Quantum physics comes up surprisingly
often in media. Perhaps it’s because it’s on the arcane end of
current science, and thus it’s fairly easy to use it as a line of
plausible BS to cover for whatever the writer wants to happen. It
wouldn’t be the first discipline to get that treatment: just about
any science fiction technology becomes instantly more plausible if
you put “nano” in front of it, while there was infamously a
period of writing where atomic or radioactive anything could
accomplish just about any goal. And there’s probably a wealth of
forgotten stories from the infancy of electric power that similarly
treated it as applied sorcery.
Noein may have its fair share of ‘might
as well be magic’, but I felt like it took it a more serious look at
what its ‘quantum’ arcana would actually imply, and ran with the
storytelling possibilities of applying quantum realities on the scale
of human events.
The essential piece of quantum physics
you should know to talk about Noein is the Many-Worlds
Interpretation. I’ll try to provide a briefer and clearer layman’s
explanation than the show eventually does, but that’ll be a kind of
tall order. So, basically, the interpretation has to do with random
events. The events that quantim physics actually imply to are things
like the decay of particles, rather than events we could observe with
our basic five senses, but a fair coin flip or the roll of a die
isn’t a bad metaphor. So you have a coin and flip it. Does it come
up heads or tails? Half the time it will do one; half the other.
While the coin is in the air, those are both possible futures. Which
one is followed?
According to the Many-Worlds
interpretation the answer (again, assuming the coin is a metaphor for
things to which quantum physics actually applies) is “both”.
There’s a universe where the coin came up heads, and a universe where
the coin came up tails. Both move forward, independent and unaware
of one another from then on. Every quantum event, no matter how
insignificant, would cause a fork like that. The timeline your
consciousness senses is only one time line out of a near infinite
number, some virtually identical to what you know and others of
extreme remoteness, depending on what went differently and where.
The storytelling possibilities come
from asking a question: “What was riding on that coin flip?”
While Noein exists in a multiverse of
these possibilities, there are only three of them (called Timespaces,
which works for me) that we really care about over the course of the
show. Those three are La’cryma, Shangri’la, and a timespace I’ll
just call Earth because it’s used as our touchstone for the normal
world.
The former two timespaces have the
technology (or magic, if you prefer, but it’s framed as technology)
to access timespaces other than their own. La’cryma sees this as
“simulating” an alternate possibility, viewing only their own
timespace as being essentially ‘real’. It’s hinted that the denizens
of La’cryma, on acquiring power over the quantum realm, did something
that set their timespace apart from all others, but it’s not made
clear exactly what that might be… which is fine.
Shangri’la stands as a threat to
La’cryma. Certainly, Shangri’la’s forces aim to wreak devastation in
La’cryma, and there’s a strong implication that Shangri’la (like
La’cryma) has a strange privileged position among Timespaces. I
think the best explanation we get is that Shangri’la is something
like the graveyard of possibilities, a world to which other worlds
can converge rather than something they diverge from. As is somewhat
common with Noein, I don’t exactly know what the deal is here… but
I know it’s important to the characters, so I care about it all the
same.
Poor Earth is the home to our most
major characters, particularly a fairly fun bunch of gradeschool
kids. It also bears an absurdly deep resemblance to La’cryma’s past,
standing fairly specifically fifteen years behind. The result of
this, from a narrative point of view, is that we’ll get to see
multiple versions of several characters, most significantly the child
characters from Earth and their possible future adult selves from
La’cryma. This has a ton of dramatic potential, and over its run
Noein uses just about every angle you could to milk that.
Now, at this point, we’re still looking
at a quantum flea circus. The Timespaces, as described to this
point, are really no different than a more poorly handwaved “parallel
dimensions” scenario. The brilliance of Noein is that it both gets
us invested in just a few meaningfully different worlds and at the
same time goes ahead and shows us a phantasmagorical procession of
possibilities at several points, selling the esoteric implications of
the quantum with ethereal beauty.
