and important his destiny is and not even Milo, the person who supposedly gave him that destiny in the first place, can seem to get through to him that recklessly acting out to stoke his narcissistic glee is not a good thing. Even when Daisuke gets punished with imprisonment, he’s seemingly incapable of even imagining that he might actually have a problem or that he’s capable of doing things wrong and learning from his mistakes.
It’s absolutely miserable. I hated him. I hated how he was incapable of listening, learning, or introspection. I hated how he reliably made the worst choices in just about any crisis situation. I hated that he never once seemed to actually look at the weight and gravity of the situation he was in or the charge he had been given and instead treated the whole thing like a video game. I hated every whining, preening, destiny-speech-spouting minute we had to spend with him for at least the first seven or eight episodes of the show. It’s been a long time since I have despised a fictional character this much, and far longer if ever since it was a character that the audience wasn’t supposed to despise. At least when I’m begging for a way to punch Shinji Matou in the face through my screen there’s an understanding that such a reaction is the intended reaction to Shinji Matou. Me hating him is an indication that the creators did a good thing, and formed the emotional connection they wanted to form. Daisuke is supposed to be our main protagonist. And it’s okay, I dare say even ideal, if our main protagonist is a flawed person… but you at least have to like them a little. Shinji Ikari is infamous for being a wimpy buzzkill of a lead character, but his fears are very human and while he’s rarely not sour you don’t always feel that it’s undeserved, especially when he’s caught in a tango of pubescent lust and tsundere frustration with Asuka. Renton Thurston is a whiny, obnoxious little twerp for the first little while we spend with him, probably longer in terms of episode count than Daisuke, but all the same he is treated as a younger kid than Daisuke and you get that he has a good heart even if his head isn’t screwed on right. Plus, the blame for a lot of the worst Renton moments lies at least partially with Holland, excusing the kid some. And when he shapes up, we still have most of the show to have him as a decent person who’s learned his lesson and who we can root for. Daisuke has a dearth of both redeeming qualities and time left when he finally does get a wake-up call that penetrates his depleted uranium skull. There’s just no coming back from how totally I hate him for as much of the show as I spend hating him. And that right there is the biggest problem with Revisions.
To an extent, I get what they were doing: they were trying to make his character the antithesis of Shinji Ikari (the only boy who can complain when his dad tells him to pilot a cool giant robot and live with some hot girls), replacing all of Shinji’s reticence, self-doubt, and fear with an equal sum of gung-ho and ego. But they failed to make him good to empathize with or even enjoyable to watch, essentially killing any hope the show may have had of reaching its audience and forming a good connection.
In the interests of actually doing this properly, I will continue with the plot. As I may have discussed while complaining about Daisuke, he’s not the only one who can pilot a String Puppet – the three (initially one, but the other two are recovered fairly early) combat exoskeletons can be run by Daisuke or any of the four friends of his who were involved with the incident in the past where they supposedly met Milo (obviously a future Milo, since we’re told she can time leap, but don’t tell them that… they’re kind of slow). Those are Lu (the firecracker redhead girl), her brother Gai (the harsh and unpleasant one who hates Daisuke almost as much as we do), Mari (the sweet shy fragile girl with a strongly implied one-sided crush on Daisuke), and Keisaku (the calm, controlled peacemaker boy who carries a torch for Mari). These are, mercifully, actually fairly decent characters. I’m not the biggest fan of Gai since he is kind of a jerk beyond even the reasonable level (and trust me, there’s a lot of reasonable level when Daisuke is the target) and Lu and Mari are fairly stock, but all four are at least serviceable. Keisaku even manages to be both pleasant and a little bit interesting in how he, to a fault, keeps his feelings bottled up to avoid ruffling feathers.
The kids, with Milo and the Police Force (represented by a reasonable tough commander and a mousy lady cop who does most of the kid-handling) backing them, try to defend Shibuya from the predation of the Revisions, which appear to be truck-sized crawling things with bloated bodies, elongated hands, and expressionless mask faces with glowing eyes that aren’t actually lifted from Noein but could fool you for a minute before you realize that they’re not as symbolic and somehow aren’t quite as creepy. However, it seems that those mindless models, “civilians”, aren’t the only Revisions – the group is also represented by a trio of jokers who appear via special interface bodies that… don’t appear to be the real body of the individual, appearing and disappearing at will and carrying no consequences if killed, but are how we know them. Those there are Chiharu, who appears as a woman with animal traits in scarcely more than a bikini who probably just missed the casting call for Gurren Lagann and serves as the crux of her faction’s scheme; Mukyu, the gothic loli who appears to be the de facto leader of the Revisions; and Nicholas, the cartoon puppy sphere who seems to hold lower rank and duties that mostly consist of screwing with the rest of our cast, particularly Daisuke, for no other reason than his own amusement. The two girls of the Revisions are just sort of there, once you get past the visual designs that are far and away a different kind of absurd from the rest of the show, but Nicholas is at least entertaining. He clearly thinks he’s funny, and he kind of is, goofing around even when he’s being threatening and generally taking a tone with the world that’s as affable as it is twisted.
