Truthseeker Serena

A 26-episode 0093 detective anime with heist, conspiracy, and battle anime elements. The story follows detective Serena Alcione as she pursues mysteries regarding a government conspiracy, a strange child, and her own history. Her rivalry-turned-alliance-turned-heavily-implied-romantic-partnership with fellow cyborg Cecilia Ceyx serves as the emotional core of the second half of the show.

Truthseeker Serena earned both criticism and plaudits for its second half, which springboards off of then-current concerns about personal agency and the growth of augmentation technology. Arguments over whether the show's writing is affirming to enhanced humans, Coordinators, and other groups spring up in the fandom with some regularity. As the show introduces the possibility of electronic compromise of a cyborg's brain in later episodes, the fandom is also sharply split on Cecilia's agency and at what points in the show she can be said to be making her own decisions.

Different translations also shift the meaning of Serena's climactic plea to Cecilia. While the Japanese and French dubs -- and the Arabic subtitled version -- have fairly overt romantic subtext, the other AEU subs split the difference, and both the Chinese subtitled and Britannian English dubbed versions of the show heavily downplay the romantic angle, framing the relationship as more sisterly.

Despite -- or perhaps because of -- airing during a tumultuous time in the Universal Century, it has a somewhat diehard cult following and a currently-running stage adaptation. While critics cite a lot of lazy, tropey writing in the worldbuilding and some unanswered questions in the ending, fans generally find the emotional core of the show to be worth the price of admission...

... though there's a recurrent argument that the last four episodes could have been two, due to the sudden increase in battle anime elements and elevated presence of secondary cast members.