Gen:Lock

The cast

What is Gen:Lock? Gen:Lock is an animated, web series made by the company Rooster Teeth. At at the time of writing, there has been one season. Reportedly, there is going to be a second season. However, it hasn't premiered yet.

What is the plot? In the later 21st century, the two political superpowers, the Polity (i.e. the good guys) and the Union (i.e. the bad guy), are at war. The Polity tasks our main characters (Julian Chase, Yasamin Madrani, Cameron MacCloud, Kazu Iida, Valentina Romanyszyn) with using Gen:Lock, an experimental form of technology that allows the user to download their brains into machines, to pilot giant robots to fight the Union forces.

One thing that bugged me is how the never explained why the robots are necessary. We only see the robots do things a trained task force with tanks or a drone strike could accomplish. In addition, the Gen:Lock technology has numerous drawbacks: you need to meet numerous requirements to avoid frying your brain, the range is so short that the user's body need to be near the robots (thus putting them in danger when using the technology on a battlefield) and users can trap themselves out of their own body if they use the technology for too long, among other issues. However, these giant robots form the maypole that the plot revolves around.

Let's contrast with Neon Genesis Evangelion. In that series, it is explained that the EVA units (i.e. the giant robots) are the only thing that can harm the giant monsters attacking Tokyo-3 (the setting). As such, the EVA units, despite being extremely impractical pieces of military equipment, are humanity's last hope for survival. 

The world of Gen:Lock

The worldbuilding is seriously lacking. Despite numerous scenes of characters doing nothing but talking, virtually nothing about this world is explained. It's almost as if they expect to already know this information, like it's a sequel or spin-off (despite Gen:Lock being an original property).

A prime example of this is the war. All we know about it is the Polity are the good guys and the Union are the bad guys. Heck, we are never even told why there is a war to begin with. Compare this to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Early on in that show, it explains the Fire Nation forces are imperialists trying to conquer the rest of the world while the rest of the world is fighting back because they don't want to be subjugated. While it does get more complex later, we still get a basic idea of what is going on in the first season. We never get this type of explanation for Gen:Lock.

What makes it worse is that the Gen:Lock writers had the perfect opportunity to remedy this. You see, the story introduces Nemesis, a guy who defected from the Polity to the Union. The writers could have used this character to show off the ideals of the Union and show why people would willingly follow them. Instead, Nemesis is portrayed as a one-note, crazy villain who is too stupid to realize his bosses are blatantly lying to him.

Let's talk about the characters. Most of them are uninteresting. At best, they will have one or two notable character traits like how Cammie is the excitable one and an expert at computers. At worst, they have no real personality to speak of like Kazu. There's only one really complex character in the form of Doctor Weller, the inventor of the Gen:Lock technology.

However, I ended up hating Weller. The show tries to portray him as a guy forced to make tough, morally ambiguous decision which is not helped by the military breathing down his back. However, Weller is such a jerk that I found it hard to sympathize with him. In one episode, Cammie uses the Gen:Lock technology to alter her own personality. Weller has the ability to fix this, but doesn't because he suspects he might benefit from this. When things go south, Weller puts all the blame on Cammie and never acknowledge his inaction. While that's the most extreme example, he has jerkish moments throughout the story, such as emotionally manipulating the heroes into partaking in the Gen:Lock project and abusing his AI assistant.

The actual story is not great. Most of it is very predictable. The before mentioned Cammie episode plays out like your standard "character tries to change herself, but it backfires" plot without doing anything interesting with it. Only two characters get any character development. Keep in mind that Cammie's "development" boils down to introducing a character flaw only for it completely vanish after an inspirational speech (thus putting her back at square one). Any interesting ideas (such as the politics of the war) are ignored or wasted. 

Overall, I found this to be a really dull show. The world and overarching conflict feels hollow. The characters were uninteresting or, in the case of Doctor Weller, unlikable. Meanwhile, the story refuses to do anything new or interesting.