| Noein: To Your Other Self | |
A promotional poster for Noein |
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| ノエイン もうひとりの君へ (Noein: Mō Hitori no Kimi e) |
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|---|---|
| Genre | Adventure, Romance, Science fiction |
| TV anime | |
| Directed by | Kazuki Akane, Kenji Yasuda |
| Written by | Hiroshi Ōnogi |
| Studio | Satelight |
| Network | Chiba TV |
| English network | ABC2 Super Channel SCI FI |
| Original run | October 12, 2005 – March 29, 2006 |
| Episodes | 24 |
Noein: To Your Other Self (ノエイン もうひとりの君へ Noein: Mō Hitori no Kimi e), also known simply as Noein, is a science fiction anime television series directed by Kazuki Akane and Kenji Yasuda and produced by Satelight. The series has 24 episodes which comprise a complete storyline.
The English version was produced by Manga Entertainment.
Contents |
Fifteen years in the future, a violent pan-dimensional war is taking place between the two dominant "time-spaces" of the universe: La'cryma, a possible future of our own world, and Shangri-La, another possible dimension fifteen years after ours, intent on the destruction of all space and time. The key to stopping Shangri'la's invasion and saving reality is a mysterious object known as the "Dragon Torc" (竜のトルク Ryū no Toruku). La'cryma's elite military force, known as the "Dragon Knights", is sent through space and time to find it. In one possible present, twelve-year old Haruka and her friend Yū are contemplating running away from home when they meet a member of the Dragon Knights named Karasu, who is a possible Yū from the future. La'cryma believes that Haruka is the Dragon Torc, but Karasu vows to protect her rather than sacrifice her for his home dimension. Other than the Dragon Knights, Haruka is targeted by the mysterious Noein, the entity behind Shangri'la who is intent on bringing her into his timespace to end all universes.
Noein is set in the Japanese port city of Hakodate on the northern island of Hokkaido. The animators took great care to recreate a lot of details of Hakodate, its buildings, port and environs look exactly like the actual city.[1][2][3]
Noein employs a conception of time as a dimension that resonates with other "timespaces." Haruka's Dragon Torc, which affects this relationship, takes the shape of an Ouroboros.
Noein makes use of several interpretations of quantum physics, particularly Hugh Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation, which views the universe as branching off into an infinity of possible states of varying probability. It also draws from the Copenhagen Interpretation, which suggests that an observer or measurement is important in determining the decoherency of the probability. In the anime, Haruka possesses "supreme observer" status in the multiverse, thus enabling her to determine the sole outcome of an event just by "observing" one of the possible futures of the event. These themes also underpin an existential ideology that permeates the anime.
In one episode, Uchida candidly explains to her bodyguard Kōriyama the paradox of Schrödinger's cat, whereby a cat is ambiguously suspended (exists in a "superposition") between life and death until observed. This act of measurement forces the cat's existence to "collapse" into one of the two possible states. She also mentions Albert Einstein's famous remark, "God does not play dice."
While the Many-Worlds Interpretation implies a divergence of timespaces, the anime also includes a possible future in which timespaces converge, an end the series' chief antagonist, Noein, works to accomplish.
The word "noein" means "to shake" or "to tremble" in Coptic, while in Greek "noein" (νοεῖν) means "to perceive", "to observe" or "to think."
In North America, the series was released on five Region 1 DVDs, the last released on September 18, 2007. In the United Kingdom, the first three volumes were sold individually, while the last two can only be purchased as part of a series collection. On the 22nd of September, 2007, a complete box-set of the whole anime was released in the United Kingdom.