Ingress
There are some things I actually want to watch on Netflix, so I'm not sure why I find myself scrolling through options looking for other things that catch my eye. Odd. This weekend, I settled on Ingress as an interesting-enough animated series to try. It's... odd.
There are some interesting ideas that never quite come together well. I actually quite liked the main characters and watching their adventure, but the foundations of central concepts and the setting are so awkwardly forced.
There's this supernatural XM (exotic matter) that's been around in the world basically forever, which tends to gather at sites people considered sacred. There are "sensitives" with psychic abilities that can tap into this on some level. Only fairly recently has technology been able to perceive and try to harness all this. Okay, that's fairly standard for an urban fantasy-style setup.
Then, they go and gamify it all. There's two factions and they can claim these sites and bias the XM to their faction. The difference between the factions is philosophical and exists because... uhh... some AI that's pushing an app that allows normal people to claim sites said so? There's sort of an implication that they've been around for ages, but when it comes time for one of the main characters to commit to a faction it's a matter of clicking on his phone because he was told to, not with any real understanding of... anything. And thanks to this app and AI, there are "agents" of these factions playing this game and claiming sites for one another like it's Pokemon Go or something, meanwhile there are a handful of actual sensitives who these sites and fields matter to fighting each other in the shadows. The game-for-laymen aspect just doesn't fit well with the few people who all this is serious for.
I am not terribly surprised to find out that Ingress has existed as a mobile app game for a few years now. This makes more sense as a story that was applied to a game rather than something scratch-built.
So, I liked the main characters. The setting was a little off-putting. The story... I enjoyed about 8 episodes, then it seems to keep jumping the shark as the primary antagonist is finished and replaced by a shadowy cabal. Then they're immediately polished off in favor of another guy who was arguable a good guy but is suddenly spouting off about a sort of supernatural singularity and how humanity would be better off ascending his way. I know anime has a tendency to fly off the rails into psuedo-philosophical territory, but... ugh. That kind of ruins the experience at the end of the day.
There are some interesting ideas that never quite come together well. I actually quite liked the main characters and watching their adventure, but the foundations of central concepts and the setting are so awkwardly forced.
There's this supernatural XM (exotic matter) that's been around in the world basically forever, which tends to gather at sites people considered sacred. There are "sensitives" with psychic abilities that can tap into this on some level. Only fairly recently has technology been able to perceive and try to harness all this. Okay, that's fairly standard for an urban fantasy-style setup.
Then, they go and gamify it all. There's two factions and they can claim these sites and bias the XM to their faction. The difference between the factions is philosophical and exists because... uhh... some AI that's pushing an app that allows normal people to claim sites said so? There's sort of an implication that they've been around for ages, but when it comes time for one of the main characters to commit to a faction it's a matter of clicking on his phone because he was told to, not with any real understanding of... anything. And thanks to this app and AI, there are "agents" of these factions playing this game and claiming sites for one another like it's Pokemon Go or something, meanwhile there are a handful of actual sensitives who these sites and fields matter to fighting each other in the shadows. The game-for-laymen aspect just doesn't fit well with the few people who all this is serious for.
I am not terribly surprised to find out that Ingress has existed as a mobile app game for a few years now. This makes more sense as a story that was applied to a game rather than something scratch-built.
So, I liked the main characters. The setting was a little off-putting. The story... I enjoyed about 8 episodes, then it seems to keep jumping the shark as the primary antagonist is finished and replaced by a shadowy cabal. Then they're immediately polished off in favor of another guy who was arguable a good guy but is suddenly spouting off about a sort of supernatural singularity and how humanity would be better off ascending his way. I know anime has a tendency to fly off the rails into psuedo-philosophical territory, but... ugh. That kind of ruins the experience at the end of the day.
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