The Reflection

The Reflection is doomed to be a love-hate series. If you want a typical anime, or are a fan of superhero franchises, then you're probably going to loathe this. If you like artsy animated films and fun shows that capture the pure joy of cartoons, then you'll find a lot to like.

I fall into the latter category but fully recognize the flaws of this show: the story and the characters are not particularly interesting or consistent. The heroes and villains are generic and don't have much in the way of backstories. The story doesn't get explained in detail and lacks a definitive ending or beginning. ... Don't watch this if you require a standard narrative-driven tale.

Where The Reflection really shines is the art and sound: it's visually distinctive with its own unique language, the limited palette and dark atmosphere work really well to capture a classic comic book vibe and allow for some unique action scenes that capture motion and energy brilliantly, and there's a surprising amount of real-world USA (more than just famous landmarks) hidden in plain sight if you keep your eyes open. The use of sound is my favorite thing about The Reflection, where insert songs and sound are kept in the foreground, and are just as important to telling the story as the spoken dialogue.

"The magic of moving pictures" is something that we take for granted, especially as anime fans. If you're conscious of how ridiculously cool it is that a series of flickering pictures can trick our brains into thinking we're witnessing motion, and thrilled when a progression of musical tones can call up an emotional response, then you're probably a good candidate for watching this show. Projects like The Reflection will never appeal to the overwhelming majority of people, which is why well-done artistic efforts deserve praise when their creators go out on a limb to make them - kudos to Stan Lee and everyone else who made this show, you rock!

Its finally over, the most controversial anime of the year. That being said, its a highly flawed show with some redeeming factors that put it just above average, but its not a must watch or anything.

Story: The pacing is all over the place, sometimes it moves too fast, other times too slow. I still don't understand the villain's plot and the show seems to end with most of the loose ends tied up, but springs a cliffhanger ending so out of nowhere it would give Madoka Magica Rebellion a run for its money on abruptness.

Characters: One of the most redeeming parts of the show. ... X-on, I-guy, Lisa, and Eleanor are all fairly likable with distinct traits but just enough to make them stand out from their counterparts in other mediums. The villains however are pretty generic.

Art: The art looks pretty good in still shots, but looks absolutely awful in animation, some of the worst I've seen in a long time. The fight scenes are a bit better, but lack speed and impact when blows are landed. All the characters lack flow in their movements and feel really stiff. Every once in a while the animation switch flips and the animation is good for a few seconds, but it never lasts. The character designs however are top notch and I would love to seem them brought to life with better animation.

Sound: The voice acting is good, nothing remarkable. and the soundtrack has some memorable tracks, mainly the OP, Sky Show, and the theme of the Reflection event.

Conclusion: The potential this show had was immense. I'm not sure if the problems were because of troubled development or just apathy from DEEN. I want this show to get a second season because buried under the garbage there are some good things about this show. But considering the reception this show got, we probably won't get one. There are some more complaints I have about the show, but those would dive into spoiler territory.

Give the show an episode or two, and if you don't like I can't really blame you.

The Reflection never tries to convince you that it's not a cheap X-Men knockoff, and you won’t forget it either. It constantly copies many of Stan Lee’s stories and superhero cliches. It attempts using a Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic for nostalgia and fails miserably. The visuals are painful on the eyes, despite being released this year you'd have a hard time finding an uglier superhero cartoon released in the past 50 years.

[Story 2/10]
The story follows people who were impacted by the reflection, a world-wide event that caused a fraction of the population to get superpowers. I don't know how else to explain the reflection other ... than it's just a plot convenience to get the ball rolling. People who were affected by the reflection are persecuted by normal society (like X-Men); they struggle against picking which side to fight for, government or the group of reflected people. The main characters live in New York which leads to some nauseating air-borne action scenes in Times Square that could have been really nostalgic in the hands of a more capable studio. Somehow the show feels slow and boring but the story moves far too fast. It suffers from horrible pacing issues. There is practically no rhythm to the sequence of events. Supporting characters pop in and out of the story giving them little time to develop before being tossed aside. After a few wild shifts in the story, I stopped being able to care about what was happening because it all just seemed like a contrivance for the sake of action, which is one of the biggest issues I've seen in superhero movies like The Avengers and the latest X-Men prequel.

The show is heavily plot-driven and that plot is a mess and in no way interesting. I'm sure it's the kind of story that will keep some fans of the genre watching; it's dynamic and each episode ends on a cliffhanger. Believe it or not, but my favorite part of the show was the ending of every episode. Not just because I was glad for it to be over, but the cliffhanger alluded to a more interesting episode (which was never the case). The story is incredibly contrived for the sake of a constantly moving plot, it's also totally predictable from the moment you understand what's the plot is all about, also the twists never feel deserved. Very little is explained about the setting and the show expects you to use prior knowledge of the genre to understand what is happening.

[Character 3/10]
Characters are not the worst part of this show, but that's only because they're just generic and typical superhero caricatures. A true example of the sentiment ”you can't fail if you don't try.”

