I finished Fractale and... my thoughts are mixed?
First and foremost, I'm not sure all the terrible reviews I've seen are earned. It feels like a lot of them were written by people who never saw past the first episode... which is admittedly understandable because the first episode is absolutely, one hundred percent fucking awful. The pacing is horrendous, it does nothing to interest you in the weird world of Fractale and it does nothing to make you like the characters either. After episode one though, things do improve. Not a lot at first, admittedly, but it's definitely a continuous upwards curve until the last episode where things honestly take a bit of a dive again.
To get the quick things out of the way first, the show has a really nice soundtrack and the backgrounds are really pretty. The animation isn't anything amazing and, honestly, feels like it predates the show's actual original run (feels more like late 90s/early 2000s than 2009 a lot of the time). The character designs also don't do much for me. They aren't terrible, I don't dislike them, but they feel extremely generic... which they shouldn't because they are objectively all weirdly dressed. I have no idea how they pulled that off.
The acting isn't the highest calibre I've ever heard either. It's not terrible by any means, but it's nothing special. Granted, some actors give significantly better performances than others. At the very least, the more central characters are mostly solid performances, some are really good even. It's the antagonists and side parts that sometimes left me disappointed. The exception to this rule is Clain, the protagonist himself. He got better as the show went on, but in the early episodes his VA put on a pretty underwhelming performance I felt.
Now, onto the writing. This is where things gets complicated. Outside of episode one which, again, was horrendous to the point I was doubting my choice to watch this.
Throughout Fractale, there's a pretty consistent feeling that the writer was more interested in exploring a concept than a story and that they didn't really have the clearest ideas of what they wanted from the themes or the plot. And the concept behind Fractale's world is fascinating without a doubt. It's also, unfortunately, very poorly explained with vague worldbuilding and little explanation as to how anything actually works or what Fractale really is. Even by the end.
This is incredibly frustrating because, again, the base idea behind it is really interesting. A utopic society that is so heavily integrated with the digital that it is hard to tell real from false at times? Sign me up. That's a great setting. Throw in some mind control and a dogmatic "religion" that allows that world to function to raise ethical questions? Fuck yeah! And the one thing Fractale definitely does right is that it makes you question who is right and wrong in its world. I can't take that away from it. The very nature of the setting and the opposing forces within it (the rebel terrorists who want to be free from Fractale and the order that are fighting to preserve it and keep it alive... with some thrown in mind control) forces the audience to consider the morality of both sides.
But, still, it always dances around how any of it all actually came to be and how it works. That wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't integral to so many of the things that happen in the story. What's more, while all the mysteries of that world and those that surround Phryne and Nessa are intriguing, a lot of those mysteries feel completely manufactured or were the results of poor writing rather than intent. A lot of things could have been cleared up simply by Phryne actually explaining to the poor bastard that got dragged into her mess at least a little of what was going on or by having people not talk in intentionally vague flowery language. Neither of those methods of creating intrigue are what I would call good writing as a general rule. This is especially irritating in the cases of the mystery of how Fractale works and its origins because they never even try to give a satisfactory explanation. This makes me feel like the writer themselves weren't actually sure, but wanted to give the impression they were instead of handwaving.
The characters themselves were a mixed bag too. Phryne's writing felt extremely inconsistent early on, like they hadn't actually decided on anything beyond "weird and mysterious girl". It cleared up by the end, but at that point she'd developed another problem of being extremely frustrating because she kept supposedly learning a lesson and then immediately would ignore that apparent development. She wasn't all bad, she had redeeming qualities, but I frequently found many aspects of how she was written bothersome.
Clain was pretty bad in general. For most of the show, he seems to have no agency. He never makes decisions and he rarely displays moments of personality beyond his fascination with old technology. He has his moments, like when he calls his parents (or their doppels anyway) or the Granitz family out on their shit. But, mostly, he feels like carboard.
It's not all bad news though! Nessa is cute and likeable from the beginning, but also contains a surprising amount of depth. The idea of a sentient digital being who is saddened by how little she can interact with the world is interesting. The reason she is the way she is, is intriguing as well. It's one of the few things the show actually bothers to explain. I feel like the aforementioned longing (to have more freedom to interact) could definitely have been explored more though. It also would have made the ending feel better since it essentially gave her what she wanted... just not in the way she'd have hoped perhaps.
Enri and the other Grantitz people of Lost Millennium were bothersome at first but they quickly grew on me. None of them are examples of revolutionary writing, they're all pretty typical and tropey. But they're very likeable and they represent a big part of the ethical questions raised by the world.
The antagonists are the most boring characters in the show outside of what they represent. They feel very generically evil or otherwise they have interesting motivations that are not explored nearly enough. In particular, Dias and the High Priestess could have been extremely compelling characters with more screen time and exploration.
So yes, Fractale is riddled with problems. It get progressively better as it goes on and it is by no means all bad. There's some likeable characters, the background art is pretty and the setting itself is interest and raises some intriguing questions. But it feels like the writer didn't have a clear enough idea of what they actually wanted from the story and that by the time they were figuring that out, it was too late. I think the most frustrating thing about Fractale isn't that it was bad, it's that it was average. It was a very unremarkable show that easily had the potential to be so much more if the writing was smoothed out and the production budget a little higher.
I gave it a 5/10 in the end. I don't regret watching it. I honestly really did enjoy it, especially the latter half. It just could have been so much better.
