The Overwatch anime is a stumbling block in the series’ narrative ambitions

It is very difficult to participate in the Overwatch story these days.

This is saying something, as a person who is regularly mocked by my best friend for rewatching old movies and crying but persevering Genesisthe three-piece Overlook 2 anime short, aroused little excitement in me for the past three weeks. Despite being the first time fans had ever seen a pivotal part of the series’ history play out, it felt disconnected from where the game is today. Years ago, I would have been hyped for an Overwatch anime series – but now that I’ve read through the 18-minute miniseries in hopes of seeing them build on stilted short stories and scattered comedic issues, I once again feel unimpressed.

Animated by Wolf Smoke Studio (who previously did the original Doomfist story), Genesis covers a condensed look at the omnic crisis framed as a world documentary. We see events that are crucial for understanding Overlook 2current story – the war with the God AI Anubis, the formation of the Overwatch organization, Omnis feeling, and possibly an explanation for the Iris – expanded upon from the handful of references we had previously.

The pseudo-documentary is a fairly common format these days, but it doesn’t serve as a compelling method of storytelling here. Fake documentaries, like real ones, all have a story, but the strong documentaries take enough time to capture the emotional arc of the subjects involved. Genesis does neither; it has brought a handful of new characters close to the events in question, and they all largely serve as explanatory.

The “star” (or supposed heart) of Genesis, Aurora, is the first android from the game’s future Earth to gain Singularity-level consciousness. Her creation through Doctor Liao (who also created the hero Echo) is what causes most of the events in the miniseries. Aurora is also the one who finally turns the tide in humanity’s fight against the robot uprising. But the problem here – a side effect of attaching tremendous narrative importance to an already short form auxiliary character – is that we never get enough time to care about Aurora, despite the superficial script telling us that we should because of the tradition.

Aurora’s history begins as an entry in the Symmetra short story “Stone by Stone” of 2020, and is described in more detail in the novel Overwatch 2: stay, which was released last year. For seeing Genesis, i barely remembered who Aurora was; I can’t imagine how strange her appearance will seem to someone completely new Overlook 2. Aurora’s struggle to be the only sentient Omnic (at the time) and trying to grapple with the nature of her existence would make for a great story in its own right, but she’s given almost no inwardness and very little on-screen presence. This makes her resolve to spread her consciousness to all the other Omnics read as a femme character who dutifully sacrifices herself, and it undermines the intended emotional message about cherishing one’s finite life.

I’ve always known that Overwatch borrowed from many other sci-fi series in film, comics, and animation, but mostly The Matrix, given the basis of the Omnic Crisis of a subjugated people gaining consciousness and free will. What I hadn’t counted on was for Genesis loosely swaying from”The Second Renaissance”, part of 2003’s Animatrix anthology; but given Overwatch’s latent racism metaphor with Omnics (which was also partially lifted from X-Men), it’s not surprising. GenesisVisions of Omnic servitude and dehumanization are less blunt than those in “Renaissance” (including one AI is mentioned after a fiction Black characterrobots building a pyramid, and more), but it still makes their “awakening” as sentient beings less uplifting and more depressing, knowing they’re just going to suffer violence and Robot Jim Crow laws. General, Genesis is extremely derivative, and it is all the more weaker.

Image: Wolf Smoke Studio/Blizzard Entertainment

That’s why I’m so confused and disappointed by it Genesis; Overwatch as a narrative object has historically worked best with fast, emotional gut feelings in the midst of an unquestionably schmaltzy dialogue. Of GenesisI was hoping to see the heroes actually interact, something we hardly ever see outside of a some short moments from in-game story sequences. Genesis could have been a solid win told as a straightforward interaction between characters we’ve known and loved as individuals for years.

Seeing such a defining part of Overwatch’s fictional world in this way feels like pulling up floorboards in a house, only to see the cracks spin through the foundation. Genesis carries the weight of seven years of audience expectations, especially with PvE missions finally being added to the game. The miniseries’ lackluster outing is both frustrating and sad, because Genesis feels like a snippet of story development from years ago being updated to not completely leave that part of the story behind. Overwatch, as both a game and a story, it has undergone several public diversions over the past few tumultuous years; I hope that the story, in a cautiously optimistic way, gains a much firmer foothold in the future.