Credit to Gaara84 for the awesome wall.
Not often do you see robot fighting and philosophizing in the same show.
Heavy spoilers ahead.
I instantly fell in love with Casshern Sins when I picked it up half a year ago (wow, quite a long time). The artistry, tone and style of the show were the kind of thing I’d never seen before (and for that I thank the Golden Touch of Madhouse) and the music and fight choreography only served to compliment the many positive aspects of the show. You don’t find many series that are as intriguing in so many ways as Casshern. The plot, the characters and the storyline always seem to have had an air of mystique about them, which always keeps you questioning (even now at the end of the series) the purpose of events or actions in the show.
The best parts of the show were by far the setting and the one-shot characters. You have the traditional post-apocalyptic sci-fi world but the hopelessness that permeates it is unique to the show . This is a decaying world of despair, death and destruction where there is no reason to live and no way to survive. At least, that’s how it seems at first. Each of the episodic characters that Casshern meets on his travel have their own engaging back story, their own reasons for living and acting the way they do. To see them struggling against the world and the ineivitable fate that awaits them makes for some excellent moments in the show. Each time thoughts on the nature of death and life is addressed from a different perspective. It’s not so much about Casshern aiding those he meets as Casshern bearing witness to what they do and learning more about the nature of humanity. In Casshern Sins, robots do have feelings that go far beyond the traditional melancholy of the Illusionary World.
When the robots are made vulnerable to death, this has a profound effect on them. With death comes humanity and you could believe that the robots (as indeed some do) should try to use their remaining time to the fullest, but instead many (understandably) recoil in horror from their sudden mortality and do everything they can to stop it. They have experienced eternal life and become masters of the universe world; to have all that stripped away and to face the fact that they will slowly (painfully?) decay until they can no longer even move must be terrifying. It becomes a dog-eat-Casshern world, based around savagery and the pursuit of the thing that made them so inhuman in the first place. But as I said, it’s the different and varied reactions of the individuals we see in the show throughout most of its first half that make Casshern so great in my eyes.
However, that was the first half. When Cassshern starts to focus on the central plot (which had a great amount of potential) things start to get confusing and somewhat irritating. Half of the central characters are completely uninteresting and even unecessary, making the episodic characters seem amazingly complex in comparison. Leda and Dio are 2-dimensional antagonists so focused on their own (ineivitably futile since CASSHERN MUST WIN) goals that it just feels like they’re repeating themselves and staying undeveloped till the very end, most of the time HAETING Casshern for all he’s worth. Lyuze is the same, except for the fact she eventually grows to love Casshern in a change of heart somewhere in the middle of the series. Ringo is understandably simple, being a child, but that doesn’t chage the fact that the creators of the show used her to hammer home messages such as VIOLENCE IS BAD or THIS IS WHAT INNOCENCE IS LIKE IN THE FACE OF DESPAIR constantly throughout the series. Braiking Boss is an ominous presence until he reveals his grand and dastardly plan to… let Luna do what she’s been doing when she reappaered. And Friender’s a robot dog.
But the other characters in Cashern Sins, including the protagonist himself, are much more appealing. After Casshern gets over his amnesiac emo phase, he really does take to heart the experiences of the people he meets on his journey; he may not end up being the perfect male lead, but he at the very least develops a sense of purpose by the end of the series. Oji’s character is probably the most layered of them all: there is the love he feels for Ringo, the regret he feels for creating Casshern, Leda and Dio and his wishing for retirbution and atonement. Though I was skeptical at first, Luna also turns out to be a bit deeper than crazy, masochistic “healer” girl. She’s just so radically different from the kind and gentle Luna that we’ve heard of up until now; she’s much more selfish and even confused than she seems from the start. It’s only natural that after being asked to kill those with eternal life for so long, she’d get sick of hearing the wails of the dead, and of death itself, that accompanied her task.
Casshern Sins unfortunately lost its way towards the end. Questions that were brought up were never answered (how Luna came back to life, how the world changed from the two’s meeting, why Ringo kept being hinted at as having a link to Luna yet just… didn’t), the pacing was slow, the art floundered at times and the writing bordered on nonsensical (circus anyone?). However, the conclusion partially made up for all this. I’ve always disliked Lyuze so her death seemed trivial to me, though if I looked at it more objectively I can see that it was well done. Oji’s death scene was truly epic in every way, his final words, the scene direction and that pan to white while Ringo was speaking to him just fit together to give him a perfect send-off. There was even some action thrown in for good measure as well as Casshern Vs M.Bison Braiking Boss for the final battle. The interchange between Casshern and Luna explained nothing other than when he killed her, their blood mixed and bad things happened, but otherwise the final episode wraps up the series in such a way it leaves you feeling satisfied, despite its flaws.Perhaps there’s even something to be said for the ambiguity, that it further immerses the viewer in a show which deals with themes such as aimlessness. But that’s probably just clutching at straws.
Overall, I’d say that Casshern Sins was well worth the ride for the first half of the series alone. It suprassed my expectations greatly, deliviring a dystopian adventure mixed with good characters and such a unique tone that I couldn’t help but be drawn in by.
I pretty much have the same thoughts as you. The first half as a travelling show was straight-forward and we can all enjoy the excellent art and music, but the second half had pacing problems and many of important questions went unanswered. Still an enjoyable show though.
mmm… interesting. i should re-watch this for the lack of anything else to watch. if everything goes as you say, by the time i reach halfway through, i will just keep on watching until the end.
@TJ
If only shows that were good somehow didn’t let that quality slip.
@biankita
You should never have abandoned Casshern. You should have DEVOURED the show as much as possible. NOM NOM SINS.