| Type: | tv series |
| Director: | Hiroshi Hamasaki |
| Studio: | Madhouse |
| Network: | FNS (Fuji TV) |
| First: | April 16, 2003 |
| Last: | September 24, 2003 |
| Episodes: | 22 |
Texhnolyze (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese experimental[1] [2] anime television series animated by Madhouse and directed by Hiroshi Hamasaki. Set in the fictional city of Lux, the story focuses on Ichise, a stoic prize fighter who loses an arm and a leg after offending an unnamed figure. Written by Chiaki J. Konaka, with original character design by Yoshitoshi Abe, the series was produced by Yasuyuki Ueda and was broadcast on Fuji Television and its affiliates from April to September 2003.
Texhnolyze follows Ichise, an underground fighter whose arm and leg were severed after he displeased an unnamed, presumably influential, man. He is brought back from the brink of death by Eriko "Doc" Kaneda, who replaces his lost limbs with prosthetics through a process known as "texhnolyzation", the process enabled by the fictional material "raffia", mined from underneath Lux and which serves as the city's only export commodity and its raison d'être. Doc tells Ichise that the limbs are special prototypes of her own construction, and that they contain the DNA of Ichise's deceased mother, the last bits of her remains that she incorporated into prosthetics' circuits. Through his connection to Doc, Ichise becomes entangled in the strife between the three major factions battling for control of Lux: the Organo, a crime syndicate of "professionals" who are the closest thing to a government in the city of Lux; the Salvation Union, a populist group that foments a revolution against the Organo's rule; and the Raccan, a collection of young itinerants with texhnolyzed limbs who wield them as weapons for personal gain.
Soon, Ichise meets a mysterious young girl, Ran, a seer from the nearby village of Gabe who has the power to see possible futures. He also crosses paths with Kazuho Yoshi, a traveler "from above" who is inciting chaos within the city by insinuating confrontations between the existing factions. Yoshi wants Lux in utter chaos and violence to sustain his essence that was slowly reduced on the surface. When Yoshi tries to kill Onishi, the putative head of Organo, Ichise manages to eliminate him with his powerful prosthetics. As the situation in Lux deteriorates, strange new enemies - "The Class", an exclusionary group of elites who live in a highly developed enclave outside of Lux, appear trying to convert the three factions to their "cause". These texhnolyzed "Shapes" are controlled by Kano, a leader of "The Class", a monstrosity produced by incestuous reproduction over multiple generations.
To stop Kano's plans to invade the surface world after conquering Lux, Ichise and Doc travel to the former, while the factions of Lux unite to fight against their common enemy, "The Class" and their minions - "Shapes". They make way through miles of empty idyllic countryside before encountering an administrative center, empty save for the assortment of randomly stacked furniture, and radios endlessly repeating equally random news broadcasts from an undetermined time. They discover the inhabitants of the surface, the "theonormals", having lost all desire to live yet maintained alive by the futuristic technology of the surface world. Having resigned themselves to extinction, the "theonormals" ignore the warnings of Ichise and Doc, choosing to wait for their eventual demise.
Aboveground, Doc and Ichise stumble into an empty movie theater, where they watch a newsreel which explains that centuries ago the people of the surface, plagued by terrorism and violence, rounded up the "undesirables" of the society and sent them underground to build and live in the city of Lux. Doc, driven to despair by the discovery that the "theonormals" of the surface world have no interest in affecting her future, commits suicide in a hotel room. Meanwhile, Ichise wanders through the city engaging the "theonormals" in obscure conversations. While the latter speak of death as a welcome relief, Ichise decides on a return to Lux, and coming across the fading homunculus of his father apologizes for holding him responsible for mother's death.
Although Lux's main entrance was destroyed by a "theonormal" preventing the "Shapes" from gaining the surface world, Ichise is shown the alternative entrance by a mysterious hologram who finally explains to him the plight of the surface people. Arriving at this entry point, Ichise encounters three "Shapes", among them Haruhiko Tooyama, his former mentor in the Organo. Despairing of the bitter end, and now reduced to a "Shape", Tooyama kills his two companions before challenging Ichise to a duel. Ichise beheads Tooyama to spare him the horrific fate of being rooted to the ground, a fate to vegetate as a useless trunk devoid of life and reason. Before expiring, Tooyama thanks him and Ichise continues on his final journey down to Lux.
In the city, all traces of resistance have been broken. The now useless "Shapes" are now rooted to the ground, the life-support systems keeping their organs, attached to the exoskeletons, barely alive. A flashback details how the citizens of Lux fell to the onslaught of the "Shapes", with only a few scattered groups of human survivors still clinging to a forlorn hope of salvation. While Ichise makes his way through the city, following phantom images of Ran and encountering former colleagues who are now 'rooted' to the ground as "Shapes", the power systems that kept up the artificial light begin to fail plunging Lux into darkness. While making his way to the Opera House to confront Kano, Ichise witnesses a berserk mob kill Onishi, the last leader of Organo and his former mentor. In a rage he decimates the mob but is himself repeatedly injured in the fight.
In the Opera House, Ichise finds Kano alone surrounded by the multitude of rotting rooted "Shapes", next to the bas-relief of Ran's head. Ran killed herself rather than live in the world created by the demented Kano who reveals his solipsistic belief in his own exclusive sanity, his work of transmogrifying the "Shapes" into living plants in order to keep them alive indefinitely until such time that will witness the humanity overcoming their violent urges. Enraged at Ran's death, Ichise decapitates Kano.
Alone on an abandoned rooftop, Ichise begins to deteriorate as the power systems controlling his texhnolyzed limbs fail. Dying, he accepts the inevitability of his end, as the artificial limbs suddenly come to life and briefly flash a crude drawing of a flower which Ran gave him long time ago. He smiles and slowly slumps, succumbing to his injuries.
Texhnolyze aired for twenty episodes on Fuji Television from April 16 to September 24, 2003. Two un-aired episodes were included in the DVD release. Geneon USA's English dub of the series aired in the United States on STARZ!/Encore's Action channel in 2006, then aired again on Funimation Channel and Funimation Channel on Demand when Funimation licensed the series from Geneon Entertainment. It also aired in Canada on G4techTV Canada's Anime Current block in the mid-2000s. Its opening theme is "Guardian Angel" by the English band Juno Reactor. Japanese visual kei singer Gackt's song Tsuki no Uta was selected as its ending theme.[3]