What’s it about? In this alternate early-1900s history where steam power runs the world, young tinkerer Kihachi mourns his missing older brother, whose dream of bringing about “the age of electricity” seems more distant than ever. A chance meeting leads Kihachi to Inako, a girl whose family seem to have ties to both his brother and a book called the Electrical Catalog. With this book, Kihachi could revolutionize electrical energy—if he can keep the steam industry from getting their hands on it first.
Sparks of Tomorrow certainly has a passionate and creative team behind it. From smudged, pastel-like backgrounds to bursts of smeary movement to paper-cutout audiences, this premiere isn’t afraid to play with style and form.
I always want to encourage experimentation in animation… which is why I seriously considered calling in sick for this review, because now I’m stuck having to explain why it left me on the platform as the Hype Train pulled out of the station.
Let’s start here: I didn’t dislike Sparks of Tomorrow. It’s definitely not boring, either visually or narratively. This premiere throws a lot of characters and plot points at us, but it’s easy to follow, and we spend enough time with the main players to get a general sense of who they are.
Kihachi is talented but cynical, unable to give up on his work with electricity even as he laments it’s “nothing but a parlor trick.” Inako is deeply religious, quietly self-hating, and clumsy to the point of caricature, believing fervently in everything and everyone except herself. These two don’t know it yet, but they’re united in both their grief for lost relatives and their lack of faith in their own talents.
It’s, uh… unclear exactly what Inako’s talents are beyond teaching the male protagonist to believe in himself. That said, Inako’s older sister is poised, resourceful, and can judo-flip her jacked fiancé (not gonna lie: I kinda wish the series were about them instead of the kids). In other words, this premiere does feature female characters with agency, so I’m willing to give Sparks the benefit of the doubt that Inako will have a character arc of her own.
Beyond our two leads and Inako’s family, the other main player is Yosuke Mizoe, an evil scion of the steam industry with shimmering eyeshadow, crescent-moon smirks, noodle arms, and pants tight enough to make Nightwing proud. He’s after the Electrical Catalog (presumably so he can prevent electricity from replacing steam power) and will lie, cheat, and force girls to marry him to get it.
Yosuke’s appropriately menacing, and I’m never gonna be mad when the obvious villain is a nepo-baby of an environment-destroying energy corporation who treats women like pawns. But he does kinda feel like he wandered in from a different, sillier show—or at least like he’s part of one of the several shows cobbled together to comprise this premiere.
Which, alas, brings us to the part where the Hype Train leaves the station without me on it, because boy howdy is this premiere a hodgepodge of tones and styles, and I think its uncertain identity stems largely from adaptation choices.
Sparks of Tomorrow‘s art and animation are undeniably lavish and fluid and imaginative, but it lacks cohesion or unified purpose. The character designs use a very glossy, mainstream anime style, which doesn’t quite mesh with the more abstract and grungy pastel backgrounds. Most of the animation is fairly grounded and naturalistic, which clashes against the sporadic bursts of cartoonish expressions or stretched limbs and smearing motions. Kihachi’s religious-like revelations about electricity are the most elegantly integrated (both artistically and thematically), but even they struggle to blend the mixed media into a seamless whole.
This premiere stitches a lot of styles together without a clear sense of why the styles change when they do, leading to a production that, at times, seems to function separately from the narrative. It dazzles the eye at the expense of the story rather than in service of it.
The end result is that I was interested in Sparks but never invested. I couldn’t sink into the world, couldn’t think of the characters as people with problems I should care about, because I was forever being reminded that I was watching a show. The artifice calls too much attention to itself. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the creative team was looking at me just off-screen, expectantly awaiting praise. “Well? Did you like that? Didn’t it look nice?”
I mean, yeah. You’re KyoAni. Of course it looked nice. But what purpose is it serving thematically or tonally beyond that?
Mind you, that doesn’t mean I’m not dropping the series yet. I’m curious to see if it finds visual cohesion as it goes, or if the lack of cohesion is intentional and ends up serving the story in the long run. Like I said at the top, I want to encourage experimentation, even if it’s not wholly successful. More shows like Sparks of Tomorrow ought to exist. I just wish it existed a bit more gracefully, is all.
But hey, good news, dear readers: Based on the glowing praise being heaped on this premiere by others, there’s a decent chance Netflix uploaded a different version to my account on purpose, as a joke, and none of the issues I had with it will be a problem for anyone else. So don’t let this review discourage you from trying out a shiny new alt-history series. Who knows? You may be hopping on the Hype Train too.
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