Noein: To Your Other Self

People online often discuss why exactly are the Japanese so obsessed with the high school setting, citing that it's apparently the happiest and most positive time in their lives, and how they always want to go back to an idealised version of it. I never really understood how that could be, when peak childhood era is clearly when you're a preteen, duhh. There's still some innocence left in you, even though it's slowly leaving. The differences between genders have began emerging (in actuality this difference first begins in kindergarten - but I think it doesn't become extremely obvious to the child until late elementary school), both girls and boys are still more earnest and free from the restrictions that hit them the heaviest in their teens. There's emerging turmoil but it's only looming in the horizon. This anime completely captures what I'm talking about.

But back to my tangent; personally I never liked the high school setting. Often times it could be easily swapped for a uni setting without anyone flinching, and it seems like it's there only to satisfy an invisible requirement. That is why whenever I see a setting that places the characters in elementary/middle school, I'm more drawn to it... Especially because for whatever reason, these sort of stories tend to include more adults as well, maybe as a way to balance the ages lmao. I'm fully aware this is completely personal experience related of course, as I much prefer my elementary/early middle school years to what came afterwards if we were to rank childhood eras...

ANYWAY. Noein is a sci fi anime with parallel universes and dimensional time travel, all while being a story focused on a group of friends and their families during their last summer break before middle school. The story between the two is a total balancing act, and this anime probably has one of the weirdest pacings and ways in which it handles those two such topics. From the moment the main characters get in touch with the sci-fi section of the story in episode 1, we literally never catch a break. Things move slowly, but at the same time a single episode doesn't go by where the main character doesn't somehow interact with the supernatural. This created, at least in me, this neverending desire for things to finally let up a bit, but also unrelenting curiosity to see what happens next. However, by like episode 19, I felt mentally exhausted. Of course, I fully blame myself since I practically marathoned this, but this is something to keep in mind when watching. I'd also like to mention that this anime explains NOTHING in the beginning, and up until episode 6 you are pretty clueless on why the things that are happening are happening besides being vaguely aware that these weird scifi people come from an alternate dimension, but as the end comes near we descend into extensive info dumping, which dampened my enjoyment a tad. This aspect definitely could've been paced better.

In 26 episodes this anime managed quite a lot, while also not being able to tie many loose ends. It's a walking contradiction in many ways but fully subjectively I loved it and thought it was a wild ride from start to finish. You can tell how much I loved it by writing so many disconnected paragraphs as many thoughts pop in and out of my head and I'm not bothering to cohesively connect them at all lmfao.

The characters in this anime are... numerous. We've got the main friendgroup; Haruka and Yuu (main chars), with Isami, Ai and Miho. We've got their parallel future counterparts as they're separate people too (with different names to make it easier) Karasu and Fukuro, and some of their future counterparts' CHILDREN. We've also got their parents, Haruka and Yuu's mom are very prominent characters, as well as Haruka's dad later on. Then we have the adult B side characters, such as their homeroom teacher, Yukie, and the detective + scientist duo Kyouji and Ryuoko. In the parallel universe, along with the main casts' counterparts we also have some characters that are unrelated to them but still a part of the group, like Tobi, Atoru and Kosagi. And these are only characters that are important to the story and appear frequently. Naturally, like half of these characters never got a proper arc, especially Tobi, Atoru and Kosagi, which in my opinion play an important role, yet we never find out why Atoru hated Karasu so much for example. We're also kept in the dark about the majority of the events in the parallel world, we never find out why the main friend group collectively all became super soldiers, and while I don't mind it when it comes to the sci-fi part, I do mind it characterization wise. The parallel counterparts are always there in the story, but they're never given proper emotional development. The way characters act is both inexplicable and real at the same time, and I really loved the discrepancy even though I guess you could say it's bad writing. There's just something "off" about a lot of the characters in this anime, while the other half gets normal treatment, like the detective-scientist duo, and Haruka and Yuu's moms.

Next, the sci-fi stuff... We are mostly dealing with quantum mechanics, a topic I know jackshit about. There's two points of views being expressed in this anime - that reality is singular and observed upon measurement and that there is one outcome vs. reality being infinite and expanding in a branch like manner, otherwise known as the copenhagen vs many worlds interpretations.

In the last episode Haruka "chooses" the second interpretation, while also stating that if you are not being observed, you do not exist. Kind of? I guess. I would also compare the ending to Evangelion, what with the instrumentality project and all... The science behind it all gets ignored sometimes, as statements made in the anime sometimes get contradicted, but I don't think it was overly jarring. As for how scientific it all actually is, it doesn't matter, what matters is if the anime follow the rules it sets. Majority of the time I would say yes, but there were moments that made me raise my eyebrow a few times...

The artstyle of this anime deserves a mention too, even though it was inconsistent and wonky sometimes. The second episode in particular had a totally different art direction from the rest of the anime though lmao. I really loved the freaky shangrila monster designs, but I feel like they were wasted as the story didn't delve into them too much. It does give them some mystique I suppose. They were so perfectly creepy!!

And this scene in the last episode was so good, hidden because massive spoiler

Lastly, episode 14 was probably one of my favourite anime episodes ever. It was so well directed and executed, it was just perfect and it had me soy facing in real time. It's only a shame the ending of the episode was never referenced again, which I was really hoping it would.

All in all, this anime was pretty great. It has a lot of flaws, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it, because it nailed some vibe based stuff I'm really particular about. Sometimes that's all that matters lmao.