Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we return to a series I actually haven’t touched for several years now, at an oddly appropriate moment. With Hiroshi Hamasaki’s adaptation of Blade of the Immortal currently demonstrating the unique range and appeal of his style, today we look back at Texhnolyze, one of the shows that initially solidified his aesthetic and built his reputation.
Many elements of Hamasaki’s style have remained consistent over the years, from his clear fondness for light saturation, to his love of layouts that act more as hyper-focused tonal signifiers than coherent scene-setting. His stories are always drenched in an oppressive white light, and his regular use of uncomfortably extreme closeups and symbolism give his shows a sense of disorientation and alienation, as well as the sense that there’s some greater conspiracy or logic at work. Some works are perfectly suited to this style, while others are not; he was the ideal choice to direct Steins;gate, but a very weird one for a show like Orange. As it turns out, Texhnolyze might be the most resoundingly “Hamasaki-esque” show of all time, and its first three episodes have let him utterly indulge in his love of slow-burning, aesthetically driven theater.
To be honest, Texhnolyze’s visual style has been stronger than its narrative so far. The story being very slowly revealed here seems like a pretty familiar tale of future-tinted gang violence, with the ultimate question of “what do you become when you rebuild your body with mechanical parts” striking me as extremely quaint in 2019. But Texhnolyze is more a mood piece than a thematic treatise, and it is a goddamn effective mood piece. Let’s see what awaits in episode four!