Phi-Brain: Season 1: Collection 1 Blu-ray Review
Do you like puzzles?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 29, 2013
There's something intrinsically fascinating to the human mind about puzzles, whether they be unsolved mathematical
formulae, whodunits or something as relatively mundane as a Rubik's Cube. Puzzle based stories are quite frequently
formulated as detective stories, and Arthur Conan Doyle is often credited with introducing the idea of deductive
reasoning into detective fiction courtesy of his many
Sherlock Holmes outings. But the fact is many other
authors have exploited that same power of the intellect, including everyone from Titanic victim Jacques Futrelle, whose
Thinking Machine stories are models of intricate puzzle formulation, to Agatha Christie, who seemed to delight in
developing not just insanely complex problems for her sleuths to solve, but also in offering an embarrassment of riches
with regard to potential suspects (many with interconnected back stories) and of course red herrings. A lot of detective
fiction has been built around murder, with Christie probably one of the more notable examples of an author who could
seemingly come up with infinite ways to kill, and infinitive motives for the killing. There's at the very least
threatened death in droves running through
Phi Brain: Puzzle of God, a rather interesting anime that
evidently originally aired on a Japanese educational station, but murder isn't really a focal point. The main character in
Phi Brain: Puzzle of God is a kind of armchair detective named Kaito, a high school kid whose penchant for
solving puzzles comes in handy when he and his best friend Nonoha find themselves in an intricate maze. The first
episode sets Kaito up as an intuitive puzzle solver, but then goes a step further, when as a result for solving
part of the maze puzzle Kaito is granted a "reward" of sorts in the form of a magical armband (hey, this is
anime, what do you expect?) named Orpheus. In a kind of cheat that may annoy some
viewers who are
armchair sleuths, Orpheus is able to effect a kind of mind meld with Kaito to help him solve especially difficult puzzles.
Phi Brain: Puzzle of God posits some fairly fun conundrums as it trundles along during its first season, but there
really isn't any major degree of suspense as it's a virtual given that Kaito, who soon has a coterie of other puzzle
solvers surrounding him, will either ferret out the answers himself or be able to do with a little prodding from his
glowing piece of arm-wear.
Anyone who's ever downloaded a puzzle app on their smart phone or in fact watched any given immunity challenge on
Survivor may recognize at least some of the sorts of puzzles that are featured in
Phi Brain: Puzzle of
God.
Aside from elements like the labyrinthine maze that is featured in the first episode (and frankly some subsequent ones),
there are puzzles like the slide puzzles where you have to arrange a disconnected set of images into a recognizable
picture, or a set of dots that have to be connected with a finite number of lines. But this is a double edged sword for
the
series. On the one hand, the puzzle element is something that is relatively unique and works to set
Phi Brain:
Puzzle
of God apart from a glut of other anime. But the series doesn't seem to have the courage to rely solely on that
element to set it apart, and other elements of the show are fairly routine, including a sort of
shōnen aspect that
gets to be fairly predictable, and a completely rote subplot that has Kaito having a "secret identity" of sorts that a
mysterious organization is out to exploit or even thwart.
Phi Brain: Puzzle of God also tends to devolve into a sort of summoning power anime, resonant of such iconic
fare as
Dragon Ball Z or even
Yu-Gi-Oh!, though this series, despite some blatantly comedic elements,
seems to
want to take itself more seriously, especially with regard to some of Kaito's back story, which gets
doled out in dribs and drabs as this first arc of episodes goes along. Like an good erstwhile superhero (which is what
in effect Kaito turns out to be), he has some tragedy in his past, concerning that time honored trope in a lot of
superhero iconography of some dastardly doings with regard to his parents. These elements are woven relatively well
into the overall puzzle solving ambience of
Phi Brain: Puzzle of God, but some may wish there had been less
time spent on these aspects and more time devoted to creating more stupefying puzzles.
There are regular threats of death in virtually every episode so far in
Phi Brain: Puzzle of God, and once the
nefarious group (the titular Puzzle of God, in fact) starts its machinations with regard to Kaito, there's a fair degree of
suspense at times, but once again the series tends to diffuse that tension with sidebars, including lots of time spent on
Kaito's sidekick Nonoha, as well as kind of silly short form exercises that for example see Kaito losing his puzzle solving
abilities. That gives
Phi Brain: Puzzle of God a feeling of having been padded (to a certain extent, at least),
once again halting forward momentum of the central plot arc.
Despite several minor missteps, however,
Phi Brain: Puzzle of God turns out to be a remarkably entertaining
anime a lot of the time. There's a certain lunatic quality to some of the humor that is very appealing, and if the puzzles
aren't especially mind boggling, the fact that an anime is at least
trying to present what might boil down to a
pretty typical battle outing in at least a slightly different environment is commendable. It's better to have tried and not
to have completely succeeded, than not to have tried at all, as any puzzle solver worth their salt will tell you.
