RErideD: Tokigoe no Derrida

When I heard Abe Yoshitoshi (Serial Experiments Lain, Haibane Renmei, Texhnolyze) would take part in this time travelling anime I was excited beyond belief. Maybe the animated medium will have the first mature and actually intelligent time travelling series, I thought. But I surely don't think so anymore. I have been absolutely blown away by how incredibly awful this series is.

*Contains spoilers*

Story:

Nothing makes any sense at all. By this, I don't simply mean the story and characters nor the "mystery" itself but the directing and execution. Plot elements and characters are thrown in the mix at ludicrous tempo. The scenery and scenes change every few ... minutes without any continuity. Every bit of writing is the polar opposite of believable. And ironically, the concept of time and movement is invisible when the series advances from normal work life settings to some sort of murder mystery in a time that takes 5 minutes on screen but is wholly indeterminable inside the anime itself.

Our main dude works in this company where people talk about terminators who have a bug in their system and will take over the world, and time travelling being literally impossible. The very next second we are at this dude house playing some sort of "happy family" where a child age 5 says "time travelling is possible if you believe in yourself", followed by a scene where our main dude and his coworker crash their car twice first in suburbs and then on an empty motorway when this evil organization appears and tries to do evil things, further followed by the heroic sacrifice trope and our main character literally flying inside some forest near the motorway where he walks like 2 seconds before falling through some secret forest passage that teleport him inside this underground time travelling laboratory that he now discovered as the outcome of these epic events....

.....Followed by him once again accidentally falling but this time inside this deep freezing machine that automatically starts up and freezes his body for 10 years and then.... and then. .... You think I am making this shit up? I am not. This is the goddamn story board of this anime. It's so chaotically random and stupid the only way to truly accurately describe it is with a meme: Bravo, Nolan. Oh yeah, and all of this happens while some astral projection of one characters appears on the screen and an alternative time line woman is analyzing obscure reference paintings.... after which we head to some sort of dramatic rescue arc inside post-war terminator world.

This writing is so pathetic that it mainly reminds me of harem series where women literally fall thru the ceiling on main characters dick except those are usually done with humor while this one is completely unaware action anime that tries to be a serious sci-fi drama, and instead of women falling, it's our main dude "falling" wherever the story writer wants him to currently "fall". On top of that, every new episode manages to somehow be even worse than the former. There are 3 letters I have to use here: smh == shaking my head

Characters:

... Are uninteresting to their very core. One of them solely exists in the narrative to create the heroic sacrifice cliche. The boss of the company is some generic money > humans and statistics > risks dude whose idiocy is required to make the story possible. The evil organization dudes could have killed the main dude with their machines guns 700 000 million times before he managed to escape but of course they didn't do that because otherwise the awful story -once again- would have gotten to a dead end. Practically every new character that appears, appears because coincidences, and the role of that character is to work as a plot element to advance the story onward. Every single thing they do suffers from character flaws and logical errors. Example: murderer chasing you, 30s long dialog in car followed by escape. It's not like escaping right now is important or anything because it's clear they won't die no matter how stupid the decisions they make are. Meanwhile murderer person uses a knife at first, after which she pulls out a gun of her own size somewhere. Why not use the gun first? Oh yeah, then she could have actually achieved the thing she was aiming to do.....The real mc is nothing but a puppet controlled by the author and the astral projection girl is essentially an ongoing cliffhanger in the mystery.

Production:

This thing also looks incredibly bad. Being an action anime, one would expect the action heavy scenes to deliver. Instead we get car driving scenes that are like 8 fps. When GAR jesus turns the steering wheel, the landscapes seen thru car windows remain still like in 40's hollywood movies. The physics are awkward and the character design surprisingly generic. The music is highly invisible which makes the action scenes seem even more boring.

Conclusion:

This series says a lot, yet nothing at all. Essentially, if we focus on talking about every single thing this series does wrong, we get a piece of text that is longer than its script, because that's how bad it is.

Super lame stuff. Advanced lame. I can't even recall a single Hollywood chaos movie or blockbuster action that was this pathetic. If you really dig that "unexpected" mystery stuff and "brilliant" reveals, then sure give this one ago, but I ain't buying this bullshit. Also the title RErideD is very deep because the girl has red clothes and the ride is in-between and what is the ride? Well the mc is called Derrida which has the words Red and Rida in it. Heh, so wits, much wordplay, subtle wow

*edit, fixed few spelling mistakes

I don’t understand this show.

Not to say that I cannot understand the appeal of this show at all or what it might have been trying to say. Rather, I have barely any grasp on how this series has turned out the way it has. Initially, this show was dubbed by publishing company Kadokawa Shotan as ‘Project D’, an original series centred around time travel. The premise is honestly nothing new as time travel appears a dime a dozen in many anime nowadays. However most of the excitement RErideD was receiving stemmed from the announced staff, specifically Takuya Satou the chief director of Steins;Gate, alongside acclaimed ... character designer Yoshitoshi Abe. These two are known for bringing their own unique style and unconventional aesthetic to many of their works, and while RErideD is certainly a perplexing show as one would expect, I do not mean that as a positive. Because if one were to watch this show with no knowledge of the crew behind it, neither person’s name would come to mind as RErideD appears more middling that any of their previous work suggests in practically every way.

RErideD is set in the near future where artificial intelligence has recently brought forth advancements in society’s living standards. Derrida, one of the engineers behind their creation has discovered a flaw in their programming that his co-worker says could prove fatal if not addressed quickly. After being ignored and reluctantly putting off any further action until later, they are attacked by his own company that results in Derrida being frozen for 10 years, emerging in a world devastated by the technology he helped create. On top of this, the update needed to repair the robots was given to his co-worker’s daughter Mage who’s now missing, leading Derrida on a quest to find her and the device before all hope is lost.

