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To think I’ve come across this title by pure accident two years ago, simply founding it on the site on which I watch anime, despite it being fully a cartoon. Something about the cover, the name and the tagline was quite captivating, I wanted to watch it even before I read the synopsis, which is even better.
Even more, I watched this title as soon as I could, just two months before the happiest we Argentinians have been after a long time, ah, if only we knew at the time…
It wasn’t very long before someone told me that the show was canceled due to very poor ratings, despite being already completely finished, so you can imagine my sadness…
But oh well, a whole year later that second season was released exclusively for Australia and New Zealand, and just some months later someone must have torrent it or something because now it’s available on pirate sites. So, in a now very saddening national situation, being able to see this show finished was a little piece of happiness in my life.
Pantheon is basically a callback to the dark cyberpunk era of anime that lasted from the late 80s to, well, the 90s as a whole, with some titles in the early 00s, with the latest being Zegapain, as far as I know. It is clearly inspired by Serial Experiments Lain, and it references Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell, and on its second season, even Paranoia Agent.
It has all the themes and plot points of the first, only updated to contemporary times in terminology, technology used in-series, scope and handling. Unfortunately, it also means that it doesn’t have the aesthetics of those series, which were dark not only in plots and characterization, but also on coloring, directing, and atmosphere. For a good portion of people, Paranoia Agent is mysterious, Evangelion depressing, Ghost in the Shell mindfuckery, and Serial Experiments Lain…all those things, plus very confusing and at times even straight up psychological horror.
None of that can be found in Pantheon, it’s an existential and political sci-fi thriller alright, but also mixed with teen drama and romance, and some action from time to time, with the atmosphere not being nowhere close as immersive as the ones that at least three of the previous titles had.
Not to say that Pantheon is bad in that regard, the soundtrack while nothing mind-blowing, is good enough, as are the special effects, especially on the second season with its boost in action and jump in technological level. Since I’ve watched the series on two languages, I can comment on two versions regarding the voice acting.
Unlike the anime series, which were limited to Japan in their settings, this show scales up to the whole world, and since it is a contemporary western cartoon, it has to have ethnic diversity, which anime usually lack or represent poorly when they have it, and in terms of audio in this series means having a lot of different accents which for a non-English speaker like myself, it was very hard to follow without subtitles, plus Maddie sounded older than she is for some reason. Another complaint I had was that the voice acting didn’t have the level of emotion I’m used to, but that’s to be expected, as I’m used to watch animation in either Japanese or Latin American, so it’s normal that when I listen to English voice acting, the performances come off as underacted for me.
So I switched to the Spanish (from Spain) dub and the voices and performances were something more akin to what I’m used to. Since the second season is, up to date, only available in English, I watched it in its original dub with English subtitles, so the different accents, far more prominent and in quantity than in the previous season, weren’t a problem. Plus, I don’t know if I got used to it or what but I had the impression that the second half was better acted as a whole, I also found a narrative reason for the delivery to be the way it is, since by that point every character is weighed down by both a global and personal crisis, or a desensitized transhuman being with a god complex, so it makes sense for them to sound the way they do.
The visuals were heavily criticized during the first season for its simplicity in artwork, character designs and backgrounds, and for the so-so motions. Surprisingly the CGI wasn’t questioned, despite being quite noticeable and in my opinion not in the same level as the rest. If you go into this series being used to watch only mainstream animation, you’ll probably hate the animation in this show, but since I’m used to watch animation from the whole scale of quality from Asia, Europe and Latin America, I wasn’t bothered by it one bit.
The artwork though simple is always consistent, the character designs are refreshing after you watched so many anime like I did, and the backgrounds are pretty good. In the second season in particular, the artwork is better, there are more characters with a lot more varied designs, and the older ones change after some time skips, the plot scales to the whole world, so you get to see a lot of different locations, and the special effects are better than in the first season, even for the CGI, even if it still isn’t as good as the rest. The motions and facial expressions are still not that good, those are the weakest aspects in this department from beginning to end, but a bit better in the second half thanks to all the action of the last episodes. The directing can be good at some points, especially for the action scenes near the end, but for most of the duration is pretty standard, not bad, just serviceable, when you compare it with the ones from the titles I mentioned earlier, this is not even close.
