A.I.C.O. Incarnation (AICO) is nothing new. That is the truth. From its concept to its character design, nothing really tries to innovate, to break barriers, or to twist the sci-fi genre. At its best this can be a thrilling adventure into the unknown, where the heroes face hordes of mindless tentacle-things standing in their path. At its worst this is a tale where the fate of the world (or Japan at least) is on the shoulders of high school students for the most coincidental reasons. It can be safe to watch though, but hardly more than that.

This is the tale of Aiko Tachinaba, a high school girl recovering from an accident from two years ago, when an out-of-control artificial life-form took over a research facility and became a major problem and mystery to the japanese government, referred as the Burst. Her life, however, is just a big lie since then, and it falls to a transfer student to give her the harsh truth and set the table for a journey right into the heart of the accident, where Aiko hopes to find some answers.

Boy meets girl

Yeah. Transfer student. Damn. Anyway, the idea is somewhat interesting but disrupted by your everyday anime tropes. It goes around a forbidden experiment performed by a genius scientist and the devastating outcome of it. Fixing things ends up as a task to Yuuya Kanzaki as he picks a group of daredevils to escort the young Aiko and himself right into the point of origin of the accident. While that happens the government hopes to use the artificial life-form as a tool to develop new technologies and the surviving scientists from the experiment clash in their views between fixing things up or teaming up with the government.

Yet…

Well, Yuuya is a fucking high school student, the same as Aiko. That could be just a detail, but this is the anime industry so this is shrugged in our faces every now and then, such as these two wearing their uniforms even when right in the middle of a deadly hazard filled with vicious tentacle monsters. The asspulled reason for Yuuya to be a student is something even more annoying as you get to learn around the late part of the show. In fact, the show goes great lengths trying to force a reason for our protagonists to be teenagers wearing school uniforms, which is sad because any young adult profile could’ve worked here for a much better and more mature tale of discovery and shooting blob monsters.

The journey

Despite everything, there is a good pace to the journey towards the point zero of the Burst. Three couples of reckless explorers are employed and presented to us, giving some group conflict as they traverse dangerous areas filled with monsters. Sadly though, these monsters are extremely boring, only being variations of tentacle things moving towards the heroes and being killed by laser blasts. Battle choreography is only based on how the humans move around the terrain, and most of the time they are on a flat surface avoiding tentacles and shooting with little to no impact. They move onwards and the setbacks only happen because someone screws up, like in any mediocre horror movie.

The plot thickens

The boring enemies can give room to a journey where you learn a bit about the heroes, but even then the show only gets truly interesting when it tackles the origins of the burst and puts Aiko and Yuuya’s past to test. There are some decent small twists in the later parts, you get to see how some big figures in the government think towards the Burst and can see a glimpse of a major picture of the show. Sadly though, this is all presented in ways that can hardly affect the journey, and you are left with only some major deaths and revelations as events shaping the personalities of our heroes and explorers.

Bones is doing good

Bones had a show about bland enemies and a generic character design with hentai-like shining bodies, much as in Suisei no Gargantia. What it did with these tools, however, can be said as remarkable, making the visual experience worth the watch alone with sharp artwork, some superb CG elements, and giving powerful expression to the cast, only losing quality on later episodes when distance shots become somewhat lazy. The sound direction may struggle to find a common ground when creating an atmosphere of tension, yet it never truly hampers the rest.

Well, good enough I might say, but nothing new. AICO seems like your everyday sci-fi of people fighting living shapeless creatures, yet it has its own twists, for good or bad. There are the two high school students to remind us this is Japan, there are happy explorers killing mindless tentacles even though they could be dead in a second, and there is a government overseeing things and trying to move on their agenda.

It could’ve made use of the shocking factor though, as for a deadly journey this seems to move far too smoothly for most of the show and the deaths of some major characters are far too heroic to give us a sense of fear. It doesn’t help that the character design is completely unfit for a show that tries to create a deadly environment, so it sadly loses a lot of potential in these parts.

As a shounen though, it can be a safe watch. There is an objective, some minor plot twists, and the cast manage to be passable considering their limitations of screen time for development. If you want an action sci-fi you can certainly give it a go.