Season 1 • Episode 4
LatestThe Wired Ghost is crashing the entire system. Some wish to destroy the threat. Some hope to capture and exploit the menace. Tooru knows that he must free the abomination once and for all.
The network covers the whole globe, and the development of the information network reaches its acme. In this age, there are two developed worlds; the "real world" and "wired" — the virtual network world. Souma Tooru belongs to a group of hackers called Steppen Wolf, surfing the network freely. On their last job they attacked the database of the UN forces. During this attack, he loses Nonomura Yuuya, his friend and team leader. Tooru is arrested by the army. In exchange for letting him free, he has to work for an anti-hacker organization, the first squad of the UN Security Force Information Administration Bureau. Working for them, Tooru searches for the person that killed his friend, while the other members also have their own reason to fight. The three-way battles between the terrorist group, the security enterprise, and the army, continue from day to day. And when several seemingly unconnected events occur during these skirmishes, it becomes quite clear that something big is afoot.
Direction
Killer action sequences that actually land emotional weight
Sound
That Y2K cyberpunk score hits different
Writing
Visual novel source material = choice-based trauma mechanics
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Baldr Force EXE arrived at peak 'visual novel adaptation fever'—Japanese PC games getting OVA treatments was practically an industry. The source material had multiple routes; the anime brutally mashed them into one tragic timeline.
JP
