“So, to sum up Hikaru’s story,” says one of Hikaru’s friends, as they walk to school in a futuristic Japanese city, “last night, Hikaru, a troubled third year in Kitakagami junior high school, was gazing at the starry sky, as he often does…” We see a shoujo protagonist screaming with passion. “No. I thought I heard a voice outside my window,” interrupts our grumpy, phone-absorbed protagonist, who is far from his friend’s depiction of him. “Then I saw that the area around Kagami building was strangely bright…” The evidence has been erased: Hikaru knows what he saw, and yet the video he took shows nothing like it. What is going on? Unbeknownst to them, a full-fledged nocturnal battle took place around Kagami. Aki, a fiery redhead in a miniskirt, snatched—from the clutches of the powers that be—the powerful Trigger Arm. To do so, she used two sentient robot arms of their own: Dex and Sinis. For her, they are partners, not tools. The Trigger Arm got lost during the brawl, and a drone army is searching for it. Suddenly, the voice comes again to Hikaru. It is asking for help. Our protagonist is too insecure a teenager to cede his seat in the subway when he wants to. Nevertheless, he follows the call, enters a forbidden area, and ends up with an amnesiac robot arm attached to his hoodie, addressing him as “young man.” And the enemy is hot on their heels!

To be honest, I was going back and forth on this one: only the ending song fully sold me on the premise. Kneeling in the golden light, grasping the arm in his hand, Hikaru gets glimpses of powerful, symbolic moments surrounding the other characters. Hands grasp, extend, open. Not only is this visual quite impressive in and of itself, but it also suggests more layers of depth and poetry surrounding the characters of this shōnen, which could have easily taken a more generic route. Given this, my final impression is quite positive, and I am hopeful for the next episodes. This show was originally a Kickstarter-backed project launched by Okamoto in 2016, and you can see the passion. The character designs have a lot of personality, and Hikaru is a fun non-heroic hero, very contemporary in his attitude and concerns (Erased evidence! Friends and tools!); I feel he will benefit immensely from the company of the Trigger Arm, who calls him “young man” and has a personality somewhat resembling that of My Hero Academia‘s All Might. I’m not the biggest fan of Aki, always eating and barging into situations, but she might yet grow on me. After all, the fights look spectacular, the banter of the friends is fun, and I’m invested in the main character’s arc: the show only needs to keep it up and walk towards the concepts it depicts in its ending, and I’ll be happy to go along.

Mecha-Ude: Mechanical Arms can be streamed at Crunchyroll.