Apr 22, 2024
I'm very surprised by the high praises this show got. I was expecting to watch a somewhat hidden gem, but quickly ended up disillusioned. In short: if you're looking for good dialogue, good pacing, good characters, good setting and a well-written story, this show is not for you.
The show has just barely enough qualities to keep you watching. The main character is fairly interesting and the show gives him a somewhat personal motivation to solve the case, again, just barely good enough to engage the viewer too. The overall story is coherent and feeds you bits and pieces of information at a steady pace, as
...
any detective drama would. The character writing is okay-ish and the overall theme of the story stays pretty consistent and (very) discernible.
Unfortunately, that's where the positive qualities end and the outdated elements of the narrative become very apparent.
The dialogue is funny. Not intentionally and not through jokes, but through how bad it sometimes is. Characters will have a normal conversation until out of nowhere, one will start a 5-minute long sob-story about their past that will conveniently just so happen to contain clues for the big mystery. Some characters will blurt out thoughts in situations where it makes no sense for them to do so.
The dialogue often breaks the immersion and makes it plainly obvious that the characters are just the author's tools to give exposition.
The pacing feels boring. It's often due to an onslaught of flashbacks (one specific scene is almost as bad as Naruto's swing) and characters repeating themselves, then other characters repeating what they heard, but the most draining cause of this boredom is due to the next point.
The characters are one-dimensional. Well, most of them. Aside from very select few, most characters have one defining personality trait that they show you soon after introduction and then that's it. No nuance or nothing, you know exactly who they are. None of their actions will surprise you. None of their lines will invest you. You know all that there is to know about them and every scene that features them feels pointless.
It feels sad to say that, because this shallowness is juxtaposed with truly compelling and well-written characters. Each scene that features both types is a reminder of missed potential. It's evident that the author was more than capable of creating depth and complexity so seeing the majority of the cast remain this stagnant and uninteresting throughout the 8 hours of the runtime gives you a mix of boredom and frustration.
The setting is an example of missed opportunity too. Pluto is a feast to the eyes for fans of 20-year-old futurism. The environments and visuals are consistently great, despite some CG horrors and stilted movements here and there. Unfortunately, the author took a lot of liberty in utilizing the setting in the story and demands A LOT of suspension of disbelief from the viewers. There are tons of sci-fi terms with intentionally vague meanings. The robots can communicate with each other over great distances when it's convenient for them to do so only to forget that capability in favor of plot convenience. Their consciousness resides in specific parts of their bodies, but they don't have any backups and get killed by a wound to the stomach. Everyone can travel at incredible speeds across the globe, until they're conveniently too slow. Characters magically know stuff, either because "they can tell" or because "they picked up stray brain waves". Oh and don't forget about "The 39th Central Asian Conflict", otherwise the show will repeat it to you every 15 minutes.
The story is pretty okay. I mean, it's mostly anchored on motivations of decently believable characters and unravels itself pretty neatly. Unfortunately, contrary to any other detective dramas, not a single plot point really hits you.
When the show gives you a poignant revelation in a well-crafted scene, it does so way after you were given enough clues to figure it out yourself.
When the story shares some shocking secret, it does so at the end of a 10-minute force-fed exposition dump.
When the characters experience any kind of shocking realization, they immediately start making decisions that are either laughably bad or frustratingly nonsensical.
When the show tries to point at its underlying theme, it does it so plainly it might as well have a character write it out on the screen.
Overall, Pluto isn't bad. It's very lacking in many regards, but has enough good qualities in the right places to please fans of the genre. Unfortunately, it wasn't for me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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