Clockwork Planet - Reviews

First some items I need to adress. I'm Dutch to expect some spelling errors, if they are to annoying just message me and I'll fix it.

My opinion may vary from others and this is fine. People are different so there is a good chance that I will not like what you love. Deal with it. I'm not telling you that you should hate it too, I'm telling you why I didn't like it.

I'll try to keep swearing to a minimum but fail utterly on occasion. In general it is the more the anime pisses me off the more I swear so watch out for the low scored ones.

Art: Art is fine. There is a heavy use of CGI but is not to noticeble. With the massive use and showig of gears in use it makes perfect sense to use CGI and here is works pretty well.

Sound: No real complaints actually, it's pretty ok. Voice actors are good and I don't remember any music either. This is how I generally prefer my anime.

Characters: The main character is Naoto. He is a highschool student who struggles to become a clocksmith. He is very passionate about gears in general and the more complex the mechanic is the more he loves it. He has perfect hearing and can find faulty gears just by listening.

RyuZU is a automaton that was created a 1000 years ago by Y. After Naoto fixes her she accepts him as her master, believing him to be the greatest clocksmith of the era. She is fiercely loyal to Noato, threatening to kill any who slight him just to put them in their place yet never loses her cool.

Marie is a genius clocksmith from a long line of clocksmiths who tries desperately to keep the world from falling apart. Quite literally in this case.

Halter is Maries' cyborg bodygaurd and quite powerful. He usually acts as a father figure for Marie and helps to keep her grounded.

Story. A 1000 years ago the world reached the end of its life and humanity was about to lose their home. Then a brilliant clocksmith, known only as Y, came along and said that he could save the planed. He did this by rebuilding the world from gears, creating the clockwork planet. Since then the world has kept on ticking but even the best parts start to show wear and tear. To fix these glitches a group of master clocksmiths banded together into a powerful guild. Unfortunately humanity is plagued by more than faulty parts as curroption, power hungry people and terrorists threaten the world 24/7.

Rant. I liked the concept and I liked the world they created but the execution sucked balls. It is rare to see an anime fall apart so quickly but this fails within minutes of starting It does this by committing the cardinal sin of starting a month into the future before going back to the beginning.

The problem with this is that it completely removes any tension from the anime because no matter what happens YOU KNOW THAT THE CHARACTERS WILL SURVIVE! You know this because the anime showed that one month from now all main characters will be alive and well.

So when they need a Deus ex Machina and RyuZU rips out her own heart in a very dramatic scene. The main characters are panicking because if they fail then RyuZU will die. All this drama goes completely by me because I know that in the 'one month later scene' she is there and completely fine.

When Noato and RyuZU jump into a bottomless pit to certain doom, you see Marie completely lose it because she believes them to be dead. As for me? I don't care as I already know that they are alive because in a few weeks time they are in that scene that the anime started with.

STARTING YOUR ANIME IN THE FUTURE BEFORE GOING BACK TO THE BEGINNING ALMOST ALWAYS FAILS BECAUSE IT REMOVES THE TENSION FROM THE ANIME. IT RUINS ANY DRAMATIC EFFECT BECAUSE YOU KNOW THAT THEY ARE FINE.

Naoto sucks as a main character. In the first arc you learn that corrupt officials plan to drop a city, killing 20 million people. Marie wants to prevent this and comes across Naoto who will be able to find the faulty parts by sound. When she tells him about the planned drop, he is horrified. So when she tells him that only he can prevent he naturally refuses.

He should NEVER rufuse! Or at least not the way he did here. If you have him refuse, he MUST have a valid reason or it taints your main character going forward because no matter what he does later, I will always remember that one little 'no'.

Speaking of character motivations.... with the exception of Marie I don't think anyone has any. Halter protects Marie and is like a father for her. Great. RyuZU is bound to Noato and serves him in any way she can. Fine. Marie wants to save the world by fixing shit. Clear. Noato.....uhm....likes gears and wants to become a clocksmith?

Naoto being a bad clocksmith doesn't work as he really shouldn't be. The anime properly starts with Naoto walking into his room, stand in front of a wall of broken clocks and loudly declares that he is a bad clocksmith. SHOW! DON'T! TELL! Have him try to fix shit and fail.

