Manga / Dimension W

It's 20 Minutes into the Future, and Nikola Tesla's vision of free energy has been realized with the discovery of Dimension W, where untold amounts of energy are waiting to be harnessed. This energy can now be directly drawn out using small devices known as "coils". However, while the coil usage is controlled by the New Tesla Company, the economic titan behind the new world order, illegal coils have become the new hotcakes of the underworld. These coils not only can deliver a much higher output, but they're also untraceable.

Mabuchi Kyoma, a man who lives in a rundown gas station and has a passion for 'vintage' gas-powered cars, knows from personal experience the danger the coils can bring, and as such, hates them with a passion. He is also a Collector - a repo man of sorts, who hunts down illegal coils for money (and gasoline).

One day, he goes out on one of his usual missions. When he gets to his target's hideout, however, there is another stranger there: a mysterious, cloaked captive that appears to be a young lady. After dealing with the thugs, he finds out that the girl - calling herself Mira - is actually a highly-advanced robot. Not soon after, her "father" is found out by the New Tesla Company. He is Dr. Yurizaki, the genius behind this new world, who went into hiding after the company apparently murdered his family in a bid to get to his newest inventions. Pushed over the edge and now, against the wall, Yurizaki activates a device that fries every coil in the vicinity, including Mira's, and then implodes, killing him in the process.

After Kyoma brings the offline Mira to his employer, the large-sized woman Mary, in hopes of selling her off for some parts. When they insert a new coil into her and reactivate her, the android gets on her knees and asks to let her help them collect illegal coils. Mary is happy to oblige her request, partnering her with Kyoma... much to his protests. And so, begins a unlikely partnership between a man stuck in the past hating the coils, and an emotional robot girl representing the pinnacle of coil technology.

Dimension W is an Science Fiction manga series created by Yuji Iwahara, most known as the creator of Cat Paradise and King of Thorn, as well as the main character designer for Darker than Black series. It was serialized from 2011 to 2019 (starting out in Young Gangan before moving to Monthly Big Gangan in 2015), and compiled into 16 volumes. An Animated Adaptation produced by Studio 3Hz and Studio Orange and licensed by Funimation (who in a first for the company, were part of the anime's production committee) aired in early 2016, and adapted the first seventy-five chapters of the series (the part that was serialized in Young Gangan magazine).

The anime aired with an English dub on [adult swim]'s Toonami block in 2016. The series is the second anime to run on Toonami while it was still airing in Japan, the first being Space☆Dandy.

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This series provides examples of:

