The easiest way to sell a science fiction story is to sprinkle it with some techo whitewash that even sci-fi nerds need to speculate about. We find these “dark” technologies in movies like Terminator and The Matrix. These adventures are populated with antagonist of metal, wire, and “artificial” intelligence that for some reason seems all too real an intelligence.

For an anime reference, we find it in stories such as Serial Experiments Lain. Lain was the first show that came to mind as I watched Denno Coil. However, there is already a drastic difference in story between the two shows. Lain was darker in general than Denno Coil. What the two share is their atmosphere of high technology. The world is an ambient computer generated illusion. It’s all an allusion to the way many people see the current world.

These things take on a mystical aura because we either cannot understand or do not comprehend the gibberish. It’s not even necessary to vial much of it with made up words. Story tellers can use the current vocabulary of technical terms to confuse even the most technically minded among us. It plays to the notion that many believe anything to be possible given the proper tools, just not feasibly doable by those experiencing the stories.

Where I’m from people are simply afraid of computers, the internet, and machines that seem smart. Ask the average person to do something with a computer; you will probably be met with a blank stare. What? Me? I can’t remember my email password half the time.

The other half, “I don’t even have an email.”

It’s a curious development of the technological world that the technically inclined find “user friendly” computers harder to use than the ones less so. Simplifying things down to the lowest common denominator has had the adverse effect of making them more mysterious to the general user and more irritating to the more than general users. Still, for the most part, everyone is clueless about some things.

It’s that mysteriousness in the things that pervade modern life that drives a show like Denno Coil. In the real world we are actually surrounded by machines, wires, and information. Where in the show it is a false reality that requires special visors, no special vision is needed for our worlds. We know we are swimming in this stuff.

All this coupled with the natural tendency to fill in the gaps of knowledge with what conveniently makes sense, magic. It works because it seems possible. More than that, it’s fun because it’s not possible. Not now, but maybe in the future.

This kids…well…she’s a little “slow”

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I wasn’t sure if I should use Dennou or Denno. I made the arbitrary decision to drop the ‘u.’

Also, it seems its demographic is younger anime viewers.