TAAN: I doubt many people have heard of Noein. I wouldn’t have known about it if my brother didn’t tell me, and he heard about it from some guy suggesting anime which are amazing yet no one’s heard of. Well, that may be moot now, since apparently the Syfy channel airs it, and the dub is as good as the sub (according to unreliable sources), but who cares. Of course, I’m not here to say it’s amazing, I’m here to prove it. Hopefully.

It's like this, except better

>>FOREWORD
So why do I like it so much? The backstory involves a trans-dimensional war between the “timespaces” called La’cryma and Shangri’la. The main story includes the concept of the absolute observer (think Shrodinger’s cat, only for the universe), and some other quantum physics concepts (if you want a better idea, check the wiki page). Now for someone like me obsessed with strange physics, watching this and figuring how it may or may not work is called fun. I know there are a bunch of people who don’t care enough, but really, if you look into all the physics they use, you can find out quite a lot of interesting theories about how messed up the universe is.

>>STORY
This leads me to the story, which gets pretty convoluted, but that’s how I like it. There exists among the various timespaces one called Shangri’la, created/assembled/something by the mysterious being known as Noein, who’s goal is to have all other timespaces assimilated into Shangri’la, to make some kind of utopia in which aspects of all timespaces exist as he chooses. To this end, he has these strange giant floating things attack other timespaces to bring them under his control. A certain other timespace called La’cryma seeks to stop this  by sending out “Dragon Knights” to find the “Dragon Torque” which would supposedly allow them to fight back effectively. The thing is, La’cryma is actually a post-apocalyptic timespace representing a possible future of the current world after being decimated by Shangri’la. And that’s just the backstory. It gets more confusing, and thus more interesting, from there.

>>CHARACTERS
Even if you still don’t care, there’s also the characters. Now the big bad of this anime is actually the mysterious Noein, but the thing is, he doesn’t really come into prominence until late in the series. Before then, the decoherence of the team of Dragon Knights serves as the main antagonistic force. I mean seriously, they come from a post-apocalyptic world that’s been exhausted by constant defending. Most of their attack force was already wiped out, and the resources to create a new one just don’t exist. The incredibly hopeless team breaks in so many ways, it’s actually interesting to watch. Of course, the team members are actually more minor characters. The real fun is watching Haruka and friends deal with all the messed up stuff happening to their future selves.

>>ACTION
Finally, there are the fight scenes and the giant messed-up floating amalgamations from Shangri’la. The fast paced fight scenes (in contrast to the more common normal ones) actually have lower quality animaiton than normal, but I’ll bet the producer thought they looked more action packed like that or something. It’s not the first series I’ve seen that uses techniques like that, but it’s still cool every time I see it. There’s also no individual special abilities, meaning everyone just uses the same stuff (spin weaponry) in different ways, and that’s awesome.

>>ENDING_REMARKS
Objectively, I suppose it’s hard to recommend this to anyone who’s not interested in the strange physics the series relies heavily on. Still, if you’re like me and love to dissect the theories they use in scifi, this is probably one of the best anime out there to check out. Apparently, they did try to make everything as accurate as possible when applicable, which makes it more fun to analyze. Also, since it brings physics to any discussion about it and not the other way around, god does not kill catgirls while you talk physics about it. Q. E. D.

As a final note, tomorrow will be Angel’s turn. As I am absolutely horrible at giving praise to anything, I’m sure it will be a far superior post. Keep watch for it, HSA followers.