In the midst of this, we get something of the fuller story: some time between Daisuke’s era and the destination era, a horrible plague ravaged the world. The Revisions are those who fell to it, their bodies mutating in a horrific manner that requires mechanized systems to act as life support and uninfected humans as raw materials (most, the Civilians, rendered unintelligent as well), while Milo’s faction (in which she’s an agent, not a shot-caller) represents purestrain humans, some of which have developed “quantum brains” that allow them to time leap.
The intelligent Revisions offer to cut a deal with the people of Shibuya, offering to help them by sending them back to their proper time in waves. Now, at this point in the show, Revisions Civillian-types have attacked Shibuya repeatedly, killing people or throwing them into ominous tanks to be carried off, so it should be crystal clear that these already obviously untrustworthy folks can’t be trusted when they offer aid in exchange for Milo and the String Puppets (aka Shibuya’s only effective line of defense), but the Mayor of Shibuya is a wormy creep, so he makes the deal anyway. The police and kids pull a coup in the nick of time, rescuing some of the “returnees” while others are still taken by the Revisions’ sudden yet inevitable betrayal, and imprisoning the mayor once they get back to Shibuya. Thereafter, once again, it’s playing defense, now with the dark cloud of the masses of kidnapped folks (including Keisaku’s mother and Daisuke’s uncle, the latter of which escapes shortly and brings intel back to Shibuya) hanging over them.
During this act, Daisuke (on a reckless rescue mission with Keisaku) ends up engaging an unknown enemy referred to as “a ghost” that seems to be lost from another part of time and space. It has a message for him, essentially calling him out for all his jerk ways and being a generally unlikable failure before ripping his String Puppet apart and vanishing. So, that’s a thing. Daisuke also causes a good amount of collateral damage fighting it, which gets him and Keisaku locked up (though Keisaku apologizes and is let out fairly shortly. Daisuke is too proud, thinking he should instead be praised for how much of a messiah he is.) Nicholas among others visits Daisuke in prison, until he’s finally released to participate in an actual sanctioned raid on Revisions headquarters.
Daisuke’s release takes part pretty much at the end of episode 7 out of 12, while the raid on Revisions HQ takes up pretty much the entirety of 8 with mostly action. This, to an extent, marks a turning point for the show. Not in terms of its plot, though it does that too, but in terms of the skill of the writing and the efficacy of the characters. Essentially, from episode 9 and on, with 8 being hard to tell because it’s wrapped up in fighting, Revisions is actually… tolerable. Maybe even good. Daisuke stops raving about his destiny like a spoiled princess, Nicholas (the most entertaining character in the show) kind of steps up, and we speed into a climax that actually has some good elements. If the whole show had been this watchable, it wouldn’t just manage a pass, it would actually be good. If the show had continued with the level of quality seen in 8/9-12, out to 24 episodes or so, I might have been able to forgive it. As it is it can’t come back from spending two thirds of the running time wishing the main character would be bludgeoned with a clue bat, but if that were one third of the time or less?
Sadly, the only timeline we have is the one in which the show is what it is. So let’s start on the attempted but not quite successful redemption arc with the raid on the Revisions stronghold.
So, there are two goals for the raid. Number one is to rescue the kidnapped “returnees”, Daisuke’s uncle was able to report the condition of, having been one of them. Number two is to destroy the artificial Quantum Brain that transported Shibuya in the first place, which will allow everyone to be sent home. Only partially known to our leads, the Revisions are planning to incarnate Chiharu in a pure human body with a natural Quantum Brain, which would be able to permanently lock Shibuya into this time, so they have that to contend with as well.
Before really getting into it, I do have to point out one fairly silly element: Part of the reason it took this long to pull off the raid was that Milo’s faction, with all their advanced technology, didn’t know where the Revisions base actually was. But when we see it, it’s kind of a mountainous spire of evil and not that far from Shibuya, I’m pretty sure that any of your basic senses could pick that up. Ah, well, we’re here now.
