What do I think? I think it could have used a bigger animation budget and could have been cut down from 26 to 22 or even 20 episodes.
Animation is kind of low budget. Fantastic Children looks and feels like it was made in the '80s. The color palette should have at least been more vibrant. I mean, sure, you have only so much money for your budget. But if you look at, say, Noir, or Requiem from the Darkness, they managed to have some interesting animation without spending a ton of money on it. What if everything looked like the paintings in the ED? OK, maybe that's impractical, but it's still possible to look interesting on a budget.
There is way too much time spent on shots of people just standing around, or extended close-ups of people looking surprised. There are a few things where a situation is first explained, then shown. It would have been better if it had just been shown. And, in general, the pacing is just a bit too slow for me. It's not that I don't appreciate Mushishi or Kino's, but that's not the style of this series. You can almost but not quite just skip a couple of the early episodes. Just don't watch eps 1-10 when you feel like watching something where lots of stuff is happening.
There are a few pretty silly things. The guys with hats, for example. It's also a bit disappointing how not all of the characters that a lot of time is spent with get to actually do much.
Voice acting is good. (The characters get intense towards the end, which is tough to do.) Some of the music, like in the last parts of ep 18, is alright too. (Yes I like the ep 18 Russian version of the ED better. So sue me.) The ED is mizu no madoromi, sung by Origa, by the way. But why oh why did they have to have some of the characters try to sing?
So is it worth watching? Does the ending deliver? Overall I'd give it a 7, which means worth watching but not worth buying, and I'd say it's better than or but worse than or . The drama and action pick up continuously towards the end, so the second half is better than the first. If you haven't seen, say, Gankutsuou, I'd suggest watching that before this, but Fantastic Children isn't *bad* and I don't regret watching it. The characters aren't cardboard cutouts, and there's not anything else like that to make me *dislike* it. There are just better series out there. I guess I'd suggest watching it if you like puzzle series and Final Fantasy. Especially Final Fantasy. I'd say it reminds me most of El Hazard the Magnificent World, minus comedy and with somewhat better characters and somewhat slower paced and a bit less coherent and most importantly minus the awesomeness of cat-based armor technology.
Well, I hope this review can help someone decide whether to watch Fantastic Children, but I somewhat doubt it.
