I watched Gen:lock over the past week. I was disappointed that it introduced a premise-breaking plot development in the penultimate episode. My beef is 100% spoiler-y.
The shows is a mecha anime. Its premise is that, in some future war in which big robots piloted by people fight each other, a new type of mech is developed that is remotely controlled by very rare, very special kind of person. That person must bind her mind to the mech through a lot of hand-wavey technology called gen:lock.
The problem is, we learn three things in the final two episodes of season 1 that make the pilots unnecessary:
- A person’s mind can uploaded to, and downloaded from, a digital brain
- A digital brain can be copied an indefinite number of times.
- A digital brain is all that is needed to drive a mech
If one pilot’s mind can be copied, without harming her, and then bound to any number of mechs, then why do we need the pilots at all, once you’ve got the first one’s mind copied? If the pilots aren’t really necessary, why haven’t the characters in charge of the gen:lock program figured that out yet?
I’m not sure I will pick it up again when season 2 comes out. Maybe this kind of anime isn’t for me.