PLATONIC CHAIN

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA MysteryPlatonic Chain
SPECIAL DramaPlatonic Chain: Web

REVIEWS

• 

  WeatherReport

  40/100
  Low-budget sci-fi with some cool ideas, but falls flat

  This review contains spoilers

  Four years after Serial Experiments Lain shook the world with its timelessly profound commentary on postmodernism, came a little-known anime with similar themes about futuristic technology envisioned in the early-internet era. It’s far from having the same level of quality as the former (it’s definitely not a good show), but I think it’s worth talking about nonetheless.

  For something made with the budget of a washing machine, it actually doesn’t look too bad. I would even go so far as to say that it has a more interesting visual style than your typical low-budget seasonal isekai. The CGI is animated fairly smoothly and gets the job done. The end of the first few episodes even gives you the polygon count of each character’s model, which is an amusing touch.

  The show follows a group of girls and their escapades with this site called “Platonic Chain” (or PlaChe for short) that allows you to look up any kind of information on anybody. Using it, you can not only doxx people but also see other things, such as what a given person is likely to be good at, their future romantic partner, etc. The show is generally comedic in nature, following an episodic format, with some episodes that focus more on the darker side of this tech. As you can imagine, it’s a story about mass surveillance, identity, and life in a cyberpunk-esque world.

  It nails the mass surveillance part in my opinion. Usually conveyed via undertones, you can see how unnerving of a society this is, where you are constantly being watched and the archives have a grotesque amount of information on you. While this site was created by a hacker, it is kept within the government files in the first place. Episode 21 has Rika comment directly on this too. But the fact that it’s a double-edged sword where the masses themselves utilize it for their own benefit, even the people who aren’t necessarily evil, makes it interesting.

  Some instances of the identity part being done right:

  Episode 14 has Rika being contacted by a stalker girl who watches her every move. She claims that she is a NEET and is just trying to live life through Rika, comparing it to watching an idol. But after she puts up the question of whether she is actually Rika and Rika is actually the NEET, this makes Rika’s head spin and fall unconscious. When she wakes up, her flip phone has been replaced by a landline telephone. Probably one of the best episodes in how it showcases the darker side of this world with a possible loss of identity that could only occur with Plache.

  Episode 16 shows a random old main who’s a menace to the townsfolk with how he keeps littering the place and annoying everyone in the vicinity. Soon, people started to click and upload photos of him. It is said that when the upload count reaches a million, his data records via Plache would disappear, and it would essentially make him cease to exist. The episode ends with the final photo being clicked, with his fate left up in the air. What exactly is Plache that can allow something like this to happen? Is a set of data all that a human amounts to in this world? How can data deletion cause someone to disappear in reality? Things like these increase the mysteriousness of this website.

  Miscellaneous: Episode 19 has Hitomi and Rika talk about Narumi, the class president who goes around seemingly committing bad deeds such as stealing Potato chips from a kid and setting an abandoned building on fire. She claims that she’s actually being a helping hand by doing all this. For example, her reasoning for swiping the kid’s chips was she found out using Plache that he is allergic to potatoes, so she confiscated it and gave it to his parents. She even ties up a woman who was about to kill herself but couldn’t as she was too afraid to, so she shoots her with a fake gun, all the while she was screaming. This could have easily been played off as the gun being real, resulting in a subversion from what was shown before, all the while maintaining Narumi’s stance of bullshitting around without any substantial harm like the case with the abandoned building. But when the episode ends with her saying that she was providing a helping hand as usual, it put things into perspective. She was actually trying to scare the suicidal woman even more, so that she would never try to kill herself again. It’s a well-executed episode made from a simple idea.

  Unfortunately, there’s more bad to this show than good. To start off with a subjective issue: For a show named “Platonic Chain”, it ironically has way too much romance for my taste. Now setting that aside for the actual writing problems:

  One of the most important subplots is about the identity of Kanae’s missing dad, which goes nowhere. It’s talked about in multiple eps and is kind of a big deal, but there’s zero resolution to this. Which applies to the main plot too. The final episode reveals that Plache was being controlled by a woman from New York City. That’s it. It abruptly ends.

  It’s such a stupid ending that resolves nothing. We already knew that Plache was run by someone outside of japan because the possibility had been brought up by rumors. So confirming this wasn’t anything new. We don’t get to learn about the owner’s motives, we learn nothing about Plache’s true nature as probed by episodes like 14 and 16, we learn nothing about Kanae’s dad. To add insult to injury, the 15-min special that was released afterwards is just random side stories (which are meh imo) that don’t expand upon the ending in any way.

  Ultimately, I wouldn’t really recommend this show because it ends on such an unsatisfying note. But hey, it’s short enough that you can binge it in one sitting on a weekend. So if you are interested, it’s not a totally worthless watch. Plus, I would rather take a mid show with originality like this one than a trope-filled show with nothing to offer.

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