It hands you a subway ride into Wonderland and then quietly turns into the darkest thing Gonzo made that year. Ai and Yu are looking for their parents, sure, but the show belongs to Kaze, the silent gunman who loads three soils into the Magun and calls a Summon Creature with the same ritual every time, and to Makenshi, the white swordsman whose mist and whose grief make him the best-written person in the Inner World. Lisa's kigen arts, Cid and the submarine, Chobi and a moogle who actually earns his kupos, all of it wrapped around the Earl and the Lords of Gaudium doing genuinely cruel things to a children's-adventure premise. Yes, the character art sits awkwardly on top of the CG backdrops, and no, the Final Fantasy name on the box is mostly a marketing lie. Judge it as its own strange thing and the backstories land harder than they have any right to.

Twins Ai and Yu Hayakawa set out to find their parents, the scientists Joe and Marie, who have not come back from a second expedition to another dimension. Years earlier, the couple were pulled into a rift that opened over the Sea of Japan, and on their return they wrote a famous book about what they had seen. After studying their parents' research, the twins wait in the ruins of a disused subway station for a strange train that carries them into the Inner World. On board they meet Lisa Pacifist, who soon decides to help them search. The three begin their journey together, in a TV run that mixes action, adventure, fantasy and science fiction.