Altered Carbon:
Resleeved is a full-length animated anime based on the Netflix original
cyberpunk web TV series Altered Carbon. The TV series itself is based on the
2002 novel of the same title by Richard K. Morgan.
This animation
is way better than the second series of Altered Carbon the TV show, and it is
set before the events of the first series. Can it be a standalone watch without
seeing the TV series? I don’t think so. They try to make it so with enough
explanation about what led to the present situation of Takeshi, but there isn’t
enough info to watch this animation without feeling like something is missing.
The story is
easy to follow if you’ve seen the first series. The ending makes you feel
there’s still more adventure to come before this anime catches up with the
first series of the TV show. The fight scenes are bloody, intense, and fun. The
animation is cool, but it doesn’t play well when the fight scenes turn bloody.
To give you the
plot of this show, we need to dive a little into the plot of the first series.
The world of Altered Carbon is set in the future, where people have the ability
to live for hundreds of years. Their consciousness can be transferred from one
body to another.
There is a
device called the Stack, where the consciousness is placed. This Stack contains
a person’s memories and experiences. It can then be placed in a body, which is
now called a Sleeve. Humans have not only found a way to defeat death but have
also overcome the stars, taken over planets, and transformed them into places
where humans live.
Now, in this
future (sometime in the 2300s), these Sleeves can be augmented to be faster,
stronger, and even part robotic. Altered Carbon focuses on a man named Takeshi
Kovacs. Without giving away too much information about Takeshi (so as not to
ruin anything for those who want to see the TV series), let’s dive into this
animation.
Takeshi has been
sleeved into another body, with the help of a friend who wants him to
investigate the Yakuza as well as protect a young girl. The girl is a tattoo
artist for the Yakuza and believes her life is in danger there. She tries to
run away from that life to the man who just sleeved Takeshi, when her path
crosses with his. He saves her, and while they’re leaving together, she runs
away from him and into the hands of the CTAC, a mercenary unit. There, they are
attacked, and the girl (Gena), along with Takeshi, are the only ones left
standing. Both decide to join forces to protect the girl and take her back to
the Yakuza base.
It’s there that
we discover there’s more to this girl’s tattooing than she’s telling us, and
there’s more to Gena than we know.
Like I said,
this is more like it when it comes to Altered Carbon, compared to the second
series of the TV show.
The first series
focuses on what happened in the book it was based on, where Takeshi acted as a
detective to solve a case after he was brought back, his stack having been
shelved for years.
The first series
was magnificently done, staying quite close to the book’s storyline. Much like
in this animation, Takeshi was calm and in control. In the second series, he
was out of control. Takeshi in the second series was aggressive, impulsive, and
angry at everyone and everything for no reason. They left the whole detective
thing behind and gave us a show so deep into sci-fi that it didn’t need to go.
Then we got a Takeshi who was emotionally out of control, which you wouldn’t
expect from a man of his caliber.
This animation
is worth delving into if you liked the first series of Altered Carbon.
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