Estab life great escape 11

Pages: 12Next »

Looking for information on the anime Estab-Life: Great Escape (Establishment in Life)? Find out more with MyAnimeList, the world's most active online anime and manga community and database. The distant future. After reaching its peak, Earth's population fell into decline. AI was developed to help preserve the species and manage the ecosystem; a grand experiment in human diversity. Through genetic engineering, a diverse array of peoples, including beastfolk, magical beings, and more, was created …

Insane, wacky, and totally out of the blue, watching Estab Life is an experience for sure.

Thanks to Crunchyroll we got a two-episode premiere ahead of its April broadcast date in Japan, and according to CR, this trend will continue with Estab-Life aka Establishment in Life. You could call this Spring 2022 officially started!

Estab-Life is kinda weird, but in all the best sense of strange, episode 01 really does start in media’s res throwing us directly into this world, not really explaining too much. We already know by the synopsis who the mastermind might be, but those going in completely blind will find themselves with a story that slowly unravels itself like a well-woven mystery. Furthermore, the action doesn’t take a lot of time to start up. There are elements here that were withheld on purpose, there was never really an exposition dump of this world or any world-building for that matter. All you need to know is that Tokyo has been sealed off in sectors and people want to escape to other divisions in order to live the life they’ve always wanted.

Estab-Life is a mixture of CGDCT, a heist show, and a dystopian cyberpunk drama-mystery woven together, and it works great!

Nevertheless, Estab-Life quickly showed that it’s taking the case of the week approach while underlying a dramatic narrative and so far it’s really working! Episode 01 deals with the case of a teacher who has grown tired of his life and wants to seek new opportunities, he’s not exactly succeeding at being the next k-pop dancing sensation, or whatever he was trying to do on that Youtube site (locked in a toilet I might add). So the Establishment of Life seeks him out, after getting a notification. They knock out a teacher in order to get him out of the school, Equa smiles at him like it’s the most normal thing ever. and so it goes. In the process, they get shot down by drones in what was an intense and well-choreographed fight scene, jump into an elevator shaft, jump out a window to fight drones, and climb up the building like they’re James Bond, this plot point served to allow us to see what the girls can do when it comes to combat. They manage to get him out by attaching a rappel rope down a building and into the next sector, where the teacher flies over as Equa pushes him into the leap of faith. Great stuff really!

I’m over here having a great time because its plot is firing happy neurons in my brain, but only because it’s trying to be so different and unique that it might be failing to grasp the basic structure of storytelling. I’m making fun of the show in my brain, and that to me signals Estab-Life is not allowing me to take it seriously. I’m having fun but only at the expense of the show. Not with it.

It’s hard to explain, especially on a platform like this that asks reviewers to be logical and look at things with an objective eye. I want that for Estab-Life. But it’s clear that my coverage of a show I don’t enjoy or can’t take seriously, deviates into an edgy teenage (cringy) edge lord (Sasaki to Miyano, Tokyo-25 ku (before revision)).

Estab-Life is the perfect show to turn your brain off, grab a drink, puff up a cigar, or just get high on life and relax. It has enough substance to sustain itself weekly and be interesting enough to keep the plot moving. After the experience is over update your MAL and call it a day!

The world population has begun to shrink after reaching its peak. The “Supernatural Renovation Project” splits Tokyo with towering walls into several Cluster neighborhoods, each with its own unique genetically modified populations, governed by artificial intelligence. Most people live their lives in their own unique Clusters, blissfully unconcerned with life beyond. However, there are some who seek to escape to the other Clusters. An outfit called Nigashiya helps those who wish to escape.

That said, I’m a fan of offbeat sci-fi series, and that’s very much the vibe I get from this premiere. The characters are simple archetypes with just enough personality to be likable, and they flit between the high-flying sci-fi action setpieces with just the right amount of energy. That’s a good thing to have for what is likely to be an episodic series of missions and character pieces, and if the writing can deliver interesting individual stories it may just be worth keeping up with. I was actually pretty charmed by episode two, with the grizzled yakuza boss who yearns to escape Shinjuku’s criminal underbelly and achieve his dream of becoming a magical girl. It’s silly and it knows it, but there’s an earnest feeling to the comedy that invites you to cheer for him and the other characters rather than trying to laugh at him. There’s a central idea that it’s ok, important even, to run away when you need to live a better life, and that compassion is a big part of what makes this whole scenario work so far. It’s not deep, but it is heartfelt.

You may also like...