Now, whatever hopes you have for this series based on my general description of the synopsis I want you to cast as far from your mind as possible, because the potential this story had gets crapped on and then some. The entire progression of this narrative is constantly dependent of contrivances, to the point where it no longer seems like a show you can trust on its internal logic to hold up. Time travel stories are often some of the most prone to these plot devices, but the fact that this series manages to fall back on the power of convenience so often without even having involved the concept of time travel for majority of the show is frustrating to say the least. Even the plot progression through Episode 1 just to reach the premise circumstances alone should give enough red flags to warrant concern:

- Derrida decides to leave the upgrade that would end up saving the world to his friend’s 8-year old daughter despite standing just outside of their house. Why? To move the story forward.
- When Derrida is attacked by his assailants, they shoot at their car till it explodes instead of just shooting at the guy. Why? To keep the story moving.
- After stumbling into an underground laboratory, Derrida manages to lock himself inside a cryostasis chamber so that 10 years pass by without him knowing. Do I even need to ask why?

The series only continues with this train of thought while, ironically, lacking such. Now awoken to a war-torn environment he meets Vidaux and Mayuka who offer to help him under the pretence that he will pay for their services. However, the pair soon find out that Derrida is promising their pay based on finding the upgrade he gave to Mage 10 years prior. Derrida does not have anything concrete to offer which makes their choice in continuing to help very odd and frankly unrealistic considering how the world has gone to shambles and helping Derrida this way would most likely result in the party wasting resources and money of their own. On top of that, Vidaux is constantly putting his daughter further in danger from protecting Derrida from everyone wanting to kill him. It’s choices like this that go against the setting and character motivations depicted, and even when/if an explanation is brought to light episodes later, more often than not we’re provided more questions than answers, a cardinal fault of the series. There are many examples throughout the show that similarly plague the plot, even sometimes going as far as breaking the laws of physics; from a character dodging every bullet her way in real time to a grenade going off in the same room as a little girl, only for her to come out of it hanging from the window with no injuries. If you were hoping for a serious, grounded series in RErideD then I think you might have put misguided trust in the wrong show.

It’s kind of remarkable for how many questionable choices and events take place in RErideD, at the end of the day it all comes across uneventful and as if you could care less about what ends up happening to the characters. Part of this falls back on the cast who all fail to properly leave an impact on the viewer. Fact: apart from Derrida I had to check MAL for what the character names were. Of course, the main character has purpose pushed onto him thanks to the plot, but is there anything else we really know about Derrida? Perhaps more importantly, is there anything particularly memorable about Derrida? Most of the other characters also lack in personality and depth, some even acting as a burden to where I was contemplating what purpose do these characters serve if they are constantly shown. The antagonists were also lacking in these aspects also, with the main villain appearing more like a poor man’s caricature of Donald Trump than anyone remotely interesting. There were obviously glimmers of hope throughout, like the hired assassin who appeared to have intriguing motives behind her actions, until her backstory was revealed just before she no longer served any purpose to the story. Revealing important aspects of characterization in the narrative whenever convenient is a very common theme with this series.

RErideD is a hard show to pin down when trying to understand what it wants to be. Looking at the genres it belongs to: action, sci-fi, drama. And yet, RErideD constantly diverges from each of these categories assigned to it. Is there action present in this anime? Yes. But those scenes are few and far between the countless amount of exposition and dialogue viewers are subjected to that make the series less and less enjoyable. One would also think the action scenes would at least deliver for the 1 minute each episode they are shown. Shockingly these are the moments where the series is at its worst visually; poor CGI, significant drop in frame-rate, awkward character physics resulting in laughably dull moments. Yes, “laughably dull”. RErideD tries to come off as a serious science fiction anime, yet the way time travel is executed makes the series feel more supernatural – I’m no scientist, but I would imagine it’s extremely difficult to explain how an astral projection can help Derrida to time-leap by ‘thinking really hard about an intensive memory.’ The fact that time travel for most of the series had turned out inconsequential is also confounding to say the least. All that is left is a drama, one that leaves much to be desired on the emotion end as it regularly treads across separate genres, failing to establish a distinct identity for itself. Well, aside from being a bloated mess of an anime.

Disappointment is the best word I would use to describe this show, most notably regarding its production. Never is the series able to alleviate the overall visual blandness it has; never outright ugly or repulsive, just simply mediocre, run-of-the-mill art design lacking any visual flare. A muddy, insipid colour palette that does little to garner one’s attention, and typical uninspiring character designs that even look off-model in several stills. The art is plain, flavourless and comparing it to the almost avant-garde styles of their past work, feels like an antithesis to the aesthetics of Takuya Satou and Yoshitoshi Abe. I have to question the budget that went into RErideD, seeing as the action present here looks significantly worse than the typical exposition scene. The score is also unimpressive, merely passable OSTs and voice acting that leaves a lot to be desired. It’s honestly a shame that as I stated before: RErideD is an original work that turned out middling in practically every way. I can’t even say I’m mad or frustrated at it, just disappointment.

And so, what we are left with is a series that disappoints from the very start and never rises anywhere close to the expectations seasoned anime fans hoped to see from it. It lacked logic, coherence and any convincing characters to be excited for after the first couple episodes. If you weren’t left scratching your head in confusion, you were probably already busy rolling your eyes at the sheer number of illogical happenings unfolding in front of you. Maybe this could have been good. Maybe if there were a few significant changes made at the start, maybe a better script behind it, maybe a clearer vision of what RErideD should have been. Unfortunately, despite what the show would like to believe, time-leaps aren’t possible in this world line. And even if they were, I highly doubt anyone would waste 10 years in a cryostasis chamber to do it.