The raid initially goes smoothly, breaking through the resistance and getting to the holding pens. However, some of the Returnees have been taken onward, including Keisaki’s mother. Daisuke and Keisaku, on the rescue side of the mission, press onward and find them, held in those creepy jars that the Civilians used, seemingly held in stasis. They also find Nicholas, who comes out to play in his ‘true’ form. I swear I’ve seen the exact spindly blank-faced humanoid giant mecha he uses somewhere else before (Xenoblade, maybe?) but in any case, he keeps his attitude, mocking the heroes to the bitter end. Since he also seems to be able to control the force of gravity, trivially paralyzing both our heroes beneath unseen pressure, he also has the upper hand. Standing off with them, he ensures that, at least, the one tank that they would most like to rescue is one used to provide raw materials for Chiharu’s rebirth. Keisaku is forced to watch, helpless, as the containment goes from blue-green to red and his mother dissolves, to the bone and then nothing, in an instant.
The moment of the dissolving, actually, is one I have to give some credit to the director for. It’s extremely brief, probably not even a second of actual transition, but it is gruesome enough to be effective. Once that’s been accomplished, Nicholas taunts the kids and rather than finishing them off or continuing the engagement down there, and retreats to the ‘throne room’ where the artificial quantum brain and all their bodies are. Keisaku, naturally, pursues in a black rage.
In that chamber, everyone ends up gathered for what seems to be the final battle. Chiharu is reborn, emerging from her mechanical exoskeleton as a human version of her interface form, presumably in possession of the powerful “quantum brain”… Only to have Keisaku squash her into red jelly before she’s taken more than a couple breaths in her fancy new body. Something happens, and a disengagement is forced with the living prisoners rescued and Chiharu destroyed but the artificial quantum brain still in place… and Keisaku missing, presumed dead, having vanished from reality on killing Chiharu, the event likely a product of her quantum brain.
I’d like to point out this probably could have been avoided for Team Revisions if Nicholas had either not picked the most spiteful possible dissolve target (none of the other tanks change color that we see) or had kept fighting away from the VIPs. Maybe Chiharu shouldn’t have constantly stood up for him against Mukyu’s suggestions.
This, at last – Keisaku’s death – is what breaks through Daisuke’s obnoxious persona. His voiceover declares that his destiny ended that day, and unlike any number of previous events that really should have hit him, this one sinks in, leaving Daisuke a wiser but wounded person. After that, it seems like disaster after disaster strikes. The wormy mayor pulls a coup, escaping from prison, taking hostages, getting pervy at Lu, and so on until he clashes with the chief of police, resulting in both the mayor and the chief dying, leaving Shibuya largely leaderless (though some formerly jerk figures help out). Milo reveals that her time is nigh, the moment when she’ll have to go to the past for her mission, which as was not previously really hinted at appears to be expected to be a one-way trip. And, as this goes on, the String Puppets (and Shibuya as a whole) are running out of power, which is excellent timing as the surviving Revisions declare “no more mister nice future monster” war, coming at Shibuya with everything they have left, Nicholas denying any negotiation to take a plague cure to the past since that would negate his existence. Maybe should have tried that bargain with somebody else, and before making chunky salsa of one of their leaders.
In the midst of one of the battles with the Revisions, the “ghost” that didn’t like Daisuke appears again, except this time when it protects Mari, Daisuke identifies the shade of spite as, in some sense, a time-lost Keisaku. It sort of vanishes before we can do anything with that.
This ends up with another raid on Revisions HQ, as the Artificial Quantum Brain must be destroyed in order to send Shibuya back. The end result sees Daisuke stuck more or less behind when Shibuya returns thanks to mission success, but more importantly, it sees Nicholas deploy his big villain twist: he backstabs Mukyu and absorbs the power of time, becoming… Keisaku. Specifically, he seems to have Keisaku’s body (altered by stealing design notes from Dark Konoha/The Snake of Clearing Eyes), becoming a transcendent being that exists across time and really hates Daisuke for reasons that are never really explained. I’m not really complaining – Nicholas has always been petty and spiteful – but an intense personal rivalry really does sort of come out of nowhere on the villain side. Dark Keisaku Nicholas saunters off into a Time-Space rift, and Daisuke follows, leaping into the climax.
The last bits of Revisions are by far the best, as we get a story and conflict occurring across multiple timelines. In 2017 (the base time Shibuya was transported away from), Daisuke is missing and Keisaku, barely pretending to be himself, has appeared, reminding everyone that Daisuke died years ago, which they all start to remember. In 2010, when the kidnapping happened, we have Milo, on a mission to kill Keisaku before he can become a core component of evil mastermind Nicholas, and Daisuke attempting to save himself, his friend Keisaku, and in some ways Milo as well, enlisting the help of his younger self and friends. Nicholas!Keisaku also appears to make things hard for them, but as they duke it out in 2010, what the characters in 2017 think they ‘know’ shifts. Daisuke overcomes his reticence and puts a bullet in Nicholas, wearing Keisaku’s face or not, which also kills Nicholas/Keisaku in 2017 and fully restores the knowledge of their friends as to what really happened. Nicholas, however, just reincarnates from another timeline and reveals that he’s tried to kill little Daisuke countless times and something always gets in the way (again, no reason why he’s so obsessed with that), inviting Daisuke to a final battle to take place outside time and space, where either one of them could be destroyed utterly rather than struggling uselessly across the shifting timelines.
