Platonic Chain

Platonic Chain is fascinating for several reasons. At its core, the story is about the mundane lives of several teen girls in Shibuya in a "slightly more advanced" version of the early 2000s. The whole story has a sense of oddness to it, since it has all of the makes of a tech-based dystopian horror, and yet the young characters go about their daily lives in stride. While the Platonic Chain tech in the show is new to the girls as well, they adapt to it quickly and incorporate it into their lives in a way that is very deeply human and very accurate to ... how we interact with new technology today.

As a watcher in 2024, I was struck by the horror of how everything in the show (made in 2002 mind you) and all of its dystopian elements are just...life in 2024. The most horrifying aspects of the show (and the parts that characters react the most to) are just...ever present in life now. The farther we get from 2002, the more accurate Platonic Chain is at depicting real life than it is at depicting.a dystopian future, because we already live in it. It's mundane for the characters in Platonic Chain, much like how constant surveillance is mundane for us too.

The rough early 2000s 3D animation is charming. It reminds me of older Playstation video games and all of their poorly-rendered glory. Character designs reflect how much care was put into designing characters that feel fully-fleshed out and can communicate aspects of character personality to viewers within the short minutes we have with them. A lot of love clerly went into rendering the main characters, and I think that's precious. It's a fantastic blast from the past visually and will make anyone with nostalgia for the y2k era smile.

Each episode of Platonic Chain is mostly eaten up by the OP and ED. The ED is always a live-action music video of a late 90s or early 2000s girl group song with cuts of the main characters interspersed. Seeing Baby VOX in an anime is a bit of trip for me, haha. I can see how it may annoy some viewers, but I found it contributed to the charming nature of the show. I LOVE watching early 2000s girl group music videos, so perhaps that's why I loved it so much...

I only mark this as mixed feelings because I recognize some will not appreciate it. But there is a specific audience that should enjoy this. Don't compare this anime to any other modern anime, because it's just comparing apples to oranges. This is a historical artifact and should be enjoyed as such. A lot of people will complain about the CGI art style, but given the hindsight of 20 years - it's awesome. I think it's perfect for this anime; lifeless, creepy CGI animation was this thing that was everywhere for a very short amount of time until everyone finally realized it was totally ugly ... and then it was really only relegated to those straight to dvd children's movies that were rip offs of disney IP. So I think it shows us exactly where this show was coming from in history, it situates you perfectly in the early 2000s. It reminds me of watching code lyoko as a kid. A time when I had no idea how terrible and cruel technology would become.

Platonic Chain is the writer's personal prediction for where technology could have gone in the future. The website "PlaChe" is like an all seeing eye, that invades the privacy of everyone using security cameras that are seemingly everywhere in shibuya. Using facial recognition technology, it can attempt to find your long lost lover or your estranged father for you. Each short episode is generally about a specific feature of PlaChe and how the main characters (cute Shibuya middle schoolers) use it. It's very entertaining to compare the technology of PlaChe to what is truly possible today, in 2023. You have this ability to basically stalk people and find their exact location, using security camera footage mainly. Information they did not give up willingly. Today, if you wanted to find someone, you would likely just find them using information they willingly put online. It would be harder to find someone's exact location, but for those who incessantly document their lives on social media, it's certainly possible. I don't have an exact thesis about this show yet, I'm not saying it's some type of groundbreaking commentary on technology and society. It's mainly just interesting to reflect on this time before everything went so wrong.

It's extremely hard to judge Platonic Chain. It provides one of the most dystopian premises of all time, and yet it centers itself around the general mundanities of teenage life in Shibuya, with the same kind of tone you would have in most other slice of life comedies. It has a very unique sense of humour that sometimes lands and sometimes doesn't, but either way you will have fun. Each episode is technically 6 minutes long, but the actual episode content is only 3 minutes once you subtract the opening and ending. Within those 3 minutes is batshit insanity.

If you know how much I hate ... CGI animation, you might wonder why I like this anime so much. I hate Berserk 2016, I'm not the biggest fan of Dorohedoro, so why this? I love that this looks like a forgotten Dreamcast game. I love the soundtrack so much. The various openings and endings are all in my playlists. The fact that this takes place in Shibuya and makes actual reference to things and events in Shibuya's landscape and history is also a plus.

It gets kind of dull after a while, but this is definitely worth the watch if you wanna see some truly inspired shit. Doing research on this anime is hell. Trying to find out things about it as a non-Japanese speaker is truly a challenge. If you find anything new, let me know.