• Acrofatic: Harry Eastriver.
• Adapted Out: Several side characters were cut out of the anime adaptation to streamline the dialogue, as well as fit 75 chapters worth of material into a 12-Episode Anime. While some are incidental to the plot, one particular removal might create an Adaptation Induced Plothole if future material gets animated: specifically the Illuminati cult-like conspiracy within New Tesla Inc., which includes the scarred man who killed Dr. Yurizaki's wife and daughter.
• All There in the Stinger: The Yasogami Lake arc ends with one plot thread still dangling: namely, who put the Dimension W-infused lake water in Shijuro's water dispenser in the first place, leading to his death. Mira even lampshades it, to which Kyoma responds that that's the police's concern, not theirs. The Stinger reveals that it was Kiyomi, the maid, as revenge for her father having died in the incident there twenty years ago. In the manga, it turns out that her dad was the night watchman in charge of the local dam, and that Shijuro killed him in order to intentionally flood the town as a way of covering up the fact that Enamori had killed a journalist who'd tried to rape her.
• Alternate Dimension: When Numbers go out of control, they create cracks in Dimension W. Each crack makes a copy of reality. These copies may be based on an alternate version of reality, where different choices were made. However, these copies usually collapse soon after they are made. They require an anchor in the real world to keep them going.
  • Shiro Kamiki, AKA Shijuro Sakaki, created a copy of reality in Dimension W where he managed to save his companions from the dam flooding. In reality, he had abandoned them in order to save Enamori. The Dimension W copy was able to persist for 21 years because the Numbers coil was still active.
• Amplifier Artifact: Coils are a combination of this and Power Source. The first episode demonstrates this early one wherein an illegal (and thus more powerful) coil is plugged into a plastic water pistol. The former children's toy is able to destroy a water fountain with a single spray.
• Animated Armor: The museum Loser is breaking into uses robotic versions of these as a discreet security system.
• Anti-Magic: Due to the Coil research facility accident, Coils don't work in Easter Island anymore.... Until that suddenly changes.
• Attempted Rape: In a flashback in the Yasogami Lake arc, Enamori is a victim of this by the journalist who was seemingly there to cover the Numbers coil 21 years ago. She gave him a sickle in the eye for that, but her brother's attempts to cover up the self-defense led to everything going straight to hell for everyone there.
• Awesome by Analysis: It's a requisite skill for Collectors
• Ax-Crazy: The spirits of the Yasogami Lake protestors. 21 years in Dimension W doesn't make for a healthy mental state.
• Badass Normal: Mabuchi Kyouma, who is able to fight on equal ground to cyborgs, robotic servants, and other Coil enhanced entities with just training and throwing needles.
• Bad Liar: Mira is really bad at hiding the fact she's a robot.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Loser and Kyouma, when the museum security system is unable to discern which was the thief and which was the bounty hunter chasing him.
• Berserk Button: You do not mess with Kyouma’s vintage cars
  Koorogi: When it comes to his cars, the guy is totally merciless.
• Body Horror: Illegal coils are able to produce much more energy than the usual one due to lacking safeguards. If an illegal coil malfunctions and Dimension W energies slip into our world... well, let's just say that you'll be lucky if you die instantly.
  • For a less eldritch example, what is under Loser's mask.
  • For a more extreme example, near the end of the anime, there's Loser's/Julian's wife Sophie having been turned into a giant Eldritch Abomination whose only functioning body parts are her severed hands and pulsing heart in a jar.
• Bowdlerise: After Lasithi warns Cassidy to stay still to avoid a hostile energy ball on Eastern Island because it only goes after (virile) men, Cassidy asks whether the energy ball is gay, while in the dub, she just agrees with Lasithi.
• Big Eater: The Eastriver brothers: Harry and Debbie.
• Big Beautiful Man: Harry Eastriver.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Debbie Eastriver and before her Mary.
• Bratty Half Pints: Shota, Shiora, Jin and Hamu, a group of elementary school students that like to bug Kyoma. They frequently sneak away from school to explore Kyoma's garage and the abandoned, gasoline-powered cars nearby. Kyoma has to chase them out regularly, not that that stops them.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Kyoma initially seems like a specific case of this as a "Beast of Grendel", but it turns out he had unnaturally high physical capabilities naturally as a mere college student already. It's to the point that when his arm was tightly held behind his back with his face to the ground, he pushed himself up despite his assailant being larger than he was and fracturing the bones in his arm and doesn't even seem to acknowledge it beyond minor strain.
  • And the man that hired Kyoma to Grendel, being the same one holding him down in the above example, notes that he was specifically looking for people like Kyoma. Which means there's more people in this world who can do feats like this without coils or cybernetics whatsoever.
• Cool Car: Kyoma's vintage car, a Toyota 2000GT. In the anime, this is traded for a Lexus LFA, arguably an equal icon in that respect.
• Cyberpunk: Specifically Post Cyber Punk, oozing with it.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Both the leads.
  • Kyouma was a member of an anti-coil military unit, Grendel. His entire unit barring him and one other was wiped out after what might have been a Numbers coil destabilized and brought forth Dimension W into that area. Considering that illegal coils are far less powerful than Numbers, it was much more destructive than what the curator caused. It's later revealed that, he joined the unit so that Dr. Yurizawa could create a prosthetic body for his dying girlfriend unfortunately she died during the operation after the coil malfunctioned.
  • Mira was "born" on the same day that her maker and her daughter were killed by New Tesla, and spent the subsequent two years on the run with Dr Yurizawa, the husband of said murdered maker, as he wasted away from some unknown disease.