All of this centers on our main
character and, to an extent, living MacGuffin: Haruka, one of the
children from the Earth Timespace who also happens to be a mystical
something-or-other known as the Dragon Torque
Now, before anyone goes crazy, I know
Haruka doesn’t quite fit the definition of the MacGuffin, and neither
does the Dragon Torque for that matter. That is, her nature and then
nature of her status will actually, over the course of the show, be
explored and investigated, and we will care about the specific
details. However, Haruka (as the Dragon Torque) does initially serve
the MacGuffin’s purpose with many of its hallmarks. That being, it
sets the action going because of how other characters react to it.
Specifically, while we eventually learn
a vast wealth of information about the Dragon Torque, its initial
relevance is this: La’cryma wants it, and Shangri’la probably wants
it too. Because of this, Haruka is subjected to a series of
attempted assassinations and/or abductions (mostly abductions) and
can’t escape entanglement with other Timespaces.
Naturally, Haruka’s friends get dragged
into this mess as well. They’re a pretty good crew, really – one
of the things that Noein does well is character. It’s a 24 episode
show, so it’s got room, but especially with all the story they cram
in there it’s not an infinite running time to build up a fairly large
cast. And yet I can’t think of a single character who’s left just
flat with any meaningful amount of screen time. The closest is
probably the scheming corporate villain whose attempt to reach for
quantum-powered technology in the Earth timespace leads to some
action in the climax.
Because of the nature of the show, we
get to see Haruka’s friends from a lot of angles. Ai, Isami, and
Miho have counterparts in La’cryma (who mercifully go by different
names), showing what they could be with one sequence of events. Some
things change, others stay the same, and when Haruka recognizes her
friends in other forms, it’s a powerful moment.
And then there’s Yuu Goto. Yuu is the
other real “main” character, at least along with his La’cryma
version, Karasu. Yuu – All the Yuus – is (are?) a vehicle for
some really great stuff, but Yuu is also the best way to highlight
one of the problems I do have with the show. I will explain.
Karasu is (or at least starts out
presenting as) your typical brooding dark-cloak wearing badass. He’s
possibly the strongest member of the Dragon Cavalry (La’cryma’s
timespace-hopping superpowered fighting force), and boy is he angsty.
But, when you see him at 12 years old in Yuu… it’s kind of
hilarious, he already has the brooding and angst down pat. It takes
Yuu a truly disgusting amount of time to realize that Karasu is his
future self, but it’s fascinating how alike they are despite some
obvious differences in construction.
Of the two, we do care about both of
them, but Yuu is the more deeply explored character. He gets more
screen time devoted to his actual problems while Karasu largely
spends his time as Haruka’s bodyguard, to mixed results. The problem
is that Yuu has no agency in this story. Because he’s just a kid,
not a timespace-jumping superhero, there’s only so much he can
contribute to the struggles to keep La’cryma or Shangri’la from
grabbing Haruka. Because he doesn’t have the knowledge of someone
from the future, he can’t do a whole lot to foil plans or engage
technobabble. But because of how close he is to Haruka, he’s tossed
essentially into the deep end of all that, and his reward is getting
chewed out by his future self. (Yuu doesn’t like other Yuus very
much, from any direction). Haruka suffers some of this as well –
she’s something of a repeat hostage, and even if her actual (rather
than attempted) kidnapping counter is fairly low the fact that
everyone is out to get her means that she’s primarily concerned with
things she can’t deal with. She does, however, have some saving
graces. When she’s taken to La’cryma, she does need some help to be
rescued, but she also achieves a lot on her own, winning over the
hearts of the future versions of her friends as well as others and at
least trying to do something to better her own situation. Later on,
when we start to get an understanding of what it means for her to be
the Dragon Torque, she has powerful tools to interact meaningfully
with the story on more levels than just one. She could have used a
little more agency too, since it takes her a long time to start using
any of what she’s got, but Yuu desperately needed something in his
personality that would let him take initiative in difficult
situations.
