Mars Express

Forget Terminator’s T-1000. In this hard-boiled sci-fi anime, the robots aren't the real villains. Or are they?

It's 2200, and private detective Aline is hired to track down a hacker, together with partner Carlos Rivera: an android ‘backup’ for her friend who died five years ago. Their investigation spans Earth and Mars, firefights and heists. At every turn the case peels back a new layer of intrigue, corruption and the human race's uneasy relationship with their robot co-habitants.
 
This first feature from Jérémie Périn stands confidently among the heavyweights of science fiction, drawing equally from Philip K. Dick and anime classics. But while treading familiar ground from the canon, Mars Express is still full of surprises, twists and unforgettable quirks. It asks questions familiar to the genre, but with a freshness that suggests new answers. And those grand enquiries and its lightest touches are handled with equal elegance – thanks to rich, tactile worldbuilding that inspires both wonder and humour, charm and horror: from a mid-surgery software update to a shop display of spare, blinking eyeballs. It might take a second to tell 'augmented' humans from 'organic' robots, 'brain farmers' from 'jailbreakers', but who cares when it's this much fun?
 
– ­Callum McLean