Over a year ago, I came upon a curious trailer that was shown from Anime Expo 2017. Originally, it was a cryptic project going by the codename “Project D’. What got me curious were the two staff that were announced at the time. First, there was director Takuya Satou who previously worked on Steins;Gate. Then, there’s Yoshitoshi Abe who designed the characters for the infamous Serial Experiment Lain. Flash forward a year later and we got much more in-depth information including the plot, more staff, and the cast. What RErideD actually ended up being though is far from an intriguing sci-fi thriller. To even use ... word ‘intriguing’ to describe this show is an insult to science fiction itself.

Initially, it felt like the show had some innate potential. The idea of a science fiction thriller mixed with adventure themes easily takes my attention in. Furthermore, we got a bit of mystery content about this girl named “Mage”. The first few episodes sets up the main plot as Derrida is thrown into a labyrinth of conflicts. Not only does he get thrown into a post-apocalyptic world in the future but he also has to take care of Mage. The main issue also stands as we don’t know much about Mage at all. In fact, I’d say the creators’ attempt to make Mage a relevant character degenerated from the start. She feels less and less prominent with each episode and by the half way point, I almost forget the character exists.

At somewhere after watching half the show, I also noticed the strange pacing of the series. It continuously jumps between themes to the point that it sometimes feels like a thriller, sometimes like a mystery, sometimes like a science fiction, and sometimes like a survival adventure. Because let’s face it, Derrida’s life is always in constant jeopardy and he has few allies to rely on. The people he encounters hardly trusts him in the beginning such as Yuri or Vidaux. It’s not until they risk their lives for each other that they develop a growing trust. The show occasionally dedicates screen time to grow these supporting characters although most of is easily forgettable in one way or another. The only person from the group that I find relevant is Vidaux as he plays key roles in their survival.

An anime like this can’t be complete without antagonists, right? The rogue gallery honestly looks pretty blend with the legion of robots and automata. However, there’s one name I can recall often and that person is Donna. From the start, she plays an assassin-like role and attempts at every chance to kill Derrida. In later episodes, we find out about her past and real motivations. But honestly, Donna is no more than an antagonist built with flaws. The way they reveal about her character didn’t make me care about her to begin with. Honestly, does anyone give a damn about Donna? To make matter worse, it took an entire episode to reveal her origins. The show already suffered pacing issues from the beginning and it didn’t do justice at all to concentrate so much on an uninspiring character.

For what potential it had, the show also has time travel. You’re probably wondering if this contains a similar style of storytelling to Steins;Gate. Considering that Takuya Satou directed both shows, that thought also came to my head more than once. However, this anime is nothing like Steins;Gate and I don’t mean that in a good way. It’s more of a tragic way that you shouldn’t feel sorry for. The story suffers from a lack of care with its character cast in particular for Mage. It’s void of any humorous content and instead tries to make the story as moody as possible. I also confess that the emotional value the show sells is incredibly underwhelming. This failure results from the consequence of its character chemistry. There’s hardly any that exists and most of it is overshadowed by the show constantly trying to appeal to its sci-fi thriller plot. And that’s a major slap in the face.

By technical standards, REride doesn’t house a name that makes people curious. Before this show aired, I had no idea that GEEKTOYS was producing it. I literally had to look it up since its animation quality and character designs didn’t remind of any other similar shows. It’s a good thing White Fox didn’t contribute into this show though. Because honestly, this anime looks plain average at best. Character designs looks one dimensional without anyone standing out from each other. Most of the characters’ expressions also reminds me how each lack personalities. I’m not going to lie, it’s really hard for me to tell what kind of person Derrida really is. By the end of the show, I still have no word to best describe him.

This year honestly had a lot of shows with sci-fi themes. Original science fiction series even took a step forward such as the extremely entertaining Planet With. Other established names like Steins;Gate 0 got attention for the good and bad reasons. What about RErideD? To be honest, it doesn’t even deserve to be on the list.

2018's dullest trainwreck has come to an end, and boy it was a complete waste of time. RErideD: Tokigoe no Diarrhea... I mean... Derrida was a complete mess from start to finish. So what did this show do to be so bad you might ask?

Short Answer: Everything

This anime has by far, one of the most stupid and convenient first episode I have ever seen. It starts out with Derrida Yvain, who is a scientist on the Artificial Intelligence Area. He alongside his team developed a robot called DZ which could be a revolution to the world, similar to that movie of Will Smith called ... "I, Robot", but things end up way worse. It didn't last long for the anime to show us the first cliché and one of the most retarded events, the DZ robots had a "Failure" in their systems that would cause them to go berserk. Yet, Derrida alongside his best friend asked their boss in order to apply a patch they created in order to "Fix" that "issue", but the boss didn't approve it because fuck it. And Derrida, instead of trying to apply the patch by force (which is the exact same thing Derrida is asked to do at the very end... smfh) he went to a PARTY, the PARTY of his best friend's daughter called Mage. Later on, after a lot of vague exposition about time travel (Yes, there is time travel on this anime), Donald Trump calls his team of storm troopers to kill Derrida and his Friend on an Ambush. And here is where the most stupid succession of convenient events starts: Derrida falls off a cliff in order to fall off something that leads him to a weird facility no one has ever seen before, Then, Derrida "accidentally" stumbles on a Cryostasis machine, "accidentally" lying down on it, "accidentally" activating it where he ends up sleeping for 10 years, just to wake up and witness how the world has come to an "Post apocalyptic" scenery thanks to the DZ "Failure".