This is one of the few cases where I’d
like to have seen a character get themselves into trouble more.
Especially with how active Yuu was in the first acts of the story,
when he only had to deal with Haruka and his mother, I wanted more
out of him in defiance of his lack of ability.
Speaking of Yuu and Haruka, I think
that’s possibly the most important element of the show, at least in
as much as it’s the element the show could not afford to get wrong.
A lot is riding on believing in a depth and complexity of feelings
between Yuu and Haruka, when it would be easy to write off any
emotion between them as “puppy love”.
First of all, I think we could stop
doing that. Just because a character is young doesn’t mean their
feelings can’t have depth. But that’s another topic, and something
of a digression from Noein. For Noein, the question is how well it
communicates the depth and intensity of their connection. And…
Noein passes this one with flying colors.
The first action in the show involves
Yuu acting out against his overly-controlling mother, both for his
own sake and for Haruka’s. He goes to her when she’s in trouble, and
in a move I again wish I’d seen a little more of, stands up even
against an unknown threat. After that, the two of them try to run
away together, even though both are conflicted about the scenario.
Yuu has clear, deep feelings for Haruka, but also doesn’t know if he
can really trust her to have his back. Haruka has clear (to the
audience) deep feelings for Yuu, but doesn’t know if she should
support him or try to save him from himself.
The struggles that Haruka and her
friends (particularly but not exclusively Yuu) go though are very
grounded in their youth. They’re struggles young people could have.
But, on the other hand, they’re handled in what I would possibly call
an adult way. Not that the kids don’t act like kids, but there’s a
weight, a gravity given to the things that matter to them, even if
those things seem objectively small. The treatment that the show
gives the kids’ struggles denies the thought of shrugging off matters
as insignificant and helps make the mundane world as meaningful as
the alternate timespaces and pan-dimensional war.
Perhaps those little events are even
more meaningful than the big ones, when you think about it. The
fight between La’cryma and Shangri’la isn’t actually the priority of
any of the characters who get the most screen time. Even Karasu,
though technically a soldier of La’cryma, gives it up fairly early in
order to protect Haruka as a person; his motivations are centered
around her. Because of this, when we see a Shangri’la attack against
La’cryma and the Dragon Cavalry fend it off… it’s awesome, but it’s
probably not as dramatic or gut wrenching as a twelve year old girl
searching through the grass for a little cell phone charm that she
herself threw away. It makes sense in context.
And there’s the fact that the
objectively little, mundane events, are what add up to make different
timespaces. With that, it’s finally time to talk about the Dragon
Torque.
Aside from the Many Worlds
interpretation, there’s a conceit in quantum physics all about
observation. It’s probably one of the more misunderstood elements of
the discipline, but for the sake of having a narrative, ‘observation’
is taken to mean what it does in common parlance: that something is
detected with any of your basic five senses. Observation establishes
something as ‘real’. What the Dragon Torque gives Haruka is the
power to witness and then properly Observe timespaces other than her
own. At one point, she’s able to repair a dam by quickly finding a
neighboring reality where it didn’t break and superimposing that over
the one that she’s in. Later, she can delve into a veritable
labyrinth of might-have-been. The rub is that her powers aren’t
really in her control, reacting more to her subconscious than her
will. There’s a brilliant sequence where Haruka, in the hazy realm
of unreal timespaces, witnesses the time her parents broke up. And
then she sees it again. And again. And again. Slowly, the
conversation shifts. Words come out differently, someone speaks up
where they had held silent. Haruka is distressed by this constant
repetition of her mom and dad having a bitter fight that ends their
relationship, but on some level she’s still wishing for it.
Something different, looking for the possibility where the outcome
isn’t just the same.
That’s not something she makes real for
herself. In fact, it’s not even something she could make real
according to the mysterious mentor who finds her when she’s in the
space between timespaces now and again. But by experiencing all the
ways that could have gone, and wandering through her parents’ past
and might-have-beens Haruka herself gains a new perspective, helping
her come to terms with her reality.
