The writing in Texhnolyze is as complex as it sounds. Like a Serial Experiments Lain without its cyberculture bite, this show is a much more traditional dystopian tale. Even though humanity has developed technology to fix their own bodies, everything in Lukuss, from its buildings to its people, is broken down and dilapidated. This becomes the primary concern of Texhnolyze as soon as we see Ichise's tragic 3-episode battle to simply walk after his incident. Hell, he even spends an entire episode in a daze at the bottom of a staircase, willing himself to get to the top.

The script is painfully convoluted, sometimes with important information, and sometimes with useless psychobabble. Comprehending the hierarchy of the various factions in Lukuss is essential to an understanding of the show, so viewers will unfortunately be forced to hang on every word in order to make sense of the dialogue. Exacerbating this is an irritatingly unbalanced dub track, and no dubtitles to back it up. Still, if you can navigate through the problems and understand the story, Texhnolyze manages to be surprisingly engaging, especially in its final act.

ADR Director Jonathan Klein provides for a fairly entertaining dub, capturing the depression and lost hopes of the city of Lukuss. Justin Gross and Carrie Savage get their rather emotionless jobs done as Ichise and Ran respectively, but the ones to look out for are Onishi (leader of the Organo) and "Doc." Patrick Seitz puts out a very cool, powerful persona as Onishi, while Victoria Harwood is sexy (and British) as Doc. To my delight, the DVDs also come with some mildly funny parody dub lines the guys in the studio made for each DVD.

We have come to expect big things from Madhouse, and Texhnolyze does not disappoint on the visuals. The dark, moody atmosphere of Konaka's script is effectively brought out in the brownish-gray color tone of the show. When, near the end of the show, we finally see a world other than the derelict Lukuss, the contrast is beautifully portrayed. Sadly, Madhouse dilutes the clean, stylish artwork with odd touches like a static screen overlaid on fight scenes and unnecessary rotated frames. This works with a cerebral show like Lain, but I think it's safe to say that a static overlay is unnecessary in Texhnolyze's well-drawn action scenes.

Yoshitoshi ABe's character designs are great as always, though they still suffer from being unrecognizable from each other when animated. Regardless, a choice few of the characters are distinctly recognizable, especially Onishi and the Lain-inspired Ran.

Texhnolyze is surely not for everyone. It has brutal violence, political intrigue, and philosophical questions, but as usual, Konaka's script skirts these issues and takes a roundabout approach. Thus, it is the approach, and not the content, that will probably turn most people off of this series. If you liked Serial Experiments Lain a whole lot, but thought it needed more bloodshed, characters, and episodes, you might want to give this anime a shot. However, if you're not into depressing stories about sad people in a sad, dirty city, Texhnolyze probably isn't up your alley.

Animation:		3.0		Overall: (2.5 stars)
Plot:		2.5
Voice Acting:		3.0
Sound:		2.5