The show starts with a girl named Maddie getting an e-mail from her supposed dead father, who was actually uploaded as, what I guess can be described as an advanced intelligence based on his own brain (called uploaded intelligence in-series), and that leads the characters to be part of, initially, a conspiracy of different companies and governments wanting to use them for cyber militaristic operations. Even though that is the main focus, the series also dedicates time to the personal drama of her dealing with bullying in the school and the loss and reappearance of her father, as well as the acceptance of her mother wanting to start a new life with someone else.
Besides Maddie there are two other protagonists in the first season, one being Caspian, basically an Internet troll and hacker who later on founds out that his whole life, family and recent relationships are a lie fabricated for the sake of someone else.
And the other is Chanda, who was forced to upload against his will and it’s initially trapped in a loop before getting help from previous victims, and after that he goes on to get revenge on the people that did that to him and becomes the antagonist that forms a rebellion against humanity after he develops a god complex.
Anyone that has seen Serial Experiments Lain will notice all the similarities between the two series in premise, concepts and protagonists, but while this one wants to tackle how dangerous technology can be depending on how it’s used, it doesn’t do it with the same fear of it that the other one did in its time. Another difference is that Pantheon divides its character arcs among three protagonists, while exploring the dynamics between them and with the support cast, instead of having one protagonist with a personality disorder, like the anime, thus it’s better in that regard, because even if Lain Iwakura is one of the greatest characters I’ve ever seen, the rest of the characters in her series didn’t matter much, or wasn’t nearly as explored.
The buildup, however, does have some parts that are not that interesting, such as the main character and her father reconnecting in a game, or some of the fights being fought in that videogame, which was making it feel like a not very serious fantasy series instead of sci-fi, but at least it offered some cool new designs for some characters.
Then there is the episode where Maddie and her father David ruin her mother’s relationship to try to get her to be together again with him…but that can’t be done, because he is no longer a human, or at least not in the same sense as she is, so they officially break up, so what was the point of the whole thing in the episode then?
At least it wasn’t a complete waste of time, since even though it was kind of uninteresting and not serious to watch without progressing the plot much, it was important to tackle the themes of the series, such as whether an advanced state of consciousness can or not be considered the same thing as a human, and it was also important to have an impact in Maddie’s character arc on accepting that her father is no longer there and that her family is no longer the same, as much as she would like it to be, at least not in the same ways.
And of course, another themes looked into are how non ethical the whole process of uploading (as well as another thing) someone can be, the existential crisis the character go through, and as I previously mentioned, how technology can be abused by the super powers despite the good intentions their studies and developments might have had, something which has happened several times in actual history.
Another minor negative is the existence of a Russian hacker that does his thing playing piano while being half naked and surrounded by even more half naked catgirls, why would you include such a thing in this series? It was so ridiculous to watch and unfitting within the show.
The first season ends in a kind of a cliffhanger and although good as a whole, it would have been affected quite negatively if it was left incomplete. Thankfully it didn’t happen and the series eventually got its proper continuation and closure.
As soon as the second season starts, you notice why the first was made the way it was, there is no more buildup and character immersion, it’s all about moving the plot forward from the very first minute. Time passes, consequences from the first season carry over, the plot escalates to a global scale and scope, opinions about the uploaded intelligences are divided between whether they are a threat to humanity or an advanced state to a human being possible to coexist with, both among the common people and several authorities, the themes are no longer limited to the ethical and existential dimensions about it, but also political, and several characters have different agendas and are moving the plot forward in some way all the time.
The political aspect is quite weak however, as the sides of the conflict are presented simply and in clear preference to one side, or solves long conflicts easily, whether by giving little screentime to the political enemies of the States, and not allowing them achieve anything before they disappear from the story, or by forming alliances between sworn enemies in a hurry.
I mean it coincides with the themes explored in the series, of how conflicting humans can be yet at the end of the day mutual understanding, love and connection are always possible, especially against a common far bigger enemy and threat for the whole species (in the form of a billionaire leader of one of the biggest companies in the world with a god complex and the most advanced technology at hand, heh), but the execution feels idealistic and sentimental for such a show.
Another aspect that some might have issues with is Chanda being relegated to a kind of secondary role, as a new, bigger, way more powerful antagonist takes his place, which makes him reconsider everything he has done.
At least Caspian and Maddie get even more focus and development, the former by developing a god complex himself in his attempt to prove himself and others and be someone on his own, and later on giving himself completely to fix his mistake and save the world, as well as being a link to the connection between different species in the end.
The latter becomes an activist and engineer and developer herself, before she gets the biggest role in the whole series, while the show also explores her personal drama full of grieve, loss and loneliness.