He fails to fix even the simplest of mechanics, yet when a highly complex piece of macine drops through his roof he fixes it in minutes. So either he is a genius clocksmith or he isn't. He can't be both. My suggestion is to have him be a misunderstood genius who doesn't fit in with shool but that would require more lines of dialogue to get the point across I guess.

Villain motivation. There isn't any. The final villain maybe but he was so poorly developed that they might as well replaced him with a piece of wood. You wouldn't have noticed the difference.

Fanservice.....the only good thing I can say is that they didn't go all out with it. There is plenty of it but I've seen much much worse.

Clockwork Planet is bad. Really bad. I daresay that there will be others who disagree on this point (I've watched some REAL SHIT which has its enthusiastic fans, and I don't necessarily mean to dissuade them from their opinions) but leave it to Xebec to, on this occasion at least, create a series which is simultaneously derivative and which sabotages its own potential.

On the face of it, Clockwork Planet has a fun but silly premise; after a scarely-explained apocalyptic event, the world is rebuilt from scratch, in cog-and-gear form, by the mysterious Y. Some time later, an automaton with a hot female body crashes through protagonist Naota's cieling and, using his auditory skills to find the problem in her mechanism, fixes her. She becomes his servant, and the two eventually meet a young meister (person who does gear things) and her bodyguard, who enlist them in stopping the military from dropping an entire region of Japan into the core of the planet. Under other circumstances, this might make for a simple but entertaining series full of clockwork people fighting other clockwork people. A more ambitious team might even pick up on the themes of authenticity and embodiment which the show occasionally picks at before putting them down abruptly in favour of more shooting at faceless robots, and endless repetitions of the word 'master'.

These aren't other circumstances.

Essentially, the show feels about eight years older than it really is. Events, character motivations and visual elements seem cobbled together by focus testers who seem to have taken the idea of working together bits and pieces, cog-like, to heart. Everything is here, from an inexplicable beach segment to a little girl character who seems to have little to no personality beyond being 'cute', but who paradoxically seems LESS cute because the show tries so hard to make you think that she is. From the animation style to the gross oversexualisation of most of the female cast (RyuZu forms a contract with Naota by enthusiastically sucking his finger, for some reason), everything feels cheap and tacky. Attempts to engage in dark or psychological matter end up seeming forced and are dropped so quickly in favour of robots shooting blandly at each other that they're almost not worth bothering about. In one scene, one of the female leads has a breakdown in a lift in which she shakes, punches things, laments and laughs uncontrollably within the space of what feels like ten seconds, which might actually be the most Clockwork Planet thing about Clockwork Planet; things happen quickly and without much thought put into them.

There's not a whole lot else to say. The MC feels dime-a-dozen, the kind of sort-of-perverted, actually-genius, optimist-to-the-last young boy protag who you've seen countless times already and wasn't great in any previous iteration. Most of the rest of the cast is uninteresting and forays into the realms of romance prove unconvicing at best, creepy at worst. Among other things to look forward to are a bizarre radio transmission which accuses a young girl of having a 'sad hole' in need of 'cocks', a villain who (again) might have been an interesting look into concepts of authenticity and humanity elsewhere but who is sorely underdeveloped, and a lack of any kind of real emotional investment, leave this as possibly the worst so far of what has actually been a pretty disappointing year for anime up to this point, IMO.

Tl;dr, Clockwork Planet seems like it might be a bit of silly fun but is actually misjudged when it tries anything new, and dull and derivative at every other turn. Bland characters, bland villains and an ultimately woeful experience. Avoid.

Positive

*Can I even find anything that I liked in this anime? …….. Anchor was quite cute. ……… Moving on.

Negative

*Because my God that was literally the only spark of light that I saw in this thing that calls itself an anime. But CP was bad on so many different levels.

First of all, I know that in fantasy/sci-fi anime you’re basically free to do whatever the hell you want. But the whole concept of CP was so triggering that I couldn’t ignore it. So if I got this right than the actual earth was dying and so this “scientist” by the name of Y build a new world completely out of gears? That, literally, makes no sense at all. Just like how in the final episodes, suddenly gears start appearing out of thin air. Again I know that this is a fantasy/sci-fi anime but this was just so irritating also because we never learn anything about how this world came to be or its creator.

