Key: The Metal Idol, episodes 14, “System.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.
Available on Crunchyroll.
The good news is that it’s not a complete disaster. The bad news is that it’s not all it could have been.
Through its thirteen-episode run, Key: The Metal Idol ratcheted up the tension with a measured and deliberate pace. Then, as so often happens to anime, the money fell through. Instead of producing another thirteen episodes as originally planned, Hiroaki Satō created two ninety-minute movies to finish off the story. This is the first of those two.
This movie is a massive infodump. Most of the “plot” consists of two guys sitting on a park bench and drinking beer while discussing Key’s extensive backstory. Occasionally, these sequences are punctuated by scenes of a crazy dude talking to himself … and discussing Key’s extensive backstory.
Although this is a terrible way to make a ninety-minute film, it nonetheless displays the consummate skill of the people working on this project, in that they succeeded in making much of this actually interesting. Yes, I definitely got antsy and fidgety at parts, but it really is a good story that the characters are telling each other, interspersed with arresting imagery and intriguing flashbacks. It finishes off with a good cliffhanger ending that sets up for the next, and final, film.
Also, I must give Key: The Metal Idol credit for laying its storyline at our feet in this way. Other anime that ran out of resources (I’m thinking mostly of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is back in the news thanks to Netflix’s new dub) simply gave up on storytelling and took refuge in opacity and esoterica instead. By contrast, instead of telling us, “You just don’t understand because we’re deeply symbolic and stuff,” Key says, “We gotta tap out, but here’s a lengthy description of what’s happening before we go.”
I respect that.
This “review” is going to be quite short; much of what I’d like to say more appropriately belongs in the final, comprehensive review in which I’ll discuss my impression of the whole thing. I don’t really feel like typing out a lengthy summary of the lengthy summary that this film has just delivered.
The short version, however, is this: Key is descended from a long line of women with mysterious psychic abilities that science cannot test or explain, and they have long served as priestesses at a secluded shrine. Mima, Key’s grandfather, wanted to make bipedal robots but was frustrated in his efforts. He married into this family and then spent a lifetime studying his wife’s abilities.
His daughter had an even greater power than his wife, and she eventually produced the “gel,” a physical substance that could contain the power, though it must be kept at extremely cold temperatures. This “power” is a person’s soul, which can be amplified by relationships with other people. Draining it from someone will cause him over time to lose his humanity.
He extracted gel from his daughter over many years, trying to figure out a way to use it to power his robots. Meanwhile, he was repeatedly harassed by Ajo, who was even more obsessed with robots that Mima was, and who spied on his family to learn Mima’s secrets.
Mima had been extracting gel from his daughter over many years and had a supply equal to that of 30,000 regular people. To hide it from Ajo, he injected the whole load into his granddaughter Key, who subsequently lost her personality and convinced herself she was a robot.
Ajo (not Sergei, as I earlier supposed) killed Mima while trying to get him to reveal the location of this massive stock of gel. Ajo wants it to fuel his “megalodome,” apparently a concert hall and probably a secret military facility or something. Sergei has correctly deduced that Key is packing enough gel to power the whole thing, so has kidnapped Akane in order to get to her.
The end.
Some other crazy stuff happens, of course: Tsurugi has gone nuts after discovering that Ajo’s idols are really robots, and there’s some crazy old man carving puppets. There’s also some really well-done imagery of Tokyo at night, almost certainly taking inspiration from Akira, which I had earlier supposed was an influence on this show. Notice particularly the way they display cars’ headlights:
As a set-up for a grand finale, it’s not awful, but it definitely would have been better if these reveals had been spread out over twelve episodes, as was no doubt originally planned. Even the actors and animators clearly know they’re giving us a raw deal here. As Kagami and Tataki sit in a park and explain things to each other, Kagami actually yawns at one point. Tataki’s reactions to each piece of information become increasingly melodramatic as the show progresses, indicating a struggle to keep things interesting.
I will say that it’s a great story, though. I’d almost like to see this remade with the full twenty-six episodes, except I’m not sure who if anyone would be able to do it justice nowadays. If this were made today, a lot of that beautiful animation would be done with CGI instead.
A studio that remade it would also be tempted to modernize it, which would be a mistake. The story fits best in the 1990s, an era of magnetic videotape and more primitive computer technology, which makes the problems these robot developers are having and their recourse to magical phlebotinum feel more plausible than they would now. There are also references in the flashbacks to World War II, and I think the show would not work as well if those were cut. If it were remade, it would need to be remade with the retro setting.
