I had initially planned on a holiday-themed post to be the one before the start of 2024, but I’m rather excited in getting this little project going. It was something I brought up briefly in my 2024 plans post, and so I want to elaborate more now. ‘Everyone is Telling Me to Hate’ is going to be an ongoing set of posts where I take a look at some shows and movies that have received a lot of criticism, backlash and hate. They could have poor animation, poor character design, poor storytelling, or a mixture of the three. These are the kinds of show and movies that are universally panned, and yet I still want to form my own opinion of them. I tried defending EX-ARM, the show everyone loves to hate, by putting it in the “so bad it’s good” category after all.
So what should I do, and where should I start? Well I’m going to begin with a little something that I had originally wanted to talk about in Japan Curiosity, but never got around to it: the 2022 Netflix original show Exception.
In the far distant future, humanity has been forced to leave Earth for the stars, to terraform new worlds. On a terraforming project, its crew are ‘created’ one-by-one with the help of an advanced 3D printer. However, a system malfunction as a result of being hit by a solar flare leads to one of the members, Lewis, emerge as a deformed horror. As ‘Lewis’ begins to turn on the rest of the crew, will the remaining crew be able to survive and complete their terraforming mission?
Exception is…well…it’s something. I’m not going to lie when I say that, after watching the trailer, I was not especially looking forward to watching it. And I can imagine the same can be said for a lot of people who saw it too. But was my complaint really about the show’s very unusual animation style? 3D anime doesn’t have a great history. I mean we’ve had fascinating pieces like Land of the Lustrous and BLAME! where the 3D animation works so well due to the story and setting. A lot of reviews of Exception have really centered around the show’s unusual 3D animation, but I still wanted to look beyond that and see what the Netflix show offered me.
(This post contains spoilers for Exception)
(Just so you know, the title is actually stylized as e∞ception. It looks better on the promo posters, I promise.)
I’ll be getting to the 3D animation later on in the post, but first I’d like to talk about the story itself, in particular the philosophical topics that are raised in all 8 episodes. A crew of five on a terraforming ship have all been ‘created’ by an advanced biological 3D printer, with their original bodies in deep sleep closer to Earth. Mack, Nina, Oscar and Patty all emerge from their ‘womb’ as almost perfect humans, with none of the imperfections their original bodies have. While they wait for the final crew member, Lewis, to be printed, they unexpectedly encounter a solar flare which affects the ship’s printer and makes what was meant to be Lewis into something more monstrous. As the printer keeps Lewis’s data, it can just print another one (which they do), but what are they meant to do with this other version of him?
Already from the first episode, Exception raises the question of the meaning of life, and not just because of what ‘Lewis’ is. Their original versions are on the other side of the galaxy, and so this crew are just copies. As they were just able to print another one, is it really the right thing to destroy this other version of him? Also, when the terraforming project is completed, what would even happen to the entire crew? Would they just be discarded, or would they have the same basic human rights as their originals? So many philosophical topics raised in the show, and to some viewers who want to switch off to a sci-fi survival horror, it can all seem a little overwhelming. To those who looked beyond the animation, this may have been one complaint they may have about the show.
But the story really picks up when we see that the ‘misprint’ (a term that the crew use to refer to the other Lewis) is able to communicate. First they discover words etched into walls (‘Help’, ‘Live’, etc.), then they find out it can operate the ship’s machinery and systems. Knowing that the crew have reprinted him making his life essentially meaningless, the misprint decides to turn against them by sabotaging their terraforming project. The crew already have a massive task ahead of them; helping repopulate the entire human race on another planet. On top of this, they themselves begin to wonder if their own lives have meaning once the project is complete and their original bodies wake up. There’s some real irony here; as they question what to do with this Lewis misprint, they also end up questioning their own lives since their only purpose is to serve their originals. One example of this I’ll point out is when Oscar looks at old photographs of his family…except they are not his family. Any mementos and keepsakes that are brought on the ship don’t belong to these people at all.
