I finally finished
Fractale
, which I got halfway through several months ago and then stopped watching for some reason. A lot of things about this confused me, and I'm sure taking such a long break in the middle didn't help. I remember being confused at the start too, though so maybe that's just how it was.
I was intrigued by the setting early on. Everyone lives under the control of a weird augmented reality system called Fractale. The main guy meets a girl who's on the run, and then he gets pulled along on an adventure to determine the fate of the world. That was a decent premise. I liked most of the characters too, a lot of them were fun but could be serious when the situation called for it. As for the actual story, though... I didn't get it. I didn't get why they needed Fractale. At one point they visited a futuristic city where anyone can do anything because reality itself is malleable. I suppose that's neat, but a lot of people acted like the world would literally end if it got shut down. Meanwhile there's a rebel group living just fine without it, they just have to farm crops and sew their own clothes and stuff. It kind of undercut the whole moral dilemma, in my opinion, when the Fractale side was cartoonishly evil and nothing super bad would happen if we got rid of them.
Other than that, I didn't like some of the more, uh, uncomfortable aspects the story ventured into. The way they handled one touchy topic in particular really rubbed me the wrong way.
I'm talking about the faux-parental incest rape stuff with that creepy priest
.
I really could've done without that, especially since I'm not sure how it ties into the overarching themes, if it even does.
I guess my overall opinion of Fractale is that there was probably a good idea in there somewhere, but the specific ways it explored that idea were confusing and didn't appeal to me at all.