Texhnolyze (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese experimental anime television series animated by Madhouse and directed by Hiroshi Hamasaki. Set in the fictional city of Lux, the story focuses on Ichise, a stoic prize fighter who loses an arm and a leg after offending an unnamed figure. Written by Chiaki J. Konaka, with original character design by Yoshitoshi Abe, the series was produced by Yasuyuki Ueda and was broadcast on Fuji Television and its affiliates from April to September 2003.
Plot
Texhnolyze primarily follows Ichise, an underground fighter who has an arm and leg cut off one night after displeasing an unnamed, presumably influential, man. Ichise is brought back from the brink of death by Eriko "Doc" Kaneda, who replaces Ichise's lost limbs with prosthetic limbs through a process known as "texhnolyzation" enabled by the fictional material raffia, which is mined from underneath Lux and serves as the city's only export and reason to exist. Doc tells Ichise that the limbs are special prototypes she made which contain the DNA of Ichise's dead mother, having incorporated the last bit of her remains into its circuitry.
Through this connection to Doc, Ichise becomes entangled in the dealings between three major factions who battle to control Lux: the Organo, an organized crime syndicate made up of "professionals" who are the closest thing to a government in the city of Lux; the Salvation Union, a populist group that seeks to disrupt the Organo's business; and the Raccan, a collection of young troublemakers with texhnolyzed limbs who use their abilities for personal gain.
Ichise soon meets a mysterious young girl, Ran, a seer from the nearby village of Gabe who has the power to see possible futures. He also crosses paths with the mysterious Yoshi, a traveler "from above" who begins to cause chaos in the city, inciting fights between the existing factions. As the situation in Lux deteriorates, strange new enemies from "the Class", an exclusionary group of elites who live from Lux, begin to appear and convert members of the three factions to their own side. These "Shapes" are revealed to be controlled by Kano, a leader of the Class produced by repeated incestuous mating over generations.
In order to stop Kano's plans to invade the surface world after conquering Lux, Ichise and Doc travel to the surface, as the three factions of Lux unite in order to fight against their common enemy. The two travel through miles of empty idyllic countryside before encountering an administrative center, which they find to be empty save for assortments of stacked furniture and radios endlessly repeating news broadcasts from an undetermined time before. They discover that the inhabitants of the surface have become "theonormals", who have lost all desire to live yet are maintained by the fantastical technology of the surface world. Having resigned themselves to extinction, the theonormals pay no mind to the warnings of Ichise and Doc, instead choosing to wait for their end without a care.
Meanwhile, underground, the Shapes are winning in their battles with the citizens of Lux. The leader of the Salvation Union dies in battle, while the leader of the Raccan drives to the living place of the Class and murders them in cold blood before being shot himself by Kano's assistant. Aboveground, Doc and Ichise wander into an empty movie theater, where they watch a soundless newsreel which explains how centuries before the people of the surface, plagued by terrorism and violence, rounded up the various undesirables of society and sent them underground to live in the city of Lux.
Doc, driven to despair by the discovery that the surface world and the theonormals have no cure or care for their situation, commits suicide in a hotel room. Ichise, meanwhile, wanders through the city and engages theonormals in conversation. The theonormals tell Ichise that death would be a welcome relief for them. Deciding to return to Lux, Ichise comes across the image of his father, who is fading away just like the other theonormals. Ichise apologizes to his father's image for holding him responsible for his mother's death before moving on.