Anime review: Noein

A group of kids get in contact with mysterious beings from another dimension, quantum chaos ensues.

The basic concept is brilliant. A full 24 episode anime series centered about quantum mechanics? Certainly the Japanese dare to go where the rest of the world wouldn’t even look, and they even got most of the details right (at least the details that us non physics understand, I’m sure that somewhere now there is a researcher snickering).

Now when I say centered I don’t mean that they spend their time looking for the Higgs Boson, this is still an Anime and so for the most part we have underage kids bickering while caught in tween angst while only a fraction of the running time delve into quantum stuff, mostly into the form of awesome fight scenes (what did you expect, as I said this is still an Anime). Luckily is all nicely integrated, the kids are mostly anxious about their future and so the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg and the parallel worlds theory not only are apt metaphors for that, they literally show what their future could reserve.

Graphically is a mixed bag. The design of the humans various human characters is very basic and a little pedestrian but the fight scenes, with the relative quantum superpowers, are excellent and Shangri la with is incredible flying units is simply awesome. Add a very good soundtrack and you get a nice viewing experience.