SERIES REVIEW: Neo Yokio
Neo Yokio is what postmodern teen drama-filled anime is becoming, and I don’t think you’re ready for it because I certainly wasn’t. PHOTO| COURTESY
What you need to know:
- Kaz Kaan, (Voiced by Jaden Smith) is a teenage ‘eligible boyfriend’, a common theme in many teen dramas, who also happens to have descended from a line of demon slayers, and whose heritage plagues him.
- His obsession with style and elegance cannot be funded by inherited riches, like many of his peers, but through his work - exorcising the city.
Neo Yokio is what postmodern teen drama-filled anime is becoming, and I don’t think you’re ready for it because I certainly wasn’t. In this dystopian future, humans have mechanical butlers (mechas, as they are called) and people live underwater.
Kaz Kaan, (Voiced by Jaden Smith) is a teenage ‘eligible boyfriend’, a common theme in many teen dramas, who also happens to have descended from a line of demon slayers, and whose heritage plagues him; his obsession with style and elegance cannot be funded by inherited riches, like many of his peers, but through his work - exorcising the city.
Thrown into the mix are his crush for a girl who is now going through an existentialist phase, as well as his arch rival, who is just as, if not more, vain, than him.
It’s a mishmash of themes; anime, vanity and supernatural twists that may have been well-meaning but ended up being just as confusing as Jaden Smith’s ambiguous tweets.