After this first episode I really had a bad feeling and the red flags dancing around my mind warned me from continuing, I was about to drop it, but at that time, 4 episodes were released in one day, so I decided to give it the "3 episodes law" and watched the entire first 4 episodes. I'm not gonna lie, the anime was looking better and I thought that it could get better and better after having a terrible first episode. Boy I was wrong. I don't know what the director of this series had in mind, but dear God, everything went to hell once they started focusing on "time rides", You see the "Sci-fi" tag on this anime? This anime is an insult to the Sci-fi genre. For being settled at 2060, this anime barely shows any new technology, everything looks outdated and if there's something "new" its the most useless thing you can think of. The only thing that I can consider appropriate for the year they are in, is the battle car Vidaux uses to travel, and yet, the anime stills falls short on that matter. Then, there's the issues of said "Time Ride" which is, the most inconvenient convenient power in this anime, its barely scientific, its just plain bullshit with several restrictions that are told after the damage has been done. In this anime, Derrida can "Time Ride" to a memory of the past, and send his consciousness to that memory so he can change "something" (In the end this ends up being a BIG plothole because the last episode came up with the most retarded revelation), but this "Time Ride" is so freaking awful that he can't do any shit because it doesn't last for that much, also its inconveniently convenient that he can't go back to a memory he has already modified, meaning that if he fucks up, he fucks up and there's no point of return. This anime trashes every logic possible and acts solely for the purpose of conveniences, there is no logic, Philosophy, nor science involved. Lets not forget that the robots are left forgotten for about half the show until the writer remembers them and adds them back.

Characters on this anime are atrocious, useless and are there just for the sake of filling, the only important characters on this anime are Derrida and Mage. Mage is the daughter of Derrida's best friend who disappears entirely off the show to add a sense of mystery regarding the DZ Robots and "Time Ride", but that just backfires as the show is focusing on nothing but atrocious exposition about how is possible to "Time Ride". The rest of the time, the dialogue is spent in dull interactions between Vidaux (Who is a mercenary who asks for big sums of money but forgets about this and tags along because reasons), Vidaux's Daughter (An anime always needs a Loli because why fucking not) and Yuri (Mage's best friend) who is now grown up and teams up Derrida just to be a good for nothing (Or you can consider her a "checkpoint" to know what things had changed thanks to Derrida's "Time Rides"). The rest of the cast is just plain dull and serves no purpose. This anime also wastes an ENTIRE episode to tell us the backstory of a character NO ONE EVER CARED ABOUT, just to kill her off in the next episode in the most dull confrontation against Derrida.

What's up with the sounds effects? The sounds coming from the guns doesn't match what they are using, it looks like very old weapons, yet sounds like a bass fart and it fires some sort of "lasers". The opening is Atrocious and cause ear bleeding, the OST is off most of times and there is nothing valuable from the art department, animation is just... there I guess.

I would really like to talk more about this shit but I guess I have said more than enough, don't even bother watching this, spend your time watching something better.

Overall 1/10

So I begin this season with RErideD. I had no expectations going into it. I am not a guy who likes to see super serious anime. I loved Made In Abyss, but with Steins;Gate I put it on hold after two episodes. So after watching the first four episodes I can definitely say that this anime is decent. In what ways is it decent? Well, get your futuristic guns and take your time, this is my review of RErideD.

Story: 6/10
It is really hard to explain the story, but I will do my best. In 2050 robots have become another vital part ... of human life. Derrida, co-inventor of the robots, finds a bug in the system that could result in the robots going rogue. Him and his co-worker Nathan proposes a update to the boss, but he refuses. The next day Derrida and Nathan are getting chased by goverment officials. Nathan dies in a car crash and Derrida, after surviving the car crash, locks himself accidentally in a timecapsule and finds himself 10 years later in 2060 when a war between humans and robots is happening. Derrida then remembers he gave the update to Mage and he goes on quest to find Mage. Also there is some other time travel bullshit going on.

This story is inherently not good. A lot of things happen for the sake of things happening and some things just make no goddamn sense, but it is also weirdly intriguing. I enjoyed the story fine enough.

Art: 6/10
You like bad CG cars? We have bad CG cars. You like boring setpieces? We have boring setpieces. You want nothing in anime that sticks out? We got nothing in the anime that sticks out.

Sound: 6/10
Wait there was music?

Characters: 6/10
You have Derrida, a smart dad, Vidaux, a man who only does things for money, Mayuka, a child who is just there, Yuri, a smart girl, and Hans, the pathetic villain aka the most enjoyable character. It's really hard to describe the cast, because they all have something in common (except for Hans): They want to survive. While that may be good in real life, in a story it is not good if all your characters have similar traits.

Enjoyment: 7/10
Like I said, the story is quite intriguing. The atmosphere is pretty heavy and the mystery is kinda interesting. Nothing makes sense but I am not as bothered by it as others.

Overall: 6/10
It ain't steins;gate, I can tell you that, but if you are looking for a sci-fi anime that isn't that special RErideD does a fine enough job.

So...the first Fall 2018 seasonal series to end significantly early...so what are we left with?

With big names such as Steins;Gate director Takuya Satou and Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze, Haibane Renmei character designer Yoshitoshi ABe, you would expect them to do the same formulas that they are well-known for...right? Unfortunately, RErideD is not a series that justifies the expectations that we were RErideD with, and all that is about to be revealed. And if you thought that this is good for even a single moment, I don't blame you, but please reason yourself.

