Ranked #861

Inazuma Eleven Go: Chrono Stone

Wanna see footballs flying through time?
A school-bus created by goodness-knows-who which can travel through time?
Imagine a world where people play soccer with footballs on fire, with people of all time.

Well, all that happens in this anime!
Try it, for hours of fun-filled time-soccer! You won't regret it!

Irrational (even for Inazuma), stupid (even for Inazuma), and campy (even for Inazuma). It has a needlessly confusing plot that keeps twisting into sideplots like a puppy on cocaine. An inbred puppy. The main plot is confusing enough, involving time travel and parallel timelines. We don't need random missions like going back in time to break Tsurugi's brother's back so the timeline can return. Or when they need to fight to restore the team's love of soccer. Or when they get magically summoned to an island to get help from the soccer god in the middle of an oddly interrupted battle with the enemy. I'm pretty sure there are times when the writers forgot what was going on too because the plot shifts gave me whiplash.

Random sums up this show pretty well. Random characters show up to help with no explanation given (Including a talking teddy bear. Yeah). Random abilities and techniques appear unexplained only to fail. No set up appears needed anymore. When they do set it up it seems half-hearted. There's a new technique called mixi-max which is introduced when the teddy bear lets out a T-Rex and then gives it's power to some dude. Characters simply know things they couldn't possibly know with no explanation given. And the new Avatar Armed just gives them the opportunity to put on silly dresses in overlong animations that don't get shortened even in flashbacks. The battles are short and uninteresting, the characters keep getting switched, the plot is a mess, and the new characters are annoying. But most serious of all its flaws: it just isn't fun.

Now quit it guys. You're making soccer cry.

UPDATE: Having gotten to the final episode I have to say that the series makes a remarkable comeback at around episode 40 to finish with probably the strongest ending of the entire series. This is annoying as I'd like to slag off the entire season. Nonetheless, eleven good episodes out of fifty-one does not a series make, and having to watch through forty episodes of pure irrationality to get there means that I'm sticking with my original rating. Nonetheless, it really makes me wish that they had done a better job with this since knowing where they were leading I can see the potential. read more