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Now in Japan
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Written by maehara
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Tuesday, 08 March 2005 12:28 |
 After a throughly intriguing but confusing beginning, Interlude
manages to leave me no more the wiser than I was when I started - this
is one of those shows where I'm genuinely left wondering what the
producers were trying to do. While the Pandora Project, and the
reasons for it, are finally out in the open, the whole reasoning behind
everything leaves me wondering, "What was the point?"
Episode 3
Time to find out the secret behind the Pandora Project,
and its place in events. Created to save the remanants of humanity
from oblivion, the project is beginning to fail, in no small part due
to Aya's continued existence. For the world to return to 'normal', her
existence needs to end. Our boy's sister, Mutsuki, is the key to the
Pandora Project - faced with the prospect of her onii-chan siding with
an entity she sees as her mortal enemy, she threatens to destroy what's
left of the world they're in, leaving him facing a difficult decision...
That synopsis fails horribly at describing the Pandora Project, so
here's a bit more detail - skip to the next parapgraph if you don't
want spoiled: Our hero's brother devised the Pandora Project as a
way of keeping mankind 'alive', in a fashion, when he became aware of
an impending disaster that would destroy most life on Earth.
Mutsuki's one of the Project's subjects - kept alive but unconscious in
a life-support pod, humanity 'survives' inside a world that exists only
inside her memories. However, some of the people that Mutsuki's
memories are supporting survived the disaster (Aya, our hero &
others), and that's what's causing the problem - they need to be taken
out of Mutsuki's memories & 'returned' to the real world, or what's
left of it.
That's how the story is portrayed, anyway - but reading that I'm
wondering if I've lost something in the translation, as the scenario
doesn't really make sense to me. How are the survivors aware of
their part in the world Mutsuki has created in her mind? Why do
they have the influence over it that they seem to have? Add quite
a few other questions, and you're left with my final reaction to Interlude...
Which leaves me genuinely torn on how to rate it. I enjoyed
watching it, as the first two episodes contained enough unknowns to
really grab the attention. The final episode seems to have done a
horrible job of making sense of the whole thing, but is that the show,
or a dodgy fan translation at fault? Fortunately, the official R1
DVD release is due fairly soon (12 April 2005), so my curiosity is
probably going to get the better of me there.
In the meantime, 'try before you buy' - while initially impressive, Interlude's ending leaves enough questions that I'm not sure it's worth a wholehearted recommendation.
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