Story:
See that insanely long synopsis on MAL? That's just the basis of how RErideD ... starts, and interestingly but (obviously) baffingly falls apart towards the end.; Nothing is coherent in this staged timeline of events that just happens for some random reason that I can (or actually can't) discern. Now, I get it that since it has Takuya Satou's now famous sci-fi time-changing mechanic, but to be honest, you are better off watching Steins;Gate than this bullcrap fest. Gliding along in this time lapse, is the fact that action-intensified tension doesn't seem to exist. If it really did happen (sic), it would feel indifferent, and raises alot more questions than answers with progression. Maybe Satou-sensei's idea was that beyond this horribly written story, we would sympathize with him. I'm sorry but nope, we're not gonna buy your plea.

Characters:
I had much faith in ABe-sensei to produce good character designs, but once the PV and images came out before the anime started, it drabs mediocrity. Nevertheless, I was hoping the anime would do both sources justice, and...it was pretty much what I've got. Now don't get me wrong, the character designs were leagues way down what ABe was confident of, that was somewhat decent, but it's the personalities of the characters that makes this series a drag to watch.

And we start off with the MC behind it all: Derrida Yvain. Despite his technological superiority that is inhabited with his father's idea of robots taking over humanity for the good (along with his colleague Nathan Bilstein), all I saw was a MC who just literally follows the motion between events, whether he was pursued by enemies of trying to understand the vague reasons for Mage (that 8 year old girl that was Nathan's daughter, turned 18 year old who holds the key to everything) trying to follow his footsteps, and showing emotions that just reflect that of typical daily life humans. Yuri, the girl with Mage, before everything went busted, she really seems like the kind of needy girl, who like Derrida, is also trying to find information about Mage's whereabouts after she had part from Yuri some months before. Both were a pain to watch and the mediocrity sinks in when the story goes deep. (Spoiler warning) The equations gets worse then both of them finally catches up with Mage, only to leave more things unanswered on the plate than clearing up the mess.

The good part (at least for me) were the stories of Vidaux and Mayuka, the atypical lost child hidden in the clutters, and then found by some random stranger. Vidaux was bad-ass (along with the Knight Rider-esque AI car Graham), a fearless warrior who is like any other competent soldier of his time, saving Derrida's ass (if there's any worth in compensation), and Mayuka in helping Vidaux regain his composure, as if they were family. Honestly, if there was one thing that this anime can be dived upon is more of both of them.

The other characters (Andrei, Schmidt and Donna/Angelica) felt somewhat of a wasteland, a way to move the plot with significance behind the reasons why they act this way (well, a yes for Donna/Angelica, but barely). Worse still, the series doesn't really try to explain why they act this way, but moves us deep with the plot before we have any chance to understand. Bad move.

Art and animation:
More than just a new studio, the first production for Geektoys, the whole series fleshed out as a passion project, an original one at that. But after watching the much abhorred CGI and the less-than-stellar art and animation, this is pretty much a BIG FAT F (for fail) when production is so highly contested for original work. And what's better is that for veterans like P.A. Works, yes they had their share of failures (I'm looking at you Glasslip), but when they succeed with it (just look at Irozuku this season), this ain't a contested competition, but more of a comparison complexity.
So, along with bad character design comes production so woefully underwhelming, but only to the point where it is barely watchable.

Music:
This is the ONLY area where the anime excels at, or rather the OP itself. If you know QUADRANGLE from Joker Game (their OP is awesome), expect the same quality of music they have here. With a dope-ass OP, I have to say that this has been one of my favourites for the Fall season. The ED is pretty much a winding-down of events, but it is by no means bad. The action-packed OST is really just a meh fest. Nothing truly ever is exciting, if going by feels. Regardless, the decent area of the bunch.

All in all, RErideD was somewhat of a work that promises much, but bares very little to the recognition of famous people's works past and honestly doesn't deserve the placement that it does. Is it any good? No. But is it watchable? Only if you feel like you have nothing to watch, and get ready to face the ridiculous levels of mediocrity you have ever watched in your life. And get this: this is bad Sci-fi.

Oh well, that's one important marketing plea to understand and note: Don't plaster big names and deliver a sub-par show, it just destroys the fanbase of popular people and their reputation even further. Regardless, it's an immense failure of a high-profile project, through-and through.

As many who started this, I was very happy to find out the Chief Director of Steins;Gate was directing this shit. I mean this is shit. I'll try to keep it short why it sucks and why you shouldn't watch it.

Story 5: It just makes no sense, they just throw at you without explaining anything. The story could actually work very well if it wasn't for the shit directing, it is awful, did this guy really do Steins;Gate directing? My main issue with the show is how they treat the enemy threat, you see one enemy approaching you, what do you first do? Think about ... how would you avoid conflict if you can and think of battle strategies. A normal human should be able to see what is wrong with this shows action, it is brainless action that gets solved in like a second in this anime? I honestly almost fell asleep while watching this.

Art 5: Nothing much to say, they can actually animate the car very well which is where their budget went to I guess. Other than that all characters look mediocre, the animation is mediocre.

Sound 7 : They got this thing right in the OP actually, the OP is awesome just as expected from sound director of B:The Beginning.

Characters 5 : Oh man, how much I hate the characters of this show. There is this guy who has some rules that he "never" breaks. SMH honestly all he does is contradict those rules and make no sense most of time. The MC is bland af, I have seen many MCs from mediocre anime that had redeeming qualities, but this guy has none. No personality, not even fun to watch. I don't wanna go on side characters honestly, you probably have seen them on many mediocre anime. The antagonist is also the worst antagonist I have ever seen, even Acnologia was way better.

Enjoyment 4: Eh, just save yourself the time.

In conclusion, it has potential honestly maybe this is all some foreshadowing. We saw something in episode 4 that makes all this character thinking be actually logical but at this point I doubt it. The studio is new and the episodes were released earlier than expected which may explain why they were rushed. I'll say this if those 4 episodes were to be expanded in to 8 episodes, it would feel less rushed and it would make more sense. Like I said my main issue is with directing.