What I didn’t fancy much initially was the inclusion of romance and sex, but I guess a modern North American adult cartoon is contractually obliged to have those things or else how it’s going to be clear about its demography right? At least the execution was done properly by keeping the sex out of screen, the teen pregnancy being handled seriously and the romance being part of the themes and leading to important plot points at the end.
Throughout the second half the now two protagonists keep traveling and talking to different people and although it might seem like the plot does not progress for the sake of exploring the secondary cast, the truth is that what they do is directly related to the themes and main objective, and it also allows for character growth and dynamics, with the payoff being the huge catharsis at the end.
What it also allows is the creators of the series to show all the different locations and the global scale the conflict escalated to, as well as fill their contractually obliged diversity quota, without shoving it down your throat and without victimizing nor demonizing anyone. By comparison, last year I watched half of Undone and had to drop it because, among several other issues, the protagonist was insufferable for how she wouldn’t shut up about being descendant of Mexicans and what the States robbed off from them, when it had nothing to do with the plot or themes, at least until that point.
None of that shit is present in Pantheon, which has lots of interracial couples and marriages, and people from lots of different countries, without limiting anyone to the distorted stereotypical image that the fake progressive mind of the States thinks it counts as proper representation. This cartoon might be woke, but it’s not garbage.
Oh, and for the totally secure with themselves, their sexualities and their masculinity or femininity lgbtphobics as well as conservatives with totally really important issues, they might like to know that there are not same sex or gender relationships nor brief references to other sexualities and identities that aren’t heterosexual and cisgender in here, so they can be relaxed in watching a fucking cartoon without having to concern themselves over petty bullshit that lives free in their absolutely sane mind for some reason.
All things considered, Pantheon could have been the best series in its kind for taking the premise and plot points of the dark sci-fi era of anime and updating them and making them more relatable to the viewers as well as increasing the scope and themes considerably, but although it is a great cartoon altogether, sadly it is still not as good as it could have been.
As the pacing moves fast in the second season, that means that some events might play out in ways that don’t feel completely organic. The time skips in the series are partially responsible for that, since they take place between seasons and near the end of the show, and several developments in both plot and characters come off as sudden or drastic because of that. The missing information is given properly to fill in the gaps, but that doesn’t change that a lot of stuff has happened without showing the whole buildup to it, and the characters that you’ve been following for the whole cartoon are now different in some ways, without you seeing they change organically and gradually on screen.
And then of course, as it’s usually the case with sci-fi of this kind, it’s very hard to say if any of this is even possible, the series explains everything to make it seem like there is a consistent internal logic, and some reviews on imdb praised the realism and attention to detail to the technology used in-series, but that’s only for the first season, as the second becomes way crazier as the uploaded intelligences become so powerful they practically get super powers.
And also, it seems that every antagonist is done for good, while for the good guys there always seem to be some backup to keep them alive in some way, and that diminishes the stakes a little.
All the problems come together in the finale, which is so out there it’s really hard to even grasp, let alone level it down to something that’s relatable. We are talking about the characters, including an advanced anti-viral software, becoming multiversal beings that can control time, space, energy and matter, and create and control whole universes and timelines, that’s why they joke about having become gods, yes, it gets that crazy.
You also ask yourself, wait, did none of that happen? Was it all a simulation? Is time going to reset itself? Is it a closed loop without showing the outcome? Did they ruined the show? And thankfully, the answer is no, as you can get when you think about the final dialogues in the show, all those events happened, the characters went through them, and they want to relive them possibly changing the outcome, in a way that doesn’t interfere with all the other time branches.
I find it positive in what it means theme wise, as even if they had become powerful multiversal beings outside the realm of time and space, they want to give away all that and change it so they aren’t alone and lonely and for the chance of being together again in a way that feels material/physical, because, you know, despite being the celestial gods they had become, they are humans, and what they want to do is, human. The very last scene even reconnects with the very first through the narration that was used in it.
As a whole, despite having several issues across its whole duration, which ultimately don’t let it be the best series of its kind compared to the simpler yet better executed anime from the 90s, I found Pantheon to be the best cartoon of its years, although I admittedly didn’t watch many other titles in them, and the best one since The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and I’m happy that this kind of science fiction (along Pluto and NieR:Automara Ver1.1a from 2023) is still done and mostly properly executed nowadays, even if most didn’t care about it.
8/10
