© BONES, Fuji TV
Metallic Rouge is too stupid to get angry. That was my gut reaction to a finale that had more twists in a row than the seal on a bag of sliced bread. Despite boasting all the sound and fury you'd expect from a climax involving android tokusatsu, the story veers into place for a solid twenty minutes before throwing up its hands and giving up. It's really funny. There is no feeling of betrayal. There is no lost opportunity. There is no disappointment. This is still Metallic Rouge as ever and there couldn't be a more fitting arc for such a flawed yet strange anime.
Everything about Roy is unsurprising and confusing. As the ultimate villain, he must question the precepts of free will and humanity, which Rouge, Naomi, and Cyan are expected to refute with the power of love or whatever. whatever. To some extent, that happened, but Roy's explanations got so wrapped up in the minutiae of the plot that I couldn't help but focus on how ridiculous the details were . You can make a point about how those in power manipulate the masses without your villain having to brag about how he programmed his robot children to offset his master plan to the point of being ridiculous to the point of being impossible. It just makes everyone involved look more stupid. Not to mention his motives are non-existent. He's the bad guy in a sci-fi anime, so the odds of him wanting to overtake humanity for selfish reasons are about 75/25 but we have no context as to why Why did he stage his own puppet show?
I wouldn't harp on the one-dimensional villain so much if the show didn't have clear ideological aspirations. It snuffs out those aspirations like they were a football filled with motor oil, but they are aspirations nonetheless. Jill's fate summed it all up. Instead of seriously interrogating her actions and motives, the show makes Roy gloat about how he arranged everything (don't worry about the details) before sending her soul to the realm of darkness . I think we're supposed to assume that Jill's noble sacrifice inspired Rouge to finally free the Neans, but I also feel like I'm being charitable by making a cause-and-effect connection. The story had a golden opportunity to look at the revolutionaries in the context of global (or, in this case, galactic) superpowers, and all it delivered was a shrug. Instead, it spends half of the finale on Roy blowing hot air without much story or thematic resonance.
The production of the climax is also bad. The animation is good, the character acting is expressive, and the battles are the best the show has ever had. But the episode takes place in an ugly orange greenhouse whose color temperature is too high to flatten the available color palette. Coupled with the lack of contrast between light and shadow, the scene looks bland and desaturated, and there is little interest in the background other than the window grilles. It feels like a setting chosen for storytelling convenience rather than visual impact. And it's doubly disappointing when contrasted with the exciting sci-fi scenery on display in the OP. Why weren't the battles taking place on that field lit by an accretion disk orbiting a black hole hanging ominously in the sky? It's a sexy scene. They even talked a lot about those black holes a few episodes ago, yet we don't see any traces or feathers of them.
Despite what I wrote in the opening paragraph, I feel a bit of a missed opportunity when I look at the good parts of the episode. The climax comes when Naomi decides to completely merge her ID with Rouge's body, turning the two of them into a lesbian-powered sentai super soldier. It's a great moment, but it would have been even better if the show had given us more of the road leading up to it. I still believe that the chemistry between Naomi and Rouge is Metallic Rouge's strongest point. However, the script's lack of focus hurts every part of the film, and ironically, it hurts the strongest parts. A fully realized version of the story of Naomi and Rouge would be fantastic, with this desperate soul-binding act providing a tart yet tantalizing cherry flavor (fans of Gideon the Ninth knows what I'm talking about). The half-baked version the anime gives us feels like a tease.
It's impossible to feel angry when the ending is so spectacularly stupid. I'm talking about the sequence where Rouge frees the Neans, the alien virus overpowers the Neans, and Gene's anti-virus software frees the Neans. It’s a whole wonderful minute of shoddy storytelling that feels ripped right out of the “what not to do” section of a creative writing textbook. You might expect this in a D-movie with a classic MST3K episode. It's a deus ex machina sculpted from silly putty. And I wouldn't want the show to end any other way. A satisfactory conclusion would be undermined by all the trepidation that preceded it. A boring conclusion would be an endless reward for sitting through all the ups and downs. But a crazy conclusion that accomplishes nothing other than providing one last ridiculous example of the series' core failures? Now that's Metallic Rouge.
With all that said, I believe I should introduce Metallic Rouge to the right audience. I've had a hard time with these reviews; even if the show disappoints, writing about it is still rewarding. If you have the same brain as me, I think you'll be similarly inspired by weighing anime's influences and aspirations against its obstacles. You can theorize about the overly complicated plot and what happened in the writers room at the same time. Unlike Wonder Egg Priority, the program never crashes and explodes. It maintains a consistent level of underwhelming, and with the strength of the character design, acting, and overall setting, I can foresee this becoming one of those 6/10 anime that stands up to the test of time. Metallic Rouge is always fun—just not always in the way it's intended.
If you want a Winter 2024 anime that tells a crazy story accurately and effectively, while also fully delivering on the promise of gay robots saving the solar system with the power of love and energy weapons , introducing Brave Bang Braven will be a lot easier!.
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Metallic Rouge is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Steve is on Twitter while it lasted. He is not a biomechanical android in disguise. You can also see him chatting about trash and treasure on This Week in Anime.