Streaming: Funimation
Episodes: 13
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: From a young age, Botan’s grandfather has trained her as a spy in the ways of the ninja in preparation for a greater purpose to come. Much to her surprise, this greater purpose actually manifests and she becomes involved in “Mission T,” a quest to recover a set of crystalline shards left behind by the famous inventor Nicola Tesla 70 years ago. Time is ticking, however, and she and her somewhat-unwilling new partner, a spy named Kuruma must find these shards before they’re assembled into a full crystal and used for nefarious purposes.
This time-sensitive quest brings Botan and Kuruma to Oslo, Norway, where a train appears to have mysteriously warped from one point to another within the city, causing destruction and bodily harm. As Botan infiltrates the walled-off research area, she discovers the horrifying aftermath of the accident, including mutilated bodies and even a survivor who’s lost his wits. This put their team on the radar of the authorities, so they must make a quick getaway. This helps Kuruma to gain a little bit of respect for Botan as a partner.
Impressions: Tesla Note is the very poster child of a mixed bag. Its premise draws from the intriguing real-life figure of Nicola Tesla, an individual who is only been truly getting his due as an inventor in the modern era. There are plenty of “what-ifs” that could serve as story starters, because the world might be quite different if Thomas Edison’s role in the development of modern technologies had been eschewed in favor of Tesla’s. But speculative fiction on its own is only as strong as the combination of its many important components, and it’s in those other areas that Tesla Note really struggles.
Botan is a very likeable lead character, a slightly socially mal-adjusted teenager with a quick wit and genius-level physicality and intellect. But she’s set against the loud-mouthed uselessness of Kuruma, ostensibly a spy but one who can’t seem to shut his mouth and keep the team’s cover. He’s a complainer, an arrogant, slightly chauvinist turd who takes little interest in the framework of the current job to which he’s been assigned (he blows off an explanation of Nicola Tesla, which considering the circumstances might be sort of important to comprehend). His level of interacting with others mostly involves yelling and talking down to people.
I think the scene in this episode which sums up his personality the best is when Botan is infiltrating the Oslo research site in disguise, and Kuruma not only forgets his job of keeping a lookout (allowing the researcher that Botan is disguised as to reenter the job site and causing a two Spiderman situation to unfold), but then tries to gain access to the site by literally whining and yelling and demanding it like some sort of awful Karen. There’s been a lot of discourse regarding unlikeable and ethically-complicated main characters recently, and I don’t necessarily believe that likeability is the be-all-end-all of character development. But when a character so completely channels the kind of immature entitlement that leaves me with war flashbacks from my time as a cashier at Target, I have a difficult time giving him my emotional investment or benefit-of-the-doubt.
This opening episode is honestly just very uneven. It attempts to convey an upcoming quest of epic proportions but gets very bogged down in some of the more basic building blocks of fiction – its character relationships. I’d like to think that there’s a worthwhile story to tell within this troubled package, but I’m not sure I’m in the frame of mind to want to find out.
Pros: Surrounded by more one-note characters – the brash, annoying male spy, the put-upon spy manager guy, the cold, logical genius analyst, Botan stands out as a fairly interesting person. She’s smart and “kick ass” in the irritating, reductive manner women tend to be allowed in action stories – “she can go toe-to-toe with the guys, and she’s cute too!” And yet through all of that I felt like she was also allowed some space to be her own person. It’s something I think is done with a ton more finesse in, say, Jujutsu Kaisen, where Nobara is a fashion-forward sort of girl with cosmopolitan aspirations which contrasts with our expectations of her within the shounen action framework of the series. Botan’s focus on cute treats while out in the city feels like a dumbed-down version of this concept, but still manages to add a little flavor to her characterization.
Cons: I waited as long as possible to mention the animation, because there are many factors during the production of an animated series that can cause issues with the final product and I don’t want to condemn a series on only the quality of how it looks. However, this series does something that only calls more attention to its visual troubles by utilizing a hybrid 2D-3D style. I get it – why spend time modeling background characters in 3D when they’re only going to be seen once and probably not in motion? Yet there’s not really an effort made to make the 2D and 3D elements meld with one-another. I’m not going to make any jokes about this – I think this is representative of both a lack of resources as well as growing pains as 3DCG becomes more and more of a force in anime production, but it is a bit difficult to watch.
Content Warnings: Violence, body horror (including disfigured corpses), mild fanservice (wet shirt), casual misogyny.
Would I Watch More? – This episode was difficult to look at and had a lot of problems to deal with otherwise, so it’s definitely not at the top of my list.