Review by Karl Verhoven

Victor Steiner has hit puberty, but his shy personality means he’s not yet acting on raging hormones. However, a new school year brings new opportunities, and he’s allocated a class seat beside the astonishingly beautiful Patricia Partzlaus and is instantly infatuated. He’s brought back to Earth by his fellow tech geek Gus, who has a creative line in allusions: “It’s like she’s an immortal elf queen in her crystal tower and you’re a smelly orc, cowering in a musty cave”. Despite this, there is a way forward for Victor.

It is set a little into the future, so Bionic has a few advanced technological intrusions, but Koren Shadmi’s far more interested in the coming of age drama. The SF is just a means to an end as Shadmi explores the realities of love and the depth of Victor’s feelings. There’s a weakness here, as Victor’s initial infatuation is based on nothing other than the way Patricia looks. Therefore no change in his feelings when she returns to school after an accident with extensive experimental robotic grafts isn’t entirely credible. She’s rather the cipher before her accident, but an increasingly erratic person thereafter. Is it just what Victor needs to bring him out of his shell, or is he being led down a deadly path?

Although a cartoonist, Chadmi creates broadly realistic environments populated by his cast, who’re slightly exaggerated, yet a stylistic consistency ensures they fit the world. Most importantly, Patricia is persuasively real with her robotic parts, when an unconvincing portrayal could have torpedoed the entire project.

Emotionally, though, Chadmi drops the ball. For a long time Patricia’s character seems too angry, so misjudged and too great a contrast to Victor’s passivity, but there’s a bombshell to be dropped explaining a lot. It’s so extreme that when it arrives there’s a possibility that it’s something Patricia is making up for attention.

This eventually does become the coming of age story that it’s toyed with progressing into all along, but Chadmi spends too long reaching that point. For most of Bionic Victor is never anything other than awed and compliant, not quite two-dimensional, but certainly accepting to an incredible degree when a greater assertiveness would have improved Bionic. So would leading to a resolution stronger than the ending supplied. Bionic has interesting moments, but not enough of them to hold the attention.