Not bad. Good way to kill time. The concept is great and the plot construction is just enough to keep me engaged.

However, there are many areas in which the production of the anime needs attention and improvement. I'm not going to list this out as others here have most likely done so. An example is the execution of the frame or visual panel in every single scene. It is very obvious that small details that would have been shown in panels/frames in between key panels were lacking such as the transition from using a gun to drawing out a polaroid picture from an item bag. ...

What the animation team did was only focus on the key points. This anime needs more extrapolation and quality assurance. To be fair the first 4 eps were leaked way before release date.

I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt that the leaked episodes are not the final approved versions of the 4 episodes. Hopefully it's not wishful thinking as I noticed Crunchyroll released the 4 episodes on their platform after the leak. Personally, I did not watch on crunchyroll so maybe others can chime in here.

Anyways despite all of the missing connections, lack of detail, lack of explanation, and lack of sufficient character development (to be fair 2 or 3 characters are being developed out as the story goes, so it isn't bad at all just not A+) this story is enough to keep me excited for the next episode. It's like fast food lol but not trash you'd throw away.

Ok, so this could be consider as a quintessential anime that involves time travel like that of another anime currently being aired this season which is " Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara" , but unlike that anime this was good because of the mystery that surround the main character Yavin Derrida and Mage Bilstien as they both travel through time in order to fix an apocalyptic future that was ravage by war and the bad guys weren't just them rich people whom were able to escape the apocalyptic war , but also DZ whom were acting like a bunch of wild dogs looking to ... pounce on any living soul coming in to their territory. Ok so the plot maybe all over the place, but the again can we stop such double standard for a while since there were allot them anime whose plot were all over the place , like that of "Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl " whose plot was more chaotic considering about the "Puberty Syndrome" shit kind of thing. Now don't get me wrong if I rate this a little bit higher compare to that of most reviews about this anime were the rating weren't that pleasing , it's just that I can see something in between the lines . Now let's face it the real premise of this anime is what of you can go back in time and redo everything or change anything and yes this was all about Yavin who slept for 10 yeas and woke up in an apocalyptic future and now he has to find a way to undo what he failed to do and yes it was Mage who help him with Yuri, Vidaux and Mayuka in the helm with an batmoble that talks and thinks that was assisting them , Graham . So , as expected the ending was good since Yavin and Mage were able to become a couple despite of a huge age gap between them so I'm think that Yavin is in his 30's while Mage is 14 years old so there is 16 year difference, but enough of that, all I can say was if you don;t get the premise of this anime the feel free to consider it as a time waster. So how do I rate this:

Story-Good 7: It maybe all over the place, but if you can see in between the lines you'll get it.

Art- Decent 4: Well don't expect a good mage fanservice around here.

Sound-Decent 4: Since I don't have any comment about it.

Character- Good 7: Well, what make me give this a 7 was how the characters got to have a good future the moment Yavin get's to fix things around......Also, having Yavin be this damsel in distress, who has to be saved by Vidaux adn his batmobile was some thing else since he becomes the latter's client, it was kinda nice that the secondary character get's to do the dirty jobs for the guy.

Enjoyment- Good 7: It maybe a time waster, but since I can see in between the line, to me this is good , and that's that.

Overall- Good 7: It ain't great, and it ain't that bad, but then again it was still good enough, so in the words of the late Stan Lee "Excelsior!"


Give me a moment of silence as I observe the death of an iconic American comic book author, Stan Lee and let's not forget even them Japs get their inspiration from him. ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................


"Excelsior!"

So, to sum it up: this show is just one mediocre mess. RErideD was one of these shows that kept me watching despite it lacking in almost every department. I did have some hopes, the plot was semi-interesting and the idea's it explored was something I thought to be pretty cool, but I was let down. I think it's a shame that these ideas were put into a show that obviously had little to no budget, and maybe if a better studio and more budget was put into this, I think it could've done well.

Some things that were okay (i guess??):
- The ideas were interesting ... and the story itself was enough to keep me intrigued, it explored things like AI and the idea of how AI could impact war along with the more sci-fi theme of time travelling.
- The ending was actually satisfactory, it didn't leave us on any cliffhangers and didn't really leave us with a lot of questions.
- This is kind of weird but I enjoyed the sound effects, they were weirdly nice to listen to.
- The ending song was really good, it's relaxing and it was nice to just ease out of the episode by listening to it.

The things I dislike:
- THE CHARACTERS! Derrida is literally as bland as you can get, he's the most boring mc to watch and the supporting cast aren't much better honestly. I'd say my favourite character was probably Donna since her backstory was interesting and pretty well thought up. Other than that though, none of the characters are memorable at all.
- The pacing was all over the place, the story itself was an absolute mess, after every episode you're left questioning whether or not you should stick along with the series or not.
- I watched this show as it aired and had hope for it to improve, the 20 minutes each week weren't really much of a drag for me but if you're someone who plans on binging it, please don't: the whole show will just bore you to death, literally.

Overall, this show is just mediocre and not worth the time. It's just not good ?? I don't really know how to explain it but the show itself is in fact weirdly intriguing which is why quite a lot of us stayed around until the very end, but not being able to even like the characters due to how bland they are and the story overall being messy just leaves you thinking "OK, I guess" by the end of it all. Anyways, I'd advise you all to not waste your time on this show, it's for your own good.