There are a lot of heavyweight philosophical ‘meaning of life’ topics raised in Exception, and for much of the show, they come and hit the viewer like a wrecking ball. When the survival story picks up halfway through, we see a lot of Alien influences. In that movie, all the cargo ship had in terms of self-defense was a stun stick, a crudely-built flamethrower and a motion sensor. Here in exception, the crew aren’t allowed to print weapons, so all they have is a pool cue from the mess hall. And so things get more and more intense as the misprint gets smarter, learns its way around the ship faster, and is even able to manipulate one of the crew into helping them steal a critical part of their terraforming project.
So with this tense sci-fi survival thriller story, what can we say about the 3D animation itself? Some anime purists will criticize it heavily, calling out the static, rigid and janky character movement in particular; I’ve even seen one article comparing the animation to what one would see in a PS3 game. I personally don’t really see any of that though. I even see some charm in the animation style; yes, it’s very unusual and unconventional, but I was able to look past that. I could warm to all the characters and understand the delicate situations they were in, even with the occasional awkward animation moments. We should also remember that Exception was not meant for regular TV syndication. More anime shows designed exclusively for streaming platforms are breaking the rule that a show should last one or two cours. We saw this with shows like Vampire in the Garden, which only had 5 episodes, or Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which had 10.
And just like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, I believe that Exception is in a unique position when it comes to who its target audience is. The English voice cast has been picked carefully, with some heavyweight names on the list of five (Nolan North, Ali Hillis, Robbie Daymond). And while this is made by Japanese studios (Tatsunoko Production and Studio 5inc), and has its own stacked list of Japanese voice actors, I found the show much more enjoyable in English. And then there is the incredible soundtrack, by the Oscar-winning Ryuichi Sakamoto (The Last Emperor, The Revenant, The Wings of Honneamise), blending moody ambient, electronica and classical music styles to fit the far future setting of the show. This was in fact one of his last soundtrack works before his passing away earlier in 2023.
The story sticks firmly to dealing with this misprint and whether destroying it is the morally right thing to do, especially since the crew’s only purpose is to serve their originals. And when the project is in its final phase and more twists and turns arrive, it really felt like the writers weren’t so sure on what direction to go next. The ending in particular left me a little disappointed; not so much in the story as a whole, but instead how much they dragged it on. Nina and the Lewis misprint are left as the only ones to complete the terraforming project before their originals arrive, and as each of them age and eventually die while completing the project, we eventually stop caring so much.
Watching Exception made me realize that this is definitely not the kind of show that anyone can just switch off to. It simultaneously delivers a tense sci-fi horror story with a seemingly-endless amount of philosophy around humanism, empathy and the meaning of life. And while the philosophy serves a real purpose and is the glue to the main story, is it too much for some viewers to handle? And then there’s also the matter of the 3D animation, which not everyone will like, and is likely the only thing people will turn them off. With all that said, I think there is still a lot to enjoy here. Sure, the story is not that unique, but once you are able to find the charm, that doesn’t matter so much.
The story idea for Exception is, in my view, very good – I’ll say that here and now. It mixes philosophy and moral ambiguity with a sense of purpose, raising challenging questions of what it really means to be human. It takes standard traits of both science fiction and survival horror, and makes it into something quite fun to watch. The English voice cast is stacked and all perform well enough, and the soundtrack is outstanding beyond words. But the one deciding factor for those interested in the show will be its 3D animation. It will either grow on you, or it will make you want to immediately switch off. Exception is a divisive show and not for everyone, but I found it to be a fascinating watch once I looked beyond the animation.
Everyone has told me to hate this show, and it really felt like their only complaint was the static and rigid animation style. But shows can be far more than just that. I brought this up already, but this was not meant for regular TV syndication, and thus doesn’t really need to adhere to any unwritten anime rules (if you can call them that). Unlike something like EX-ARM which genuinely had awful animation, Exception sets out to have unique animation; it is just up to the eyes of the viewer to judge whether it is ‘awful’ or not.
Exception is available to watch on Netflix.
Anime Solstice 