Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 1

Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 1

The Hero

I was looking forward to Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 1. The preview for the series made it look pretty cool. Unfortunately, reality is often disappointing and the episode was much worse than the preview was.

I’ll get to my expectations vs. the reality of this series at the end of the review. But before that, let’s run through what happened in this episode and what some of my revised expectations for the series are.

For starters, there’s Shigure Daniel Kai, the protagonist who signed up to be a “Sleeper” without knowing what they actually are. Shigure is the equivalent of people who see U.S. Army commercials that compare the military to a video game and thinks that’s what it’s really like.

Shigure Daniel Kai from the anime series Deep Insanity: The Lost Child
Shigure Daniel Kai

In the commercial for Sleepers, they’re compared to superheroes whose job is to lead the rest of the world into the future. And when he applied for the job, he claimed his motivation was that he wanted to be a hero like the one featured in said commercial.

Sleepers are actually just soldiers who travel down into a giant abyss in Antarctica to fight against mutated animals referred to as Scarred (which are animated using CGI). For now, I don’t think we know what their actual mission is, but I’m going to guess it’s not very heroic.

Sure, in the end, Shigure and the rest of Vera Platoon are probably going to be heroes. But the organization they work for definitely isn’t “good.” It seems like a combination between a private military company and an oil or mining operation.

Is a militarized mining company ever a good thing? No. They’re probably responsible for awakening the Scarred and releasing the virus that was mentioned at the start of the episode.

Vera Platoon

Vera Platoon (Platoon 11) is the platoon Shigure is assigned to after being brought on as a Sleeper. The platoon only has 6 members, 4 of which are actually out in the field. Maybe my definition of a platoon is wrong, but I’m not sure 6 people qualifies. I’d call that a squad instead.

Anyway, the Commander of the platoon is Vera Rustamova. We don’t know anything else about her aside from her name and what she looks like. But, we can assume that she runs the “unorthodox” platoon.

Aside from all the other Vera Platoon members being a bit eccentric, you’ll also notice that this is the only platoon to dress differently. All the other sleepers we see in the episode are dressed more like what you would expect from a military organization.

Reika, Leslie, and Larry from the anime series Deep Insanity: The Lost Child
Reika, Leslie, and Larry

Under Vera is Leslie Blanc, the Executive Officer of Platoon 11. He (she? I’m going to assume genders, don’t cancel me) is my favorite character so far. But, that’s not saying much considering how little we know about all of them.

The two other field team members aside from Leslie, and now Shigure, are Reika Kobato and Lawrence “Larry” Jackson. Reika is missing a leg and became a Sleeper to gain access to their advanced prosthetics. Larry suffered a brain injury that resulted in him not feeling pain, so I guess he decided to become a soldier.

And the last member of Vera Platoon is Sumire Mochinoki. She referred to herself as the Sanity Anchor and works as the liaison between the field unit and Commander Vera back at base. Due to her title, I’m guessing that the abyss takes some sort of mental toll on those who enter it.

Maybe this series has a psychological version of the physical effects the abyss has on people from Made in Abyss.

Not What I Expected

Speaking of Made in Abyss, that’s kind of what I expected this series to be like. When I was going through the list of anime airing during the fall 2021 season, I noticed two series that had to do with exploring a mysterious abyss: Deep Insanity and Sakugan.

Since I’m trying to limit the number of anime I have to keep up with, I chose to watch Deep Insanity over Sakugan. They both seemed like maybe they were influenced by the success of Made in Abyss (or at least got anime adaptations because of it). I just chose the one that looked better to me based on the preview.

I get that this is partially my fault, but I really was expecting something a bit more like made in abyss than what I got from the first episode. This doesn’t seem like it’s going to be much about adventure. And instead, it does seem like it’s much more of a sci-fi anime than I anticipated.

Shigure using his FIBE from the anime series Deep Insanity: The Lost Child
Shigure using his FIBE

A lot of the technology featured in the episode is pretty tame and I wouldn’t necessarily call sci-fi. But then there are things like the FIBE, which are battle robots that get summoned through portals via magic or something. That’s the kind of stuff I’m not a huge fan of.

And on top of that, we have Shigure, who’s not the most interesting protagonist. He actually reminds me of a mix between Deku from My Hero Academia and Kirito from Sword Art Online. If you’re new here, those are some characters I think are pretty bad.

So, at the end of Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 1, my thoughts are that this series isn’t going to live up to my expectations. The plot doesn’t seem all that interesting, the monsters are animated with CGI, the characters all seem pretty bland, and I can’t say I enjoyed the soundtrack either.

Conclusion

What do you think about the first episode of Deep Insanity? Were you expecting something more like Made in Abyss? Did you know what this series was before you got into it? And how would you rate it based just on this episode? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of Episode 2 is available now.

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