A.I.C.O. Incarnation: Exploring the Journey Through 'The Burst'

We’ve seen so many series set in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic worlds, each telling their own gruesome stories. The closest incident to an apocalypse I’ve experienced in my lifetime is the COVID-19 pandemic, which seems like it happened so long ago now.

It goes without saying that the disasters we see on TV tend to be much more serious and deadly, making for a more suspenseful story with a cast living out nightmares. So today, let’s look at a sci-fi anime set in a world overridden with disasters, where the main characters carry a heavy burden on their backs.

A.I.C.O. Incarnation, also simply known as AICO, is a 12-episode ONA series that both started and ended airing on March 9, 2018. The well-liked Studio Bones brought it to life along with Bandai Visual, Lantis, Hakuhodo DY Music & Pictures, Yamasa, and Studio Easter. Its primary staff included Murata Kazuya as director, Aketagawa Jin as sound director, and producers Amano Naoki and Kisara Youhei. This original series featured the genres of action and sci-fi and received a rating of R-17+ for its violence and profanity. Each episode had a runtime of 24 minutes.

The series also has a manga adaptation, which ran for three volumes from November 25th, 2017 until April 26th, 2019. Targeted at the Shounen demographic and serialized in Shounen Sirius, it featured the work of artist Michiaki Hiroaki. From the 10th of April 2018 to the 10th of December 2019, Kodansha Comics USA published this in English digitally.

The story begins within the fictional year 2035, when a catastrophic incident known as “The Burst” occurred at a Japanese research facility. This accident gave birth to the rapidly expanding, all-consuming, and self-replicating abomination known as "Matter." Until task forces besieged it to stop it from reaching the ocean, this hostile thing snaked its way right through the remnants of dams and military facilities at the Kurobe Gorge.

Meanwhile, mercenaries started a race to find the real truth behind this hellish existence. The series protagonist, Aiko Tachibana, is a girl who lives under constant medical surveillance after being rescued from the Matter itself. She spends her dull days simply waiting for her recovery to complete, making paper planes to pass the time.

Yuuya Kanzaki, a strange transfer student, soon disrupts her routine at school by pointing out all of the anomalies in her physical appearance. For example, why is she never injured, and why does she not need her wheelchair suddenly?

The boy claims that there is much more to her existence than she had been led to believe and states that she alone holds the key to ending the accursed Burst. This leads many factions to show newfound interest in Aiko, so she and Yuuya must now find allies and embark on a perilous journey into the heart of the Burst-infested gorge before it's too late. As the net closes around them, they must escape the conspiracy moving against them, and the fated duo must face off against the Matter itself. After all, it's just a monstrous enemy that can flow like water; how hard can it be?

I do not need to tell you how good the art and animation are in this anime because it is the work of Studio Bones. The plot seems fine in theory, but the show's fatal flaw is its characters, rendering the rest of the show's strengths moot. Despite having a fantastic plot and stunning visuals, this series is a prime example of how bad characters can ruin an entire franchise.

The main objective of the tale was to get to the aforementioned important location as quickly as possible, but we needed to be adequately shown the reason behind this urgency. Other than the characters constantly chanting about how they need to hurry, of course, even then, the characters showed no sense of urgency and took drawn-out breaks that lasted almost complete episodes.

This makes any progress they had made redundant as well, agitating the audience further. What was all that senseless bickering and joking around for? Entertainment? Well, they failed to keep me entertained. Anyway, because of this, the episodes start to feel incredibly repetitive. There are some decent scenes where they fight against the Matter, heralding some sort of development for the plot or characters, but these are followed by further goofing around and blatant inaction.

A group of generic characters who keep talking to one another rather than moving the plot forward cancel out the intriguing story that the anime was attempting to tell. Some neat plot twists grabbed my attention, though; props to that.

Let us address the elephant in the room in more detail now: the characters. The show starts by needing to introduce them to the audience properly. Things get worse as you realize how poorly written all of them are throughout the anime.

We just aren’t given good enough reasons to care about them, much less feel anything for them. There are a few actual “emotional” scenes in this show meant to make the audience shed some tears, but the issue is that nobody will react to the drama surrounding characters they honestly don’t care about or relate to.

I seriously forgot most of their names, and they all needed distinguishing traits for me to remember them by, much less like. There are also many different factions and organizations, each with their own goals, that aren’t adequately explained and leave the audience confused.

The main characters are horrible, and you are given zero reason to care about them. Without diving nose-deep into spoilers, I can't tell you much about Kanzaki, so let’s talk about Aiko herself. The audience aside, I doubt any of the staff working on this project knew what this girl’s personality was supposed to be like.

She is as changeable as the weather, constantly switching sides and opinions every waking second of the show. Even her inconsistency is inconsistent. She goes on to get emotional, causes a lot of trouble for the sake of plot progression, and lacks any character. She might be the bane of the entire show.

The supporting characters are just as bad, and most are scientists who must be introduced appropriately. The show tries to make us think they are all important, but we aren’t given a clue why, and there are just too many of them. So yeah, we are treated to a bunch of random side characters who are suddenly "important," and even by the finale, we don’t know who they were or why they were even there.

When you finish this series, you’ll wonder why they didn’t put enough time into explaining the story and lore of the show. Instead, we were given stale character backstories and elaborations of their feelings in a vain attempt to get the audience to care about them.

These bloated scenes are the only introductions most characters get, and ultimately, they become unimportant figures in the grand scheme of things. Meanwhile, proper characters that should have been explained further are left untouched, confusing viewers. What’s sad is that AICO has such an exciting world to work with, one filled to the brim with intriguing mystery and sci-fi that you yearn to know more about. But nope, the pointless characters and their so-called “adventure” are given center stage to no avail.

As for the art and animation departments, Bones did a superb job yet again. The character art and designs are just plain beautiful, especially the care and detail given to the eyes. The general art style expertly captures the bleakness of the world the story is set in, integrating creepy elements here and there for added effect, all while being a visual masterpiece.

The character designs are neat and crispy, making even their tomfoolery occasionally bearable. The visuals also make the dramatic scenes hit home, popping them without warning for maximum effect, so props to execution, too. The animation is top-notch; I wouldn’t expect anything less from Bones.

The Sounds and Music department isn’t something to write home about, but it isn’t bad either. The opening theme is "A.I.C.O." by TRUE, and it’s fantastic in every sense. This is not an opening sequence you should skip; just give it a shot, and you’ll see why.

The ending theme is "Michi no Kanata" by Aiko Tachibana (Haruka Shiraishi) herself, which is also a decent piece. The voice acting was good; no complaints there; it’s just that the characters themselves are terrible. There was nothing groundbreaking about the OSTs either; they existed and did their part.

I almost forgot to mention that this is a Netflix original show. I didn’t go into this expecting much, and I got a bit more than I expected—not unbearably terrible. If not for the trashy characters, this would’ve been an excellent show, and I hope they learn from this to create something much better in the future.

Overall, A.I.C.O. Incarnation is a show set in a legitimately exciting world I would’ve loved to learn about and understand better. But alas, the creators’ priorities lay elsewhere, and the Lore is left unexplored. On the bright side, this is a good anime to binge-watch while munching on some popcorn. It also gives you an odd sense of entertainment, thanks to the lore, story, and visual aspects.

So yeah, most of you would enjoy this one but still have a whole sack of complaints by the end. Because of this, I recommend it. But if you start feeling irritated by the characters’ shenanigans early on, it’s best to drop it then and there.