WARNING - minor spoilers may occur.
Anime of the year as many dub it? HARDLY.
It took me a while to put my finger on what irked me about the show and one fine Redditor (ironically their username is A_Toxic_User) said it so beautifully that I’m so grateful to them for summing up the show for me. In their comment they said that the story suffered from too much exposition, and, on top of everything, too much ‘telling’. They are completely right. I will quote some of their review:
“In every episode there is so much exposition, where characters explain their backstories, emotions, and
...
motivations in the driest and most cliche way possible. If two characters share of past, we don't intuit it through interactions or figure it out from conversational dialogue, instead, they will literally stand/sit next to each other and exposit all the information about their backstories (which they should already know, so why are they saying it), as well as directly stating their emotions and how they feel about their relationship.” When they said it, it hit me like lightning and finally everything made sense.
The storytelling is horrible, cliched, inauthentic. Even the humans in the show are guilty of this, not just their robots. Everything is presented as a concept more so than a developed idea. War happened therefore people are sad, angry, filled with hatred. While in reality that is one hundred percent true, it’s presented as a fact that’s just that - not palpable even to someone as myself who has lived through war in real life. The story feels more like a collection of bullet points and not like a developed story. Emotions are talked about and presented as just that - words. We should all play a drinking game when they say ‘hatred’.
Because these concepts aren’t explained or explored, just named, not depicted in a nuanced way whatsoever, you just need to take things at face value. Like that Redditor said, there is no buildup, just some torrent of information. It’s like a Kojima game where they spell things out for you, with an unnecessary amount of overcomplicated plot points. The characters are shallow and one-dimensional at best. Their entire personalities can be summed up on a name tag they should be wearing on their person - genius detective, wunderkind, a long haired so-called pacifist with a ton of kids, a grieving man with a vendetta, and so on and so on. They’re all just tropes, not characters.
Even when they try to deepen the characters by showing us a relationship between a bitter old man and his newest robot butler - SPOILER ALERT - the whole subplot seems forced and rather formulaic. It lacks authenticity and depth. The story greatly suffers because of its overused cliches - a bitter old man plagued by betrayal of his mother only to get a formulaic old switcharoo where his mother’s actions (the reason for their rift) was actually for his own good, not because she didn’t love him. And a robot who is trying to escape his past as a killing machine by learning how to play the piano, only for the old man to forbid him for doing it and his blatant, stubborn refusal. You don’t get to see the trauma of the robot besides his sentence ‘I want to learn how to play so I don’t end up in the war again’ - delivered so flatly. The results of their traumas are just touched on and their whole personalities are so one-note that are unbelievable. Eventually they somehow bond over music, but the subsequent death of the robot while defending the old man just when the latter was about to share with him the finished piece of music the plot was revolving around - it all fell flat and what was supposed to be moving, because of its cliches and its overall performance made me not want to care.
The same keeps happening throughout the story, as various characters die, you don’t get connected enough to them to care. I can go deeper by analyzing every episode and every plot point and subplot, but honestly, this anime doesn’t deserve it.
I wanted so desperately to like it, but should have stopped when I saw that this comes from the same creator who wrote ‘Monster’ - another highly praised title. I tried loving it and I do understand the genius of Johan Liebert and his connection to Doctor Tenma (there’s also a Tenma in ‘Pluto’, out of all names…Unless there’s some sort of connection I’m missing). The idea is brilliant, but just the premise of Tenma’s character - a successful Japanese surgeon in Germany, engaged to his boss’ daughter and left by her as soon as he did something her daddy didn’t like. Another cliche. Most of it is unbearable and I tried giving it a chance twice before giving up.
You’ll see better characterization in a shonen anime like Bleach - for example the first season of the TYBW, where they show their fear and despair by their actions and facial expressions - even such an absolute emotion like hatred - without telling anyone or thinking to themselves ‘I’m angry’, ‘I hate so-and-so’. And while I do understand that in ‘Pluto’ concepts like emotions and other human-like aspects in robots need to be discussed, at the very least they could have done a better job with the robots that do look like humans (therefore are more relatable and physically able to). The only time they came close to this, just barely, is with Helena, but this is also a stretch…
The story eventually becomes too complicated that even the point of the whole thing becomes muddied at best, and even though the topic of free will and humanity of the robots is an interesting one (and also used in popular media to the death) becomes irritating and irrelevant because it’s delivered horribly.
Perhaps this is the fault of the source material, which I never read, but the anime could have built on it and made it better…
So, why is ‘Pluto’ so beloved? Why do they think it’s the anime of the year? Is it because of Netflix’s popularity or influence? Maybe it’s so ‘deep’ like Nolan’s pretentious, overcomplicated movies people only pretend to understand so they can look smart? Can anyone please tell me what I’m missing here? All I know is that I want eight hours of my life back! And, as the Redditor above mentioned said, “I'm going to upload my brain into a memory chip and destroy it.”
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Nov 4, 2023
WARNING - minor spoilers may occur.
Anime of the year as many dub it? HARDLY. It took me a while to put my finger on what irked me about the show and one fine Redditor (ironically their username is A_Toxic_User) said it so beautifully that I’m so grateful to them for summing up the show for me. In their comment they said that the story suffered from too much exposition, and, on top of everything, too much ‘telling’. They are completely right. I will quote some of their review: “In every episode there is so much exposition, where characters explain their backstories, emotions, and ... 
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