How would you rate episode 1 of
Your Forma ? Community score: 3.2
How would you rate episode 2 of
Your Forma ? Community score: 3.5
How would you rate episode 3 of
Your Forma ? Community score: 3.7
As a writer, I believe beginnings are important. A good beginning hooks the reader (or viewer), introducing the world and characters in efficient and entertaining fashion, providing context for the rest of the story to build upon. Clearly the producers of light novel anime adaptation Your Forma hold different opinions, and I'm not one hundred percent convinced they're correct. Much like last season's cursed Übel Blatt, Your Forma elects to excise the entire first novel volume, dumping the hapless viewer in media res, when the original story wasn't written thus. Imagine if Peter Jackson decided to forgo The Fellowship of the Ring's slow build-up, deciding instead to jump straight to the meat of The TwoTowers? No matter how excellent the film-maker's craft, the viewer's experience would suffer.
Having not read Your Forma's source material, I can but guess at the production committee's decision to skip to the second novel's material. Are they so determined to reach, within their set number of episodes, some incredibly important plot point from a later novel that this technobabble-heavy story must sacrifice its introduction? When the anime completely fails to explain what the titular phrase “Your Forma” actually means, while every character seems to understand, there's a problem. (I assume from context that it's the technology that allows digital access to human minds.)
Now, some stories are deliberately written in achronic order to build mystery, and that's fine. Your Forma, however, seems to assume every viewer is already familiar with the source material, and it makes only minimal effort to get anime-onlies up to speed. This “effort” takes the form of brief flashes of on-screen explanatory text I needed to screenshot, and then zoom into, to make legible. A smooth viewing experience this does not make.
Take the relationship between protagonist Cyber Inspector Echika and her synthetic Amicus android assistant Harold Lucraft. There's obviously some kind of history here. Echika is somewhat guarded – almost tsundere – around Harold, while he needles at her sarcastically. Their interactions are fun, and presumably supposed to be the heart of the show. However, it feels like there is essential context missing. Harold says he's “said a lot of mean things” to Echika. When? He asks her if she misses her pendant. What pendant? Why is it important, and what does it have to do with her sister? Echika says she's resolved her feelings of hatred towards Amicus. Gee, wouldn't it have been nice to witness this particular bit of presumably foundational character development?
It seems Harold was an essential part of the previous arc, which involved “The Nightmare of St Petersburg, the Amicus Sympathizers Serial Murder Case of May 2022”. From the freeze-frame info, I learned that detective Sozon Chernov (presumably now deceased) was in charge of this investigation, and Harold's memories were the main clue. It doesn'tseem like the optical camouflage-wearing perpetrator was caught. Sozon's wife, Darya, who briefly appears in this arc only to be attacked and become comatose, is Harold Lucraft's owner. I don't know, this seems like an awful lot of important context to relegate to blink-and-you'll miss it background information.
At least Your Forma explains fairly well about what Amicus androids are, even if yet more context is relegated to the aforementioned freeze-frame text dumps. They're human-like androids with advanced artificial intelligence who take on all manner of tasks within society. The Amicus are governed by a set of laws that are extremely similar to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, in that Amicus should be completely unable to harm human beings. Like in Asimov's work though, there seem to be exceptions in Your Forma's world, and Echika's investigation into a spate of apparently Amicus-perpetrated attacks is what drives this story arc.
While the story begins in St Petersburg, Russia, Echika is summoned to London, England by the police at Scotland Yard. Harold is branded as dangerous, as one of his “brothers” is accused of attacks against humans. Harold, Steven, and Marvin, the only three “RF Models” were all built by Dr Lexie Carter, who seems like a taller version of Steins;Gate 0's Maho Hiyajo. Lexie installed a cutting edge OS into the RF Models that far exceeds the capability of other Amicus droids, which is what leads to the police's suspicion that they may not be bound by the same limits. While the general perception seems to be that Amicus merely feign the act of thinking by running to a program's instructions, Lexi claims that she doesn't know how RF Models make decisions, as their thought processes occur within a “black box.”(This is a legitimate concern even in our world – engineers are often unable to explain how complex algorithm-based AI generate responses.)
So at at least Your Forma has an interesting setting, dealing with subject matter that I am particularly passionate about, and I'm already a fan of other similar anime shows. Your Forma is a mishmash of Ghost in the Shell (with its brain diving technology) and Psycho-Pass (with its futuristic police procedural structure). Echika herself is a mix of Motoko Kusanagi and Akane Tsunemori, two characters I adore. So far, however, Your Forma fails to hold a candle to either of its main inspirations, and while the lack of an introductory arc has a lot to do with that, there are other problems.
While the first couple of episodes are generally intriguing, the third episode really starts to flag. This is despite an enjoyable car chase through the rural English Cotswolds of all places, and Echika's amusing frustration at having to use an ancient rotary-dial phone in a village of Luddites without an internet connection. It's hard to care about these characterswhen we've not been given adequate chance to get to know them or understand their motivations. Harold's decision to use Echika as bait in the second episode, driving a wedge between them, probably should feel a lot more impactful than it does. It doesn't help that these characters barely seem to emote. Who'd have thought such a “genius cyber-inspector” would look so gormless most of the time? Echika also manages to get herself captured and tied up twice in the space of two episodes, which goes from being unlucky to careless. I'm also struggling to follow what any of the side characters'motivations are, though that could be by design.
My impressions aren't completely negative, though. While the animation isn't overly exceptional, it's a good-looking show with a unified design ethos. I especially like all the little metaverse touches with brightly-colored context-specific ads popping up in the characters' vision every now and then. The brain diving sequences look great, though repeated use of the same footage makes it feel like Echika's in a cybernetic magical girl show, complete with her own transformation sequence. Said sequence owes a significant debt to Ghost in the Shell, though that franchise's take on cyberspace has become so iconic and ingrained in pop culture consciousness I can forgive Your Forma for recycling its visuals in such stylish fashion.
Your Forma's interesting world and exploration of timely AI-related concerns do a lot to mitigate some of the more questionable structural choices around its adaptation. Hopefully the main characters will continue to grow on me, as they show great potential as compelling detective partners.
Rating:
Episode 1: 3.5
Episode 2: 3.5
Episode 3: 3
Your Forma is currently streaming on Samsung TV+ in the U.S., YouTube, and other services worldwide on Wednesdays.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.
