Nagi Taira was the city’s greatest assassin until the day he took a bullet to the head while rescuing his sister, Shizuka, who’d been taken hostage. Since then, he’s been unresponsive, alive but unable to interact with Shizuka or the world around him—that is, unless someone tries to kill him. When he feels a killing intent, Nagi awakens and becomes stronger the more formidable the opponent is. Though confined to a wheelchair, Nagi is able to display immense power—and his sister intends to use murderous foes as rehabilitation to heal her brother and bring him back to the way he once was.

Do you remember the game, Fruit Ninja, where you’d swipe at the screen to cut fruit into multiple pieces and get points? TANK CHAIR immediately reminded me of that game because whenever Nagi assassinates people, these fluorescent pink flashes pop up on the screen while body parts robotically fall all around, just like Fruit Ninja. And unfortunately, that fake reel really ruins a show that has a lot of promise. Polygon Pictures, the “expert” in CGI, does its usual bang-up job (::sarcasm::), from mouth flaps that don’t quite match to skirts that flutter in unrealistic ways to hair that’s moves so unnaturally it makes you want to scream. It’s a shame, because the background art is tremendous, creating an urban city that’s both stunning and in decay, and the still scenes look pretty nice if you freeze frame them; they just look terrible in motion, which, you know, is a problem since this is animation and not manga. Nagi himself has a really cool look, like a Jason Voorhees confined to “tank”-like wheelchairs, and there’s both real emotion attached to the relationship between brother and sister and a dark morality to dig into with a young girl going down a murderous path. It’s too bad that despite all the good stuff, I’m still leaving this episode thinking of those two words. Fruit Ninja.

TANK CHAIR can be streamed on Prime Video.