In an interesting turn, she isn’t the
only beneficiary of her power. Others, like Yuu’s mom, also get
dragged into scenarios in the misty edges of the timespace map, and
typically they come back better people for what they’ve seen, looking
at their past and future alike with fresh eyes.
That said, it would be a
misrepresentation to say that Noein is about understanding and
catharsis. There’s some of that in there, but there’s also a lot of
plot. There’s the struggle of the Dragon Cavalry to protect La’cryma
(including by acquiring the Dragon Torque to bolster their own magic
observes-the-universe computer). Haruka does actually get kidnapped
at one point letting us learn more about the struggle of life in
La’cryma by meeting its people, including people that Haruka cares
about because they are also her friends. As La’cryma slowly becomes
a lost cause, we follow the defectors from that timespace and their
struggles. Some of them fight one another, others seek to work out
how to properly protect the ‘earth’ timespace from the horrors that
may have been called down upon it. Speaking of the Earth timespace,
we also follow a government lady and her cop partner as they attempt
to track down quantum phenomena and, ultimately, stop that wormy
business guy I mentioned earlier from possibly destroying the world
attempting to harness quantum power through the “Magic Circle”
project… an effort to which Haruka is connected through an extra
avenue since her father is, though against his wishes, working on it.
And then there’s the matter of
Shangri’la, and the eponymous Noein.
Noein is a figure that, much like the
Dragon Torque, the show will introduce you to early but not explain
for a very long time. He initially appears as a Casper ghost wearing
an ornate gold Phantom of the Opera mask (which despite that being my
best shorthand for it, is actually a fairly cool design), or
sometimes just as the floating mask. Noein acts as the ‘face’ of
Shangri’la, and is seemingly not just its spokesman, but its master.
It’s hard to get a bead on Noein’s game. He seems to reaffirm
Shangri’la’s interest in the ruin of La’cryma as we know it, but also
presents Shangri’la as a utopia to which he’s willing to take a
traitorous member of the Dragon Cavalry if only he’ll deliver the
Dragon Torque. He protects Haruka at least once, but he also hurts
her dearly by killing the La’cryma version of one of her friends
after she finally managed to see that friend and Karasu reach a
reconciliation of their differences. On one hand, he seems almost
like an inhuman force. On the other, some of his mannerisms are very
human, and give you the uncanny sense that he’s a lying snake at
that.
As the show progresses, Noein and his
minions (mostly robot-seeming things with a very cool and creepy
design) come to the forefront as the antagonistic force in the show
(along with the previously mentioned slimy businessman), since Noein
also desires Haruka/the Dragon Torque. Part of the reason for that
is, of course, her powers – the same reason La’cryma wanted her,
but to an opposite effect. It’s glossed over relatively quickly, but
with Haruka’s cooperation (or at least with the Dragon Torque) Noein
could finally converge all timespaces onto Shangri’la, finalizing his
‘paradise’.
There’s another reason, though: Noein
also happens to be another alternate version of Yuu Goto, and like
Yuu proper and Karasu feels a strong attachment to Haruka. The
difference is that Noein is so far gone, lost in the depths of his
own nihilism, that you can’t quite tell whether he loves her or hates
her.
This is why the bonds between Haruka
and Yuu were so critical to get right, because in the end it’s that
complicated relationship that forms the foundation for understanding
Noein and Shangri’la. We understand Noein, as far-gone as he may be,
because we understand Yuu Goto and Karasu, his other selves – or
are they? A critical moment in the climax is that Haruka ultimately
repudiates Noein. She accepts both Yuu Goto and Karasu as being the
Yuu she cares about, but sees Noein as having ultimately become too
distant. Even if that was how he started out, he’s no longer Yuu.
Even then, though, we need to know Yuu and Haruka to feel the truth
of that moment.
