Clockwork Planet

Episode 10

I'll give this episode credit where it's due: “Progressor” is a fairly apt title, because the plot feels like it progresses much more than it has in weeks. The first half of the episode is actually Clockwork Planet at its best – the team pursues a relatively simple objective, with each member getting something useful to do. In this case: “Take over the Pillar of Heaven, and find Halter a cool new robot body in the process.” This entire first act was decent action-adventure entertainment, even if the show's roughshod animation limited the overall success of each scene. Everyone contributed to the battle, and the banter between the characters added to the fun and breezy tone that this series consistently aims for but only hits at most half the time.

That being said, until the plan to put Halter's brain in a robot was revealed, I had completely forgotten about Halter's existence. I had to go back and skim through the past couple episodes to remind myself that he has indeed been out of commission since the Yatsukahagi's EMP attack. Halter is just such a nothing character that his absence from the show just went unnoticed by me, which isn't a good sign, though it is representative of how dull and unmemorable our cast has turned out to be even ten episodes into the season.

The rest of the episode following the takeover of Tokyo's nerve center was fine, though the frayed edges of Clockwork Planet's sloppy storytelling are beginning to show more and more. Characters like Marie's old classmate from college and the Meister waiting to report the government's goings-on back to our team keep being tossed around in mere exposition dumps, lacking any kind of personality of their own. The threat of the Yatsukahagi itself is also poorly communicated, with only a couple of cuts back to its cockpit reminding us that there are even other characters controlling it, whose goals and motivations remaining just as vague and uninteresting as ever.

The Tall Wand still stands as the ticking clock to motivate Naoto and the others to assume the role of terrorists and take over the Pillar of Heaven, but even that feels like a footnote, given how needlessly jumbled and complicated the plot has become at this point. As I understand it, Naoto and Marie are performing a fake coup to prevent the real coup that would lead to the release of a weapon of mass destruction that might kill everyone, but in order to do that, they need to stop the other weapon of mass destruction that's being wielded by a shadowy organization with mysterious motives, who may or may not have ties to both the creator of the Clockwork Planet itself, and by association the two maids that Naoto insists on cuddling and cooing over all the time. The back half of this episode does its best to put all of these disparate pieces together and make things feel somewhat cohesive, but this show's story is threatening to burst apart at the seams. To be honest. I'm not sure how much can be done to fix things with only a couple episodes left in this season's run.

The final scenes of the episode try to inject some much-needed emotion into this tangled web of plot devices and bureaucracy, but the moment doesn't work nearly as well as it should. The idea of Naoto performing an impromptu proposal/marriage ceremony is cute on paper, but the reality of it just doesn't gel here. I don't know how he is in the anime or light novels, but the television version of Naoto is kinda insufferable, and his over-the-top affection for his new family of robot maids is more irritating than it is adorable. Marie keeps remarking on how much of an idiot Naoto is, and in most anime that would be a slightly harsh term of endearment, but I just find it to be depressingly accurate for our hero. He isn't interesting, he isn't cool, and he certainly isn't charismatic. He's just kind of dumb.

Couple that with the way whatever chemistry he had with RyuZU withers away in the face of all this nonsense storytelling, and the whole marriage bit just falls flat. The scene even tries to double back and address Naoto's self-administered burns, and while I appreciate the attempt to milk some kind of pathos out of such a ridiculous situation, it only enhances how silly and overdone it was.

Somewhere inside of Clockwork Planet, there exists an entertaining and interesting story, told with a measured pace and a flair for its own ambitious complexity. This anime is most definitely not that version of the story, which only makes its failures that much more disappointing. I'm pretty sure that by this point, Clockwork Planet has graduated into being just plain bad, too ambitious in scope and too muddled in execution to rise above its many flaws. There are only a couple of episodes left to go before the summer season begins, but right now I'm just waiting for Clockwork Planet to finally be done.

Rating: C-

Clockwork Planet is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.