©うめざわしゅん・講談社／「ダーウィン事変」製作委員会

The Darwin Incident, hereafter referred to as The Darwincident, like its humanzee hero’s heritage, is a series of disparate elements spliced together. It’s running allegorical sociological observations of a distinctly American approach, while also playing at being a straight-up thriller to provide punctuating action, while also using theoretical sci-fi suppositions to support its explorations. It’s dense, but it’s also blunt, and as of these first three episodes, just as clumsy as it is ambitious.

The axis this all teeters around on, and the first component of The Darwincident I need to critically address is, of course, Charlie himself. He’s the jumping-off point for the thought experiment around which this story constructs its conflicts. To that end I think it’s pertinent how so much of said conflicts happen around Charlie. The Humanzee himself has his heterosis-induced super-logic leave him to regard people and events with dry, detached interest and evaluation. He responds to IRL reply guys springing whataboutist rhetoric on him with sharply ironic counter-questions and admissions of self-preservational pragmatism. He regards his own chimpanzee birth mother with bored indifference via the reasoning that she’s a low-intelligence animal who has no attachment to him.

Maybe The Darwincident is going somewhere with that. Right now, Charlie is written almost entirely as the avatar of an author winning arguments in the shower, and as a character, I can’t imagine that’s his endpoint if he’s to develop, personality-wise. And as much as it makes him an observational mouthpiece, I can actually see how this attitude would have been informed by Charlie’s journey thus far. Anybody raised as a cultural sideshow and then isolated to just their parents in a small town would wind up with behavioral issues. That’s to say nothing of whatever the truth of the incident with the cops and the pool when he was five reveals about Charlie when the story gets to that. We’re just lucky that Charlie never got addicted to Posting. The humanzee finding his place in the world is, ostensibly, a key component of this story, and it’d be nice if the writing takes him somewhere on that journey, apart from being a wry Reddit response.

But of course, The Darwincident is not a character-based story; it is an idea-based story, and it sure thinks it has some big ideas. But are they articulated as competently as Charlie’s pithy commentary? It’s a show where vegan terrorists wear Guy Fawkes masks and are presented as oafish fanatics. As a portrayal of animal-rights groups, it practically reads as satire more than earnest commentary. Part of that is the fantastical setting undercutting it: humanzees don’t exist in the real world to throw the balance of human/animal exploitation relations into sharper question, and vegans aren’t actually the ill-regarded, oppressed, quasi-religious group engaging in ongoing terrorism that has defined the world of this story. As an attempt to say something pointed about animal rights groups, it’s laughable.

But of course, the vegans in The Darwincident aren’t really vegans, are they? They’re an allegory, a stand-in for out-groups regarded with suspicion and oppressed accordingly. Disregard that this anime is plainly set in the United States, and we still have enough avenues of actual bigotry that could be portrayed and examined. The use of a humanzee and veganism lets The Darwincident perform its sociological scans uncoupled from any real-world timelines. The vegan terrorists can demonstrate the dangers of fanaticism in their murderous methods of violently forcing their beliefs on others, as opposed to the "peaceful" vegans like Charlie and his parents, who are happy to live and let live. Never mind that actual, real-world oppressed groups have their own methodologies and reasons for resistance—this show forfeited all claim to nuance about its own allegory the second it slapped "ANIMAL LIVES MATTER" on a graphic in its opening.

I gotta get my griping about the mixed metaphors of The Darwincident’s vegan stand-ins out of the way early (though I’ll absolutely reiterate it if and when it becomes further strained) because the series does actually have a couple of handles on how to use this outlet of storytelling, after all. Charlie forcibly being seen as a "representative" of a dangerous group despite technically having nothing to do with them is a phenomenon anyone marginalized can relate to—and it doesn’t feel like an exploitative allegory here, but an understanding portrayal. It’s a place where the show being built on hot takes feels like it actually fits.

And in terms of hot takes, I appreciate Charlie’s dad, Gilbert, candidly replying, in the third episode, on how he felt Lucy should consider converting to veganism. It’d be easy for the writing to promote choice and compromise, but Gilbert’s arguments feel like they could come from someone actually engaging with this lifestyle, and they actually work as articulations for the principled belief systems this story is portraying: trying to do better morally, even incrementally, is a net good overall. People will never be unilaterally perfect, but striving for some measure of virtuous improvement is at least worth attempting. It’s a salient way to think about how we, in the real world without humanzees, can go about making choices that might benefit others. It’s a really appreciable cut-in, right after Charlie’s mom tries to shoot for a safe response that they’re not activists or anything, heavens no! It demonstrates that The Darwincident might actually have a chance at evolving in its messaging as it continues.

Becoming more measured in that element can only do good. Philosophically farty as it can often be, the show’s more straightforward thriller angle is actually propelling it well enough. The mysteries behind Charlie’s chimpanzee birth mother and the disappeared scientist who led to his creation, the truth of what happened ten years ago, the ALA’s plot to abduct Charlie, and how they’d use him to further their goals—these are basic building blocks of this kind of story, and they’re being paced out effectively in-between all the allegorical philosophizing. The direction and animation are workmanlike, not quite capturing the askew detail of Shun Umezawa’s manga art. But it animates important elements like Charlie’s brutally efficient fast fighting style effectively, and I enjoy seeing little details like how he kicks off his shoes whenever it’s go time. The "horrific scene" of young Charlie having taken out all the cops in the flashback was the main bit that the art undersold for me so far, bloodless as it is, but that’s minor, all things considered.

I can’t give the same compliments of functionality to Amazon’s English dub for The Darwincident, unfortunately. Being set in the US, this is one of those anime that would have greatly benefited from a naturalistic dub, but this is the furthest from naturalistic as can be. Characters speak in stilted sentence fragments with odd reads or pronunciations here and there. Kate Domenech as Lucy is the only one who really sounds at home in her role, not being enough to carry an effort that might have elevated this show. So I’ll be sticking with the Japanese version of The Darwincident, for the most part.

For all my near-eyeroll experiences with parts of it thus far, I am interested to stick with The Darwincident. This is one of those series where I don’t know that I’d be motivated entirely to watch it for myself, but the act of evaluating and discussing what it does week to week should prove compelling. I’m curious about where it might end up going, what else it might try to say before its run is up (the source manga is still ongoing, apparently). Granted, that curiosity is based on the possibility that it might miss grabbing a branch on its leap and faceplant onto the ground, but that too would be interesting to see.

That theme song is a bop that is 200% stuck in my head, though, I will give it that.

**Rating: **

• The Darwin Incident is currently streaming on Prime Video.*

*Chris’s favorite ape is probably Optimus Primal. He can be found posting about anime, transforming robots, and the occasional hopefully more salient political commentary over on his BlueSky. *