One of the things Noein (that’s the
show I’m talking about now) does best is engage its topics with a
degree of subtlety. The show does talk a fair bit about what
characters are going through, but more of it is an experience. The
show’s style, blending ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ and blurring the line
between the two, leads the viewer to engage with Noein on a more
emotional level.
As part of their final confrontation,
Noein (the character) shows Haruka other time spaces – both his own
past, how he lost her and slid into his bitter and absolute nihilism
from that loss – and prospective futures for her friends as she
knows them. But where Noein writes a tragedy stretching out before
the characters, their own foibles that we know well by now and dark
circumstances dragging them down to what seem to be terrible ends,
Haruka as the Dragon Torque changes the story. She doesn’t rewrite
or negate anything Noein showed her, but she takes the reins and
spins all that suffering and despair into catharsis and hope.
Through the future lives of a few growing kids that we see, touched
in the tiniest critical moments, we get a basic rejection of Noein’s
nihilism. This could have been the most shallow, hollow thing if
they just shouted at each other, but the presentation in Noein is
brilliant. You’re drawn into the simulated future as much as if it
were the present for the characters you enjoy, you suffer along with
them when Noein’s dark outlook is in charge, and feel the same relief
as the characters when Haruka turn their course around.
And, over all, I think that’s one of
the biggest strengths of the show. For all its discussions, it is an
experience first and foremost. Some shows struggle to make you feel
and never actually reach the bar because they try to do it through
brute force. Noein draws you in, almost hypnotically, and as a
result you end up feeling along with the characters, understanding
their unique points of view on the experiences around them. It’s not
the only show to do this; to me, it has a very similar feel to
Haibane Renmei, even if it doesn’t reach quite the same level of
consistent quality
There are some… idiosyncrasies about
Noein’s presentation. I believe that they were, by in large,
deliberate choices, but not all of them work perfectly. First of
all, the art style. Or styles, as the case may be. The characters
are a little different than what you’re probably used to, and while
it does exude something of a different feeling thanks to that, they
go off-model very easily. There’s also some very conspicuous CGI.
Most of the time, though, it’s for otherworldly presences or
scenarios, like the Ouroboros that appears when various timespace
nonsense is engaged, or the minions of Shangri-la that seem to have a
very tenuous, even ghostly existence. The art can also go extremely
sketchy. There’s one of the fights in the show, between Karasu and a
(former) friend of his from the Dragon Cavalry, where this became
really obvious for an extended period. I don’t know if it was done
to save on budget or what, but while there were good elements to it –
the animation for that fight having a good flow and a strong sense of
motion – it actually distracted from the scenario, and in a very
rare instance for Noein took me out of my engagement with the show.
The writing can suffer too. It must
not have been easy to weave it together as well as was done, having
the necessary long-winded explanations sound natural (they do) along
with dialogue that actually feels ‘in the moment’. But all the
same… there are points where I think they could have had the
dialogue either shut up or be a little more artificial, because there
are a few too many exchanges that consist of Yuu and/or Karasu saying
“Haruka” in various inflections with Haruka saying “Yuu” or
“Karasu” in various inflections in reply. I get it, that
actually can be a lot of how people talk, and the voice actors are
good enough that those different inflections do bear a lot of
unspoken meaning. But again, it became noticeable, and noticeable
enough here or there to take me out of the moment when the bulk of
the show is so good at keeping you there, wherever and whenever that
moment happens to be.
On the whole, Noein strikes me as an
A-. It’s smart and it’s dramatic, but it’s also rough around the
edges. It is, however, a show I think I’d like to revisit. There
was so much going on that, looking over my own review, I feel like
I’ve only gotten through the tip of the iceberg in 4000 words, and
that out of order and disjointed. If you’d like to hear a commentary
track, or see an episode-by-episode summary and analysis with a
rewatch, let me know in the comments, I really do think there’s more
here to appreciate (and possibly pick apart) than I could comfortably
cover in one of these.