Posted in: Review, TV | Tagged: Ingress, Ingress Season 1 Episode 1, netflix, Niantic

[Review] Ingress Episode 1 "Begin – Danger – Message" is a Decent Though Imperfect Pilot

Nettflix's Ingress takes inspiration from Niantic's AR mobile game of the same name, but you wouldn't quite know that from the first episode. The show starts off with a bit of narration that tells us the basic premise: there's an energy called XM that affects some humans and gives them special abilities, and can even alter the human mind, and two different factions are fighting over how to utilize it – the Enlightened and the Rebels. The Enlightened wish to use XM to the betterment of mankind, while the Rebels want to suppress it, until they know how it works.

From there, the show quickly changes gears as we watch a researcher, Sarah Coppola, try to leak information on a danger to the world. That danger is related to XM, but we don't exactly learn what it is, as Sarah is quickly involved in a high-stakes chase through the Hulong laboratory she works in. Sarah gets cornered by lab security and the series' primary antagonist, and her "co-conspirator" is brought in. Sarah doesn't recognize him, but he knows her, and he arranges for her to escape by blowing up the lab with a cryptic line about how creation comes from destruction.

The show then switches gears and we meet Makoto, the everyman who becomes the show's protagonist. Makoto is a psychic detective who can experience someone's memories by touching an object, and he's been hired by the police to consult on the lab explosion. Makoto and the detective who contracted him are quickly kicked off the case by the corporation that owns the lab. Makoto goes home, we get to witness his abilities in action along with a nice flashback to all the ways his abilities isolated him as a child. After showing us his power, Makoto starts looking into the explostion, which is being ruled as a "gas leak."

The first episode does a great job of throwing us straight into action, which is the series' best trait. Unlike many other anime (and Netflix Original Anime in particular) we don't get stuck with lengthy exposition throughout the first episode. We're introduced to the show's stakes immediately, are thrown into the action without many answers which immediately creates intrigue. We want to know why Sarah is leaking information on the company she works for. We want to know what XM is and how it works. And we want to see Makoto find acceptance.

It's not a perfect pilot, as we don't get a full setup of the anime's plot in Ingress Episode 1, we do get a damn good start to the show. The CG animation is slick and doesn't look too much like a video game, the use of the Ingress app feels natural in-world, and the plot gets off to an immediate start. The wonky voice over at the beginning explaining what XM is, is perhaps the worst point of the episode, but that's pretty alright.

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