It's hard to think of a story where a supposed protagonist does so little protagging.
Maybe you're lucky enough to have not seen Production I.G's
Loups=Garous, then.
That unenviably became my yardstick for passive, pointless MCs, and
Mardock, for me, is not even within visual range of it.
This has a very Ghost in the Shell feel,
Undeniably so. It was written by Tow Ubukata, who would go on to write
Ghost in the Shell: Arise for Production I.G, so he must've already been a fan.
Speaking personally, I actually do rather like the
Mardock Scramble trilogy. I can totally see the narrative problems in it, and I agree that part 1 is the best, which obviously isn't great for a three-parter, but I like the setting and the ideas, and above all I can't help but
care about what happens to its characters, which is more than
Ghost in the Shell has ever managed for me, as unpopular as that view might be.
I'm sure a big part of me being invested in Balot as a character is her being voiced by the living legend who is Megumi Hayashibara (Rei in
Evangelion). She cared deeply about her role, as the accompanying interviews with her in the extras on Kaze's Blu-ray box set really reinforce.
So yeah, I'm a fan of
Mardock. I'm sure our fellow AUKN member
@Adam-M would probably say the same (clearly liking the series enough to have Oeufcoque as his avatar character.
Fun fact to end on here:
Mardock Scramble, (originally a series of novels by the aforementioned Ubukata) before being made into a three-part anime by studio GoHands was originally planned to be adapted by Gonzo instead, with character designs by Range Murata (
Last Exile). See this article here:
Studio Gonzo is known for several things: making lots of anime series, letting those series disintegrate by the halfway mark, and epitomizin...
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