3 Episode Rule – Null & Peta

I believe that a sign of skill when it comes to writing is being able to convey a message in less time than it’d take other content creators. It’s an approach I wish I could apply to my own writings, but I just love to waffle on and on. Null & Peta is another short form anime series, like Days of Urashimasakatasen, which I’ve already spoken about.

While both shows are very limited in their run time, Null & Peta infinitely more in the narrow span of time than the other show did. We’re given a character who is interesting, has some complexity to her and obviously has something to learn and grow from right away.

As opposed to the other show in which stuff just happens. Through a lot of flashes and implied exposition, we’re introduced to Null; a genius girl in the process of building herself a new sister. Her old sister; Petra, isn’t around anymore. And while it’s never overtly said, it’s implied that there was some tragedy to het fate.

The replacement sister, an anime Baymax looking marshmallow of a robot called Peta, starts immediately doting on Null in a way that seems overbearing, with fantastically over the top results. On it’s surface, the show is a very pretty looking series of goofs and mundane situations escalating to extremes.

But already, I’m already seeing this as a story about a girl who struggles in connecting to her peers. Something about her, in Null’s case her intellect, ostracises her from her peers. With her sister being the only one to understand her, she built Peta to replace her, because she is unable to connect with normal people her own age.

It’s a bittersweet story of a lonely girl playing make believe to feel a connection to someone she lost.

I’m reading all of this through subtext. The show itself mostly has a big robot turning into a Mecha and emerging from the destructive flames like the T-1000. The fact that this show can look like a Professor Layton, with a watercolour style, and then turn into an action shonen the next second. Despite it’s short run time, the animation team pulled out the stops in making all those minutes count.

Verdict: I’m probably going to wait till the end of the season and binge the whole thing

I like this show, it does a lot in it’s brief time, and manages to create a main character with some depth and problems to work out, all through subtext. It’s the kind of show that can be different things to different audience members depending on what they bring into it. However, it being as short as it is, I think I’ll end up watching the whole thing in one big chunk when there are more episodes to see.