The four leads that fill the majority of the screentime are Eleanor, Lisa, X-On, and I-Guy. Eleanor is a journalist turned vigilante when she gets her teleporting ability, she has a desire to protect people in danger because she is the hero and has a generic backstory that motivates her to protect others. Lisa is a wheelchair-bound young lady who can transform her chair into a mech, she has a dark backstory about how she lost the ability to use her legs. None of Lisa's characterization comes across as insightful, the most we get for development is that she is a fan of jazz wow! It really is a shame considering how the reflection gave her more mobility but the show fails to comment on this. Lisa's character makes it clear just how much the show missed the opportunity of saying anything meaningful about the reflection, instead, it merely says look at these cool superpowers!

X-On and I-Guy are the more staple heroes, both of them are featured prominently due to how much inspiration they take from Spiderman and Batman respectively. X-On is a good guy who has dubious methods of getting the job done, taking a painful amount of inspiration from heroes like Wolverine and Batman. I-Guy is conflicted between his public image and his secret identity, beyond simply mentioning this characteristic the show doesn't follow through with his arc. The lack of conclusion for any of the character arcs could be due to the lack of a definitive conclusion episode because, like all Stan Lee products, the ending is just a teaser for another season (which will probably never happen).

All four of the leads are duds because of how predictable their dialogue and how bland their backstories are; either their motives appear a bit cloudy or they are as pure as freshly fallen snow, no part of their individual character development matters in any way by the end.
The Eleanor herself isn’t involving in the slightest, but throughout the show, she impacts her adversaries and supporting characters. An example of this potentially solid character writing is when Eleanor confronts the villain Steel Ruler. She talks to her and we find out her dark backstory that, while slightly unoriginal, was very present in her character’s design and personality. She relates to Eleanor because they both were abandoned, and this is even revisited as a prominent theme in a later episode which I thought made for the best writing in the entire show. The only interesting part of the cast is the villains, while they aren't original, some of them have complete arcs which gives you something to root for when trudging through this drek.

[Art 1/10]
The visuals are shockingly bland for a superhero show. Sometimes for minutes at a time you have only 3 colors to look at with very little detail. There were more than a few times I could hardly understand what I was actually looking at onscreen.
At its worst, it's painful on the eyes. It feels like someone removed every other frame from the animations in post-production leaving the action janky and nauseating. The only reprieve I got from the awful action was the CGI, which was by no means good, it's ugly as hell but at least it didn't make my headache. The Reflection may not have had jankiness issues if the episodes were 50% faster at only 10 minutes long instead of 22, but alas it seems as though the director had very little understanding of the woes he ensued upon this show before releasing it (I doubt he even watched it). There were many shots (sometimes entire scenes) where the characters had no faces at all. The artists didn't draw on any details, only the outlines like a first draft of the storyboards. This was probably due to a strained production budget and poor time management.

I think that Studio Deen was aiming for a comic book aesthetic, but due to a clearly strained budget, the result was lackluster at best.
Some of the superpowers are well conveyed like Eleanor's teleporting because it isn’t affected by the lack of frames and Lisa's mech thing which is CGI and is animated separately to everything else. I'm not sure if it's worth mentioning but the opening is incredibly simple, it’s just a few colors devoid of any detail. It’s the blandest OP I've seen all year.

[Sound 5/10]
As for a musical score, if you’ve seen a Marvel movie you may expect a generic soundtrack from this, but The Reflection has a surprisingly solid soundtrack. The most memorable song is Skyshow, that plays whenever the flying hero I-Guy is onscreen, is fantastic.
Unfortunately, they always use an obnoxious echo effect making it hard to appreciate the song. Skyshow is a good song and I think it’s worth listening to separate to this disaster. The show butchers the song by playing it over and over until it loses any magic its singer gave to it. Just another frustratingly bad decision in this production. The only good choice they made was casting Stan Lee in the English dub. He plays a villain, but sadly the script is so flat that it doesn't do him justice. All of the voice acting is rather flat too. On top of that, the sound quality is pretty awful. I don't know if it was just a bad script or if the actors didn't get enough direction, but the end result of the dub is downright painful on the ears. It is disappointing considering Stan Lee is the show’s main selling point.

As a side note, the show flips to Japan from time to time to follow an idol group by the name of Ninth Wonder, they don't really add anything other than the ending song. Their presence in the show is a blatant advertisement for the group 9nine. They performed the song in the ending credits which is, in my opinion, pretty decent J-POP.

[Enjoyment 2/10]
There were times when I felt moderate endearment to the characters and their turmoil, but the myriad of issues that plague this show got in the way far too often and prevented me from rooting for them. Idiotic characters contrasted with a serious and overwrought tone makes me believe that no one in the production of The Reflection cared about the outcome, no matter how embarrassingly awful it would be. Watching the cast struggle to overcome adversity wasn't engaging in the slightest, because of how half-hearted the effort to connect them to a poignant theme was.

Xenophobia is a prominent theme in just about every piece of superhero media, therefore it’s The Reflection. It’s not executed with any delicacy, instead, it’s slopped onto the script for the purpose of evoking modern day prejudices; it in no way comments on its themes, it just reminds us they exist.

[Final Score 3/10]
Dead on arrival, done to death, and in no way original, The Reflection is a low point in Stan Lee’s career that is best left forgotten.
Its only reason for existing seems to be to callback to Saturday morning superhero cartoons, with a bit of a Japanese twist. If you've experienced any form of superhero media before then watching this will cause your eyes to roll right out of their sockets because The Reflection has nothing new to offer whatsoever.