Ddinosaurr

In a typical sci-fi you are shown advanced technology, machinery, robots etc. Imagine a sci-fi that has none of that!

In this show, modern civilization crashed due to humans developing psychokinetic abilities and annihilating each other, and we are 1000 years into the future. We get a tiny population of people living by the countryside.

How did a small amount of humans manage to survive?

Answer lies in behavioural genetics and ethology.

This is among the only shows I've seen that takes behavioural genetics and ethology seriously, to create a situation where no human can consciously harm another human, yet it can only take a single human to wipe out the whole population.

As someone that's taken courses related to ethology and evolution of social behaviour, I could spot concepts such as inclusive fitness and eusociality in this show.

Someone with a surface level knowledge of evolution won't understand why an organism can be selected through natural selection, to die without reproducing. However we see it happen widely in eusocial animals such as naked mole rats, ants, bees etc.

For context: In eusocial animals, the queen mates with a select few males on top of the hierarchy while majority of the colony spend their entire lives working and not reproducing. This makes sense with the concept of inclusive fitness. Inclusive fitness is the idea that the selection of traits in a population of organisms depend on whether they allow individuals to directly reproduce OR whether they aid the survival of those that are genetically related.

This whole concept was explained very simply for a casual viewer while being scientifically accurate.

I also liked the fact that "queer rats", a fictional species in this show that descended from naked mole rats (real life animal), were shown to selectively develop outlandish shapes. For example, some of them would develop stick-like shape and hide in trees. This was clearly a reference to real life research on naked mole rats changing their skeletal and body structure depending on social cues and transitions in social hierarchy. Though the shapes of queer rats in the show were exaggerated and interestingly adapted for warfare, which relates to the broader theme that I can't mention without spoiling.

Some things I did not like: the psychological aspect of the show still relied on outdated Freudian terms like "subconscious" and "unconcsious mind". Although there were some displays of modern psychology such as personality testing.

In addition, people in the show could block and change memories in others. It was not explained how that occurred. Perhaps the source material (novel) explains it? But this was an opportunity to capitalize on false memory research in modern cognitive psychology.

Nonetheless one of my favourite anime. 9/10.

The story starts off in an interesting setting. An area in Japan termed "Hell's gate" is sealed off through massive walls. Laws of physics fail to work within Hell's gate and it spontaneously and mysteriously emerged out of nowhere.

Coinciding with Hell's gate is the spotting of humans with supernatural abilities called "contractors". They're called contractors because they must perform a repetitive action after using their powers as part of a contract.

Another trait of contractors is their supposed rationality. Their decision making is based on efficiency rather than emotions. Due to this they resemble sociopaths.

Contractors don't appear out of thin air unlike hell's gate. Humans transform into them, for mysterious reasons.

With this setting, this show could have addressed the mystery behind the hell's gate and contractors in an interesting way, it could have discussed the impact of contractors on society from a philosophical POV, or could have discussed the impact of human to contractor transition from an individual's perspective (anime parasyte does it well).

The show does none of this. It turns into a generic action anime and nothing more.

The potential philosophical POV I mentioned above could have included discussing prisoner's dilemma or stag hunt dilemma to show that rationality often entails cooperation and altruism despite how the show erroneously equates rationality with selfishness and sociopathy.

The repetitive action as part of contract is just an aesthetic without any significance.

4/10.

One of the best portrayals of autism in cinema, and in a main character too which I've never seen before! Don't know if it was intended by the author, but I haven't related to a character this much until now (as an autistic person) despite the supernatural aspect.

To name a few things that I related to, include sensory sensitivities, intense emotional experiences, affective empathy, meltdowns, guilt/grief, being oblivious to social trends, excessive self-monitoring, and masking, all of which is captured very well, in detailed and experimental art-style/animation.

Most importantly, this show displays the idea that a lack of facial expression does not mean a lack of emotional experience and empathy. Emotional experiences are often intense in autism and many individuals experience hyper affective empathy (different from cognitive empathy which entails reading people's emotions through body cues and having the right response to them, which is difficult for autistic individuals).

This is in stark contrast with stereotypical portrayals in other shows where autistic characters are presented as cold, logical, non-emotional, adamant on being proven correct, and present for comedic relief.