Oh man, I'm a collector of train wrecks at this point. Here, we have a masterclass in doing everything you can possibly do to ramp up the carnage. What starts off as poor decisions escalates into a multi-train pileup, during rush-hour, at the busiest station, during Christmas. That last bit sounds like a stretch, but it's plot relevant so just run with it. While you're preparing your suspension of disbelief for a REVIEW of something that will shatter it regardless, I'm going to run with the train metaphor.

It's all I have left to enjoy about this one.

Story: Time travel gone wrong. Okay, how do you ... screw that up? No seriously, I've seen my share of cobbled together time travel plots. What the hell even happened during the story boarding for this? It's NOT a disjointed episodic narrative you're supposed to piece together. It IS a disjointed Frankenstein's monster of story beats without any of the life and character of the monster. Characters come and go at the pace of bullet trains, one minute you have a villain the next you're stopping at the airport for a scenic garden tour. Just as abruptly a steam engine plows through on the same track and you have a kidnapping plot plodding along with film noir dialogue and espionage tropes. I'm not even going to touch the shipwreck that blasts it's horn at the tracks before colliding with everything at a landlocked train station.

Art: I'm sure someone could pull some decent still frames out of this, I don't envy the level of patience that would involve. There are some neat designs buried in the background, you just have to ignore any characters present on screen and pretend you're looking at specart. None of the character designs are particularly impressive or memorable, and the scary robots that are supposed to be significant tension feel the least bit threatening. Nothing has any impression of weight. Nothing, outside of that metaphorical cruise liner barreling down on a multi-train wreck, rush hour, Christmas nightmare I just finished witnessing.

Sound: Sound is apparently where they put the animation budget. Nothing was amazing or stood out, but it wasn't the ear bleeding cacophony of death, suffering and, dismemberment you would expect from any other description I've offered so far.

Character: Just like the plot couldn't pull of Frankenstein's monster levels of compelling, the characters barely snuff up to archetypes. It's probably due to the terrible narrative directions. Train wrecks are chaotic and disorienting with just one train. You only get to know a few characters in singular moments, before they get thrown off the tracks and go careening through entirely different archetypes and genre tropes. The one interesting character is Donna, and that only works as well as it does because of the imminent landlocked shipwreck that eclipses the absurdity of the Christmas rush hour station multi-train pileup.

Enjoyment: 10 if you're into this metaphor, and need something to watch while absolutely hammered. For the rest...if you're still reading this review I can assume my efforts to dissuade you are meaningless, or I'm enticing you to indulge in some twisted form of schadenfreude.

Overall: Shipwreck, landlocked train station, multiple trains collided, during rush hour, on Christmas.

Whew, this was the most painful thing I've endured since my last review.

This anime is enjoyable, but minimally so. It seems to check off the boxes it needs in order to avoid being a bad anime, and I have trouble finding real faults with it. The art is okay but not mindblowing. The plot is fairly well-constructed, although it suffers from some pitfalls to common tropes. The characters were well-defined excepting the ones which weren't supposed to be, and it's decent overall.

That said there was a feeling of distance I had from it. Maybe it's an anime that suffers from being watched one episode at a time. Every week we'd watch ... an episode and I'd have to remind myself of what was going on and where the plot was, when other anime had really engaged me. There's a good bit going on in the anime but not nearly enough to not be able to keep up with, it just didn't seem to perform well in the format of weekly episodes. They could have done a lot better with a pair of movies, in my opinion. A good execution of time travel takes intense focus from the viewer, as can be seen in films such as Primer, and only having twenty-two minutes a week interferes with that focus. I may change my rating and edit this review on a rewatch (if I ever rewatch it) due to the possibility of high rewatchability, as is common with time travel plotlines.

It's a good anime and has a good storyline. This is the kind os anime you have to watch a few episodes of to understand and to get more in to it. The whole anime is about this guy Derrida who loops through time and is trying to find and save his best friends daughter Mage and save humanity from destruction. I think that Mage is the one who developed the "Time Machine" in the future which used to be a project that her father was working on. That is probably the reason to Derridas time loops (but that's just my theory). I actually like ... it, I'm excited to see what'll happen on the 5th episode :))

If you've stumbled across this show, there's a strong chance it's because of the talent attached - namely, Satou Takuya. You see that name and think to yourself, "He led series like Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze, and Steins;Gate. What could go wrong?" In short - everything.

Any element of this show that isn't painfully awful is mediocre at best. The characters all have no personality. There are no defining traits. The one character who had rules he lived by literally abandons them when it becomes convenient to the plot.

At four episodes in, the "time ride" mechanic, blatantly lifted from S;G, has served only a single purpose ... - a seemingly inconsequential twist. The only difference I could think of is that Derrida, unlike Okabe, doesn't know of the changes as they happen.

To me, this seems like Satou really liked the way time worked within Steins;Gate and his only original thought outside of that was, "But what if it was in the future?" From there, I imagine everything that wound up in this series thus far is a result of trying desperately to think of futuristic sci-fi plots to justify this setting. Spoiler: It doesn't justify the setting at all.

This anime with the art and the music is so great!, Although the content of the anime is not clear, but in my opinion will be answered in the last episode, which creates curiosity and expectations. A new studio and a charismatic style.
Art and graphics are comparable to popular anime series like Guilty crown, Aldnoah Zero, which is great.
The ending song was great, I could not stop listening to it over and over again. The voice actors have a sweet voice and very deep lyrics.
I think this anime deserves a higher score, hopefully everyone will have good reviews for this new studio. I think they ... have worked hard on the first project.

I like the concept of the story involving time travel, or so to speak. I figured after 3-4 episodes, the story along with character development should really pick up. At least that's what I was hoping for. Unfortunately, it really didn't. Besides the 2 main characters, any others introduced were honestly irrelevant.

