It’s night in the city. Under the starry sky, Rudra, the teenager whose ponytail shines like fire, uses her hacking abilities to steal some mecha designs stored at a colossal neon cruise ship. A chase ensues as the mysterious vocal music intensifies in the background, and mask-wearing goons follow her on their water scooters. Now it’s day at the sea, and Kairi, a young man, gives his late grandfather his last goodbye and begins his journey to fulfill his mysterious last wish: to find Senki and give him a half-erased, pixelated photo of a man and a woman, a couple perhaps. Soon, we learn that the world is half-submerged, with humanity having adapted to live either in boats or in Venice-like half-sunken cities. Golden Valley is one of these, a town where the inhabitants are greedy and circumspect, and the main currency is fish. Kairi is hungry and conspicuous, and Rudra uses him to hide the data. But a fateful coincidence puts Kairi in contact with the people the data was stolen from, and when the chase ensues and Rudra takes the data from him again, she cannot help but notice that he has good eyes and a courageous heart—particularly when he jumps from an untold height to save her friend Isana. Perhaps he could be the player she is missing on her team for Dark Machine, the mecha-themed video game that everyone has heard of. Kairi is not very interested at first, but then he learns that Senki is not an individual: it is the title of the person who wins the Dark Machine competition…

DARK MACHINE can boast some amazing visuals, as you can see for yourself above, as well as some strong editing that makes for a magnificent pace. The whole episode went by in a breeze, and I was left wanting more of this half-submerged world. It seems there will be conspiracies, video game matches, family secrets, and character-based comedy, all of which, if not mind-blowing, still sound pretty cool to me. To be honest, I cared only moderately for the fighting this time around, but I did care about everyone who was introduced: our main leads, our secondary characters, even our villains. Rudra is appropriately mysterious, and the story hints that she might be more connected to Dark Machine’s secrets. Kairi is fun and relatable, skillful but still vulnerable, and though he has a natural gift for Dark Machine, he does not outshine every player right away, which I appreciate. Some concepts and characters feel familiar, and I’m not expecting the show to invent something wholly new, but I’m interested in the interactions of the five characters who live in the ship called Carbuncle, and the little we know about Kairi’s grandfather is appropriately shrouded in mystery. All in all, I had a good time, I consider this show to be above average, and I may very well watch the next episode.

DARK MACHINE THE ANIMATION can be streamed on Crunchyroll.