Key: The Metal Idol is one of the most unbelievable anime series I’ve seen to date. So many tv anime series are artificially extended with filler episodes to meet a 26 or 52 episode quota, yet Key exemplifies the polar opposite extreme: putting almost too much material into too few episodes. Sato Hiroaki, Key’s writer and director, has taken an innocent enough premise - to help a little robot girl find 30 000 friends in her quest for humanity - and then overlayed it with more than enough mystery and psychological intrigue to satisfy fans of series like Evangelion and Lain.

The plot for Key: The Metal Idol is incredibly intricately woven. Episodes are chock-full of flashbacks and foreshadowing madly complicating seemingly innocuous, almost every-day events. Much of the foreshadowing is so odd at first glance that your mind will likely quickly forget images which might flash for a second with seeming randomness - but trust me, each time you watch the series to completion, the staggering method to the madness becomes gloriously apparent. Just be sure to take a break of fifteen minutes to every hour spent watching, to allow your mind time for recovery, especially when you hit the final two episodes... The last two episodes are much longer and overtly expository, but don’t let that fool you into thinking they are any less nuanced than the rest of the show: for every concept that is tortuously "explained" there are at least two other tantalizing mysteries seemingly left untouched ^_^

Key’s characters are brilliantly conceived and realized. Every one of them is deeply psychologically flawed (some more obviously than others), yet one can identify and commiserate with most of them through this bond of shared humanity. Part and parcel of such an exploration of the human psyche involves extreme exaggeration of these flaws, however, in order to examine their ultimate implications, sometimes resulting in rather disturbing scenes when the thread of inquiry turns to monomania. However, even the exaggeration of Ajo’s madness is frighteningly believable: none of the exaggerations surpass the boundary of everyday experience so far as to shatter one’s natural suspension of disbelief.

Confusing scenes flash on the screen at seemingly random times, offering tantalizing hints of further plot developments.	"I understand everything. I may not know much, but what I need to know, I know." What a guy...

As a quick cast survey, Mima Tokiko is the protagonist, a robot girl nick-named "Key" who leaves her sheltered but hollow life in Mamio Valley to seek 30 000 friends in Tokyo per her dying grandfather’s request. She speaks in a level, emotionless voice, often making comments like "Key is well-constructed" and the like, though in the actual Japanese she does not speak in third person ALL the time, contrary to the translation. Chukawa Sakura is her childhood friend, who left for Tokyo back in junior high and now works three part-time jobs to make ends meet. She ultimately takes up Key’s dream as her own, to give some meaning to her fairly limited and previously hollow life. Utsuse Miho is a rising star in the idol singer field, sponsored by a subsidiary of Ajo Heavy Industries. Tataki Shuichi is the president of the Utsuse Miho fan club and a friend of Sakura’s, as well as a martial arts fanatic. Ajo is the president of Ajo Heavy Industries, an industrial zaibatsu which is currently developing combat robots, called PPORs and Sipes, to reap a profit from the arms market; Mima-sensei, Key’s grandfather, was his counterpart, a researcher in the robotics field who developed many of the principles used to construct these PPORs. Sergei, also nicknamed "D," is Ajo’s formidable lead assistant, possessing some mysterious bodily enhancements and a rather independent spirit of inquiry that causes him to both challenge and frighten Ajo at times; Wakagi Tomoyo is Sergei’s counterpart, Mima’s lead assistant, who nows serves as a bodyguard of sort for Key. Key believes that his uncanny knack of dropping out of the woodwork to save her from predicaments is derived from his practice of monitoring the radio waves emanating from her head... Be sure to keep track of all these names used to reference the characters, as different people call them different names at different times. For example, Key will always call Wakagi Tomoyo "Tomoyo" or "Tomoyo-chan," while everyone else will refer to him as "Wakagi-san."

While Key may cursorily be classified according to standard tv grade animation techniques, this belies the masterful understanding of pace exhibited by the animators. With frames flickering in for short periods of time and still scenes often being jarred by subsequent flashes of frenetic energy, you really can’t complain about any "fluidity" or "flashiness" of the animation. In all honesty, if the framerate WERE any higher, the pace of the plot combined with the speed of the animation would likely induce seizures and general neural shutdown out of sheer shock. The artwork presented is very moody and well drawn, with quite striking character designs and memorable scenery, especially with the imagery of dolls and robots mixed with forbidding architecture.

The music is the final layer of immersion which completes the experience that is Key: The Metal Idol. The background music perfectly captures the mood of the scenes, with its somehow "mechanical"-ish vein classical music that accompanies the shifting scenery. The opening and closing songs both echo this mechanical character with haunting efficacy, and are rounded out by a nicely varied suite of songs sung by Miho and Key.

In all, Key: The Metal Idol is an experience no fan of series like Neon Evangelion Genesis and Serial Experiment Lain should miss. It has the distinction of being the series I have watched the most times (upwards of seven), which is quite telling for someone who rarely watches series more than twice. For those who are averse to ecchi comment, there are some overtones of this only in the first two episodes, none of which are too tastelessly done.

My one complaint against the series lies in Viz’s domestic release translation: there are a number of lines which are outright left untranslated, and numerous other examples of heavily interpreted "translations" which anyone familiar with Japanese may find jarring.

Distributor: Viz
Creator: Pony Canyon, Studio Pierrot
Released: 1994

Plot: A+
Character Design: A+
Animation Quality: C
Music: A+
Overall: A+