There were several times, where I wanted to just drop it but I'm the type who has to finish it, regardless of how bad or good it is.

It felt as if the writer struggled/didn't know how to proceed with the storyline and was a "last minute" mashup ideas.

I had high hopes for this ... anime after learning the people involved in production but ended up very disappointing.

I don't ever write reviews or place any scores with anime that I have watched. Whether that be bad or good. I like to just appreciate and enjoy the fact that I am able to watch these. But I had to leave a score and review for this one and didn't wanted to write a review with what some others have said already. Read scores rated 3 and below from others. They described it like I wanted to.

When you tell a joke, it usually follows by a punchline. Well in a similar sense... RErideD sort of is missing the punchline?

In other words... This anime needs to be RErideD.

Two scientists find a bug in their robot that can potentially be a hazard to humanity. However, the president of the company doesn't want to retrieve the robots due to the cost of repair and so he instead tries to assassinate the scientists. But the main character, being one of the scientists, escapes and accidentally traps himself into a chamber which froze his body. Ten years later, he wakes up and finds himself in a middle of a war and realized that the world had changed.

The premise sounds tempting and filled with potential. However, the poor writing of this show ruins the show. The ... main character attempts to search for a girl throughout the show, which diverges away from the world that this show set up.

I would like to see less about this girl and more about the world, more robots, and more character development on the side characters.

It is the year 2050. Automatas are now part of human's daily lives. Derrida's father happens to be the creator and now he follows in his footsteps developing them at Rebuild. However, he and his friend Nathan discovers a fatal bug in the latest "DZ" models that could allow them to go out-of-control. Not only that, rumours were the models were going to be militarised which was all the more reason they had to fix the bug first.

Not long later, Derrida finds both Nathan and himself targetted by Rebuild. As he desperately runs away from his assailants, he finds himself falling into an underground laboratory ... and put into cryostatis. When he wakes up he finds something he had given up research on had happened to him - time leaping. He was now 10 years into the future which was now ravaged by an ongoing war, over-run by rogue DZ models. Now Derrida must find Nathan's daughter Mage so that he can retrieve the key he had entrusted to her, needed to run the patch on the automatas.

This is actually the Geek Toys' debut title. Looking at Director Takuya Satou's profile you might expect something good to come out of this show considering he was the co-director of Steins;gate, scenario writer for Fate/Stay Night (2006) but, unfortunately this original story is nothing special.

World setting is passable as a futuristic city with automated robots and vehicles serving humans. It's nothing original really although the building designs look quite good. Sci-fi background art by Kusanagi Studio looks pretty good and the 3D blends in pretty well but the animation's really stiff. This is especially true of the characters who look roughly designed. Most of the time it looks like they can only animate one thing at a time or if there is animation, it looks like it's been cloned and set on a loop.

The story's very cliche and the pacing's also awfully rushed so you don't really get to know the characters well enough to empathise with them. It feels like they come up with very cliche ideas, decide to try them and then don't know what to do with them afterwards. Sci-fi isn't setup as good as say Steins;gate ironically because instead of using real world hypothesises and expanding on them, this show just makes things up like "Trout Theory" that are vaguely explained. Time leaps (or "time rides" as they're called here) happen randomly and are unexplained with your familiar protagonist desparately trying to change history failing time and time again (pun intended). It even tries to add in a bit of mystery and magic too with random mist and a "mystery girl" appearing which just becomes tiring to watch because it doesn't add much to the show. Every time the sequence happens it feels more like the team ran out of ideas and thought, "Lets do use that scene again to pad out the story."

Good points? Besides the good background art I guess it's one of those rare shows with no fan service scenes. The supporting cast stands out more than the protagonists. Mayuka is probably the only character you can empathise with being a good girl character similar to Kanna from Miss Kobayashi. Oh, and maybe Graham the AI car.

I do enjoy shows with complex ideas, but they tend to be more difficult to execute. This show had grandiose ideas for the idea of people traveling back to special memories as well as a dystopian future exploration with interesting character backstories, but the scriptwriting to keep the plot together was not there, especially for awkward action scenes. I think if they had a guy to specialize on making the action scenes and plot devices make sense it might have turned out into a great show.

Story:
Cool overarching ideas, terrible execution especially action scenes. I did enjoy the themes and ideas in the side stories.

Art:
The important ... places all were fleshed out. It must have been hard to have to animate all of those robots.

Sound:
I liked the interesting eyecatch audio. Nothing too special good or bad.

Character:
Derrida seems like a weak lead as he seems to be led by plot rather than pushing forward the plot himself.
Mage was nonexistent.
Yuri is pretty forgettable. I don't think she did much in their journey besides survive.
Vidaux, Mayuka, and Graham were pretty memorable and well fleshed out. A prequel with just them would have solid due to their characters.
I don't understand why they made Andrei a joke character and Schmidt a real villain boss, with Donna being the strong antagonist character.

Enjoyment:
I was able to suppress my plot-hole reflex to somewhat enjoy the general theme of the show, but I completely understand people who are upset at the glaring holes. I was able to enjoy the last episode as well as the backstory episodes on Vidaux and Donna.

The animation was quite potato. Just looking at the art by ABe it was meant to be much more reminiscent of texhnolyze but apparently the art department was incapable of drawing something that was not your cliche anime character.

Comparing this and texhnolyze, the greatest things missing are what made texhnolyze so compelling; Hamasaki and the unwavering commentary of the writing/dialogue. It just never went as deep in buildup as Steins Gate or as deep in philosophy as Texhnolyze.

Without much of the depth or genius, it's really not worth the watch time, even if you can finish it in half a day.

And that god damned ... ad break 'rerided' sound makes my ears bleed why does that exist