Quite possibly the most intense and gritty series of an apocalyptic society which has been underground for centuries. In that time, while under the earth, scientists have come up with a way to elongate a human life to adapt themselves while under the ground. The technique is Texhnolyze (technolize) a human with machine parts. It was believed that while having organs replaced with machines, your life could endure more as such. But when a few radicals moved up to the surface, life had begun to replenish but at a bitterly slow pace. Now a few more centuries later life is even more disparaged with constant scrimmages between street gangs, or small organizations which vow for power in any way possible. Between these factions, is a boxer who fights for a living. Having his parents die early in their lives, Ichise lives on the streets for his slight monetary gain. But through a night of being seduced by his manager, and with some aggressive sexual torture to him, he fights her off which in turn costs him an arm and a leg, literally. Now other than trying to regain what humanity he has left, he vies for gaining information about his tech gadgets and why people need them to live. Through out the series, there are mind bending twists and surreal places for which the humans themselves chose to live out the last of their lives. Or for that matter, what is left of their soul. During his travels a small girl named Ran becomes his confidant on trying to help him realize that not everything he sees has any meaning. His tech doctor who had applied his bionics also becomes a unwilling participant in Ichise's road to nowhere. This series held me captivated, from episode one to the last. Gore fights, violence, sex all mixes in with the constant struggles on what keeps us human. Pain, laugher, sadness through despair, and the idealism that the human race can no longer survive on a planet which has been long dead from constant ore mining or wars which has devastated the surface. Ichise soon realizes his plight that he is no longer human himself because of his limbs. Once he held a notion that he can still keep his sanity, but then starts to tumble down the rabbit hole in his madness. Quite an achievement for a series. Really does show the hardships people must endure day in and day out. On how to live without technical help, or how to get what one needs without a machine to interfere. Or when one machine does interfere, the populace becomes an unwavering force to deal with in a time when the humans no longer have a place to stay.
Review of Texhnolyze