Nicholas gets plenty of points for smug mockery, but doesn’t earn many when it comes to making great decisions as a villain.
The battle outside time, ripped from Demonbane or no, is pretty good. In general the action has been the most consistent part of this show, and the ending is no exception. Nicholas, no matter what form he takes, is ultimately defeated by Daisuke, though as he drifts down into oblivion he declares that he’ll take Daisuke with him, only to get slapped down by the double Deus ex Machina of Keisaku’s spirit restraining Puppy Nicholas to go to oblivion together with him, and the hopes and care of Daisuke’s friends manifests as their hands reaching out for him, which he’s able to take and be pulled into safe and sound 2017 by.
Sadly, the series doesn’t just cut there, and instead gives us a long sequel hook tail where they both discuss the biggest loose end (Milo, theoretically in 2017 via the slow path from 2010, who Daisuke may or may not have a thing for), say some useless nonsense of saving Keisaku from his outside-time oblivion, and advance the world to a point where mysterious temporal occurrences like what happened to Shibuya start occuring elsewhere, indicating that Nicholas, Muyku, both, or some other villain is still out there replicating the evil plan on a greater scale.
As I alluded to before, it’s kind of a shame that we don’t get that second plot. While there’s still plenty to mock in the last episodes of Revisions, they are on the whole actually rather good in isolation. Daisuke is rewritten into a watchable character almost too quickly (but any relief from what he was before is welcome), the action is strong, and while the ideas it touches on were done far better both visually and conceptually in Noein, they still aren’t bad here. If it had continued through a new arc with that quality, maybe spent some of the extra time really developing Gai and Lu and possibly addressing the Milo-Daisuke-Mari-Dead Keisaku love quadrangle that’s set up but never pays off on the side, I could have forgiven that the first quarter or third of the (24 episode) show had me gnashing my teeth at how horrid Daisuke started out. But we’ve only got these 12 episodes, and since Revisions has an aggregate score similar to Beatless (.01 better at the time of this writing, though that digit could fluctuate even by the time this review goes up), I think it’s safe to say that the odds of getting any sort of continuation are slim to none. Which is, regrettable or not, as it should be. Shows need to not screw up their first outing before they get the chance to do it again.
Speaking of that rating… Revisions is kind of what I expected out of the “good” end of that score. That is, while it has some very notable redeeming features, it’s bad on the whole, and has some absolutely intolerable features that will largely kill any enjoyment of the show for myself, possibly, and others for sure.
Before I issue my final letter grade for Revisions, I need to note one more thing, other than Daisuke, that really does hold it back: the CGI. I am actually very reticent about complaining about CGI because, well, it’s an overused and often inappropriate complaint. If there’s a hint of it anywhere in a show, someone somewhere will scream “terrible CGI, ruined everything” and do so pretty loudly. In the case of Revisions, it’s a full CGI show, much like Knights of Sidonia and like Knights season 1, it doesn’t have the infinite budget to do everything well. However, compared to Revisions, Knights of Sidonia knew where to cut corners and where not to. In Knights of Sidonia we suffer a lot of very sterile or empty environments and extras who don’t look very good, but the main characters (particularly Izana and the Hoshijiros) can emote well. Their faces are detailed and well-animated enough that they can still convey subtle emotions with an appropriate look, and their motions are fluid and controlled enough that they have all the right body language cues.
Revisions, by contrast, prioritizes badly. The monsters move well, but the people don’t. The environments are detailed and good looking, but the faces… the faces are the worst part, they don’t really have a good range of expressions. Big expressions like the Mayor’s wormy creeper faces or Nicholas!Keisaku’s lopsided smirk of evil look fine, but in a more quiet scene you can’t tell what anyone is thinking or feeling, they just have one resting face and have to try to use shoddily animated body language and a lot of arm acting that looks like a PS2-era character awkwardly flapping to indicate speech to try to get it across. It really doesn’t work, even if the base level of CGI is probably technically better than Knights.
So, my final score for Revisions is… D. Just D. It fights back so hard in its last episodes that I have to recognize that effort, and in a big way, but until episode 8 and possibly even through it the show was on cruise control for a big, fat Fail. The good news is that if you do the smart thing and don’t watch this timeline of frustration, the best it’s got is matched and topped by Noein. Watch Noein instead.