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*Which seamlessly brings me to my next point of concern being that CP explained nothing. Not only do we never learn anything about how the gear world came into existence or who Y was but also in terms of the story itself the anime fails at explaining anything. The whole coup with the giant electromagnetic weapon and its leader and every single goddamn thing in this anime just happened. Where did the leader of the coup come from, what’s his backstory, his motive, where did all these flashbacks between him and our MC come from. This anime was just a huge pile of random events thrown together in a story framework that wasn’t even there.

*And last but certainly not least, you had to make the MC a pervert, you just had to. It wasn’t enough that your entire anime fell apart because of the nonexistence of any logic in it, you had to go and use this freaking stereotype which I have seen so many times and honestly I am sick and tired of seeing this kind of dumb, pervert MC’s who actually don’t contribute anything to the story.

Conclusion

So as a conclusion, CP was just bad. I can’t even say that this was a disappointment because I wasn’t expecting anything from it. But still this anime isn’t worth your time, it definitely wasn’t worth mine and I was so happy when it was finally released from its misery. So overall I’m going to rate Clockwork Planet at a miserable 1 stars. This is an anime that belongs in a far corner of the anime universe where nobody can find it because if I look at the ratings that I already gave this year than this is the worst anime that I had seen until now this year.

With a really silly plot and some pinch of action and comedy, clockwork planet will entertain you for the time being. A good story development and lovable characters is all it takes to make yourself like this anime. During the course, you will really stick to the characters by watching them how beautifully they develop into. As a light-novel adaptation, this indeed has an excellent plot but the the same time, didn't slack off at the action part. You won't be feeling bored watching this because there is humor everywhere in this anime. Even when they are in dire situation there is comedy. So that it won't just be a concentrated action or comedy, but an amazing work of both together.

Story (8/10)
As the most crucial and interesting fragment, the story opens in an interesting way explaining the working of the world, and how people live in them. And it progresses smoothly as new villans and challenges appear. The world is really well constructed with its complicated gears and science works. They will eventually explain everything but if you are careless and not pay attention to it, you might lose the track of the story. The rate at which the story goes is also proportional to the character development​ which makes things more refreshing.

Animation (7/10)
Now this really is a tight spot. The animation was not that great and it may leave you wondering why a famous light-novel's adaptation has such a sloppy animation. The hair moments are weird, different angles have different kind of shapes, but they didn't fail to animate the gears since it is the most crucial object in this anime. Gears and some fight scenes were animated in 3D . The 2D animation won't bother you much since they atoned it by its amazing 3D animation.

Sound (8/10)
I really loved the Opening song and ending song, and some BGMs too. Well composed, and it really suits the anime perfectly.

Characters (8/10)
You will really love to just sit back and watch the characters marching towards their goals and ambitions. The characters will develop feelings like jealousy and hatred and will overcome them eventually. The talented envy of the genius and the vice versa is just really refreshing to watch.

Overall (8.2/10)
It is just fun to watch the mixture of comedy and action in the really complicated world running on gears. If you like some action, but not too serious action type, then you're going to love this.

Tiny, Tiny Spoiler.

I really enjoyed the show, it had everything, Sharp-tougued beauty, Blond Tsundere, Cross-gender and cross-dress characters, cute little girl who everyone wants to hug, a main character who's not dense, an old badass pervy guy, a cool relaxed guy....

Animation was a bit poor for a 2017 anime but the story made up for it, sound was good but not to the point where it really made express emotions as i hear it

All in all, will be one of my best action/romance anime i've watched.

NOW CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHY THE FUCK IS THERE NOT A ROMANCE TAG ON THIS SHIT WHEN THE GUY SPEND THE WHOLE ENTIRE ANIME CONFESSING TO THE GIRL AND THEN EVEN GOES TO THE LENGHTH TO PROPOSE TO HER! TWICE!

PS. 9.5 BECAUSE I DIDNT GET MY KISS SCENE FANSERVICE, I MEAN WHERE THE FUCK IS IT????