Shiyan Pin Jiating

Concept: good
Execution: absolutely terrible

The first four episodes are full length and actually pretty good. They get you hooked into a story with what looks to be an overarching plot. Then it takes a complete 180, the episodes drop to 12 minutes or less after intro/recap and the other half of the 23 minutes are live action interviews with the voice actors talking about random stuff. I wouldn't have minded this as much if the story didn't feel like it suffered from it.

The lead up to the climax of the series is based off of characters acting completely contrary to what we have seen ... thus far and SURPRISE //spoiler warning// they start acting like themselves and everything goes back to normal. Additionally, the loose ends this series leaves is simply startling. Not a single question they brought up during the whole series was answered. The end of the series feels like they cut off 3 minutes too soon, if not a whole episode too soon.

The art also slowly went downhill as the series progressed. The final episode was startlingly different animation than the first four. It feels like the budget was slashed halfway through making this anime and forced the animators to cut episode length by half for the second half of the season and then even that wasn't enough...

I really wanted to like this anime, but I have never been this disappointed in an anime's execution. To prove my point, this is the first score of 2 I have ever given and the first time I felt compelled to write a review.