Kojiro Shindo is the top Foreign Affairs Ministry negotiator in Japan. One day while on a plane ready to fly off to an international conference from Haneda Airport, a giant 2km edged cube appears and envelopes the plane he is on. When Kojiro takes the initiative to explore the strange new space they are trapped in, an anisotropic being who called itself "Yaha-kui" appears before him. The cube was named "Kado" and Yaha-kui claims to help the human race advance and reach "the right answer", offering technology they could not achieve yet such as compact infinite sources of pollution free supply of power.

As such, Japan was now quickly becoming the centre of attention within the international community. As talks are underway with Yaha-kui to discern his true intentions, Japan is under huge pressure from the United Nations to handover such powerful technology. The Japanese government sends in their next best negotiator, Saraka Tsukai to talk with them. Are they friend or foe? That is for mankind to work out as their talks begin and are broadcast worldwide. Now Kojiro must take up his role as a negotiator to allow the alien being to communicate with the rest of mankind.

All seems well as humans are exposed to new alien technology of great benefits but is it really what's best for humans?

Saw a bit of this show on Japanese TV and it piqued my interest. A original story by Toei Animation who you'll probably know behind popular mainstream shows such as One Piece, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon etc.

The serious tone from the start of the series is pretty good as we watch adults go about their job. A kind of fresh take compared to your common high school students with super powers setting. That said, the characters are still fun not all business despite their position and the situation as they are colleagues who have been working and getting along well for some time.

Art work is pretty bland as with their other shows and they make use of a lot of 3D models which have stiff animation. Interestingly enough, they used Unity for some of the 3D because they wanted fractal patterns. Since fractal patterns are infinite they needed something continue generating the patterns as they animated rather than a loop. If you're sensitive to flashy lights and colours you might not want to watch this because that's how the fractal patterns are used to depict the alien objects. At the same time, it also allowed them to keep the quality between the other models more or less the same.

There are some familiar sites around Haneda airport and Skytree which you might recognise if you've been. Character art shown in the ending probably looks better than the 3D. Music is good and dramatic too.

Someone had written in a review once that alien movies can usually be split into two types; one the guns blazing action type and the other, a proper sci-fi where science is used to discern the foreign beings. This show is... mostly of the latter where both sides try their best to communicate instead of your average alien invasion flick. There's plenty of chat and lingo going on. Anyone expecting an action show will best be skipping this.

I thought it was fun guessing what new alien technology Yaha-kui would reveal and how the world would change with each one but as we neared the end of the series, it kind of felt silly. I guess at least the characters make up for it. I think it had the potential to become something better if they wrapped it differently. Starting point with the giant structure reminded me of Arrival (2016) but this came later so this might have been partly inspired by it. Both stories don't exactly go in the best direction IMO. Maybe it was due to time constraints.