  • Loser has one as well. After taking over the Adrastea project on Easter Island, Haruka Seameyer took all of the scientists who had helped him with his coup and started using them as guinea pigs in a lethal series of attempts to perfect teleportation of living things. Loser was the last one, and while he survived the teleportation, it cost him his limbs, his skin, and the lives of all his co-workers, including his wife.
• Dead Person Impersonation: The real Marisa died in a car accident a while back. The "Marisa" seen in the present is actually Haruna Enamori, Shiro's amnesiac childhood friend.
• Disease Bleach: Marisa, or an amnesiac Enamori, originally had black hair. It turned permanently gray after nearly drowning and suffering from dreams of her now Ax-Crazy classmates.
• Eldritch Location: From what little we see of the titular Dimension W, it does not play nice with Earth geometries, or anyone who gets caught up in it.
  • Judging by the state of the Yasogami Lake protesters after spending 21 years in Dimension W, it's not a fun place.
• Explosive Overclocking: The real danger of illegal coils.
• Fast Tunnelling: Debbie Eastriver,thanks to her oversized coil-powered gloves.
• Flawed Prototype: The Numbers. They're much more powerful than regular coils, but are very unstable. When they go out of control, the effects are catastrophic.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: A heroic example Jony and Every Won agreed to work for Drake Horton as not only would it give them power but allow them to get revenge on Kyouma for arresting them. However when he came to rescue Mira he didn’t even remember who they were as he plowed through them.
• Gentleman Thief: Loser, a masked thief who sends warnings to his targets before he strikes. He's called that, because while he always manages to slip by the security, he never managed to steal anything. Nothing that his victims would talk about in broad daylight, at least.
• Great Offscreen War: The Coil War where Kyoma fought as a special forces soldier on Easter Island, the site of an important New Tesla Energy research facility which suffered a severe accident.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Loser's assistant uses robotic pigeons in order to hijack network broadcasts and replace them with Loser's show.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Loser. This is intentional, as he broadcasts his heists live.
• Cyborg: In the manga, Mary mentions that replacing more than 60% of the body with cybernetic parts is illegal. Full cyborgs (people that have replaced everything except for their brain with artificial parts) are exceedingly difficult to make. It's easier to just make a robot from scratch.
• Law Enforcement, Inc.: The DAB, which works directly for New Tesla.
• Large and in Charge: Mary is the head honcho of the Collectors around Tower 47. Even Jerkass Kyoma and New Tesla Company agents defer to her authority.
• McGuffin: The Numbers coils. Back before the towers were built around the world, the Numbers were created as prototype coils. They were distributed to various research groups, who used them to test energy transfer from Dimension W to reality. The Numbers were very powerful and produced a lot of energy, but were very unstable. As a result, the Numbers were replaced by more stable, less powerful coils. Not many people are still aware of the Numbers, but those that know of them want them. Badly.
• MegaCorp: New Tesla Energy has a monopoly on energy production around the world. They are also the biggest supplier of coils, which most electronics require to function. Despite their contributions to mankind, they hiding more than a few skeletons in their closet.
• Mugged for Disguise: Leide kidnaps Marisa (actually Enamori) by dressing as her maid, Kiyomi. The police later find the real Kiyomi Bound and Gagged in her underwear in the hotel's wine cellar.
• No-Sell: During the Yasogami Lake arc, Kyouma gets angry at Mira for what he perceives as her incompetence (she was actually temporarily sucked into an Alternate Universe), and he punches her in the face. Because she's a robot (and therefore made of metal), Kyouma ends up bruising his hand while Mira doesn't even flinch.
• Origins Episode: Chapter 78 of the manga was this for Elizabeth, and how she first met Julian/Loser.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: The studio adapted 9 volumes of material in a single season. Needless to say, so far whole arcs, and more than a few side characters, were dropped from the adaptation.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: If not for her robotic attachments, Mira could totally pass up as a normal girl.
  • Mary's robot servant, Four, also looks just like a human teen.
  • Human-like robots are not uncommon, especially amongst the rich. The law requires that human-like robots have an obviously robotic feature on their head that allows for easy identification.
• Robotic Reveal: Lwai is a cyborg, having been converted by Salva to save his life after an accident that would have otherwise killed him. Additionally, the "Lwai" accompanying Salva and the Collectors to Easter Island is one of several robotic duplicate bodies that the real Lwai remotely controls from the safety of his home country.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Both Loser and Kyouma pull this when the museum curator messes with the damaged illegal coils. The following blowout is pure Nightmare Fuel.
• Shout-Out:
  • May be unintentional, but Loser has an uncanny resemblance to Izanagi.
  • The chief executive of New Tesla is more or less Steve Jobs as he looked during the late 2000s.
• The Stoic: Kyoma, who rarely emotes beyond surprise or general annoyance.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Enamori lost her memories after nearly being raped and suffering a serious head injury during the lead up to the flood.
• Tragic Mistake: The truth behind the incident at Yasogami Lake. A power company sent adults to distrupt the coil experiment Shiro and his friends were working on, and Enamori killed one of the saboteurs after he tried to rape her. To cover up the man's death, Shiro decided to flood the town, tasking Enamori with evacuating the bystanders. However, Enamori fell and was knocked unconscious before she could reach their friends, which resulted in them drowning and Shiro mistakenly believing she had died as well.
• Underestimating Badassery: Loser is called such because he never successfully steals his stated target. He never gets caught either. And that first bit is just what he wants you to think.
• Worthy Opponent: Loser to Kyouma.

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