Obsolete

What a weird project.

First things first - it’s a full 3DCG series that half the time (the humans/downtime) has like 8 fps, I can tolerate it, but I won’t be surprised if some people would literally have their eyes bleed from this. However, the parts that matter (mecha fight scenes) run much smoother, have very impressive choreography and the level of detail that simply isn’t possible for the traditional animation (hundreds of accurately portrayed shell casings flying around with realistic physics).

With that out of the way, I imagine 9 out of 10 people would know this exists because of the Gen Urobuchi’s name in the ... credits. Short answer is - yes, this is a “real” Urobuchi series, by which I mean not Aldnoah.Zero Season 2. It's speculative fiction (aka maximum hardness sci-fi) that asks and answers a simple question that most mecha series just ignore: “how can our modern world evolve into one where bipedal mechs are a practical and ubiquitous war machine.” Because, you know, legs are an obvious weak point, the higher your war machine is the easier it is to spot and shoot, and the whole idea of mechs is stupid. The answer this show offers involves aliens and economics. If I had to compare it to something, it would be the film Arrival, but instead of grammar it’s about (not very) giant robots. The format of the story is a historical chronicle showcasing six incidents every one of which changes the status quo concerning the place of the mechs in the world. Naturally, every incident involves fighting that, like I mentioned, is pretty fun to watch.

Now here’s the weird part: the whole “series” is basically a prologue to… what exactly? I don’t know. It’s pretty clear-cut - every episode is essentially a character trailer for the four main cast members and one antagonist, they even have the names of the characters as the titles, yet somehow these six episodes are supposed to be the whole anime. Imagine the first episode of Fate/Zero as the entire Fate/Zero. Like, yeah, you introduced the world and a bunch of actors, I’m hooked, now show me the actual story. What do you mean, it’s over? How? What.

Anyway, 8/10 for an hour worth of Gen Urobuchi writing.

Exo suits? check.
Urobuchi? check.
Let's go.

Obsolete is your standard war story full of sarcasm and indifference.
What's different here however is the format. 6x12 minutes.
It doesn't leave you with much space to tell a grand story or express ideologies.
Anyone who's hoping for character depth or such will be let down.
The staff did everything in their power to make this a coherent piece of work but they were heavily restricted by the episode count and it shows.
Limestone? Aliens? It doesn't matter to us humans according to Mr. Urobuchi, and there's really no time to explain them anyway.
The core of this product seems to be "Give a man a ... fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he'll wage war on his fellow men with fishing rods"
What we get here are pieces of war history. How it started and... that's it. There's no end, or climax.
The individual episodes all follow key events of this futuristic war, the background of the fractions and some people involved in the conflict.
In each episode you will get new characters who drive the story and drop a few lines of lore. The rest is mindless action with dubstep. Oh right. Skrillex did the music.
While the sound engineering and effects were great, the music was offputting as hell. Jungle dnb or tribal would've been more fitting considering where it takes place.
They went overboard with screen effects such as smoke, but the shading was really lacking. The action itself looks well done, but with not enough contrast it looks bland.
The art is... fitting I'd say. silky smooth 4fps cgi we all hate, with a realistic touch. It's sad that this level of mechanic detail needs cg because all the decent animators are busy with gundam.
It gives the whole show a very cheap feel. Pair that with how short it is, and the 4th wall breaking "Just like in my japanese animes" and you're left wondering why they're doing this exactly?
So is Obsolete supposed to be above anime, some higher form of entertainment? Is this how they meant it? because I'm sad to say it's subpar. Or the opposite?
We tried to make something akin to anime, and almost succeeded at times! yes, that seems more correct, sadly.
Honestly this show could've made it as a toy commercial. I'm not sure how many people will it reach if it's on a paid.youtube.service.
Don't you want the largest possible audience for your product placement, instead of those 10 people who paid for youtube premium or whatever it is?
The exosuits look cool. The story seems interesting, the execution is so-so, the runtime is the downfall of this show really.

Moral of the story? War bad. Humanity bad. 12 minute format bad.

CG in anime has always been a bit of a contentious issue, and even a meme, since there have been so many shows that have miss-handled it to the detriment of the story they're trying to tell. I personally have seen very few shows that were fully, or mostly CG that I thought were enhanced by the addition of CG, but fortunately that is beginning to change.

Obsolete is one of the first fully CG shows that I have not only enjoyed, but felt was enhanced by the use of CG. True, if the right style and quality of 2d animation were used, an ... equal or greater effect could be achieved, but for depicting such complex machinery and frequent action shots, the CG excels and is even pleasant to look at. The visual style is completed with detailed and beautiful backgrounds that look like they were painted rather than rendered.

The story of the show is relatively simple, but that works in its favor in this case. Rather than trying to tell an extremely complex narrative, Obsolete focuses on a sort of snapshot take on the effect that the arrival of alien technology on earth has on the world, and warfare specifically. Each episode follows a different character and a different event in the world, following the introduction of EXOS - powerful exoskeletons built by the alien "Peddlers", who have no interest in earth and its people save to trade these suits in exchange for limestone. And some of the insights its characters have are quite interesting and thought provoking.

At this stage, I'm not sure how many episodes there will be, but I certainly hope there are more. Underneath the episodic feel of the first six episodes, there are many underlying themes and now even characters and events that seem likely to tie together in future episodes to give the show a more meaningful finish, but even if it remains episodic it's still interesting enough for me to continue watching.

I recommend this show to anyone who's interested in military, SciFi, or even just seeing an unusual take on these two genres, with a side of fascinating social commentary.

Don't listen to all the cynics complaining about this series. It was awesome. If you like mechs and/or sci fi then you will eat this up and be hungry for more. It's only downside is that there are only 6 episodes (currently).

The writing was mature and intelligent. I love that the story gets right in to it. They don't explain anything about the aliens, and instead focus on the characters, some tech, and the effects of the mechs on the planet.

Some of the combat scenes were great, some were just ok, but well within tolerance as they were not necessarily the main focus. ... I don't think this series was perfect, but it outshines everything else out there right now, except maybe GenLock.

I can't wait for more episodes!

Obsolete is an episodic, fully CG, western styled mecha anime about humanity trying to adjust to the arrival of alien technology that they don't understand but changes both the civilian workflow and military landscape drastically. It's by far the most realistic approach to a mecha anime I've seen yet, with not only clear references to real world weaponry in detail, but also consideration on the global political impact the Exosuits brought with them. Unfortunately, it ends very abruptly with no continuation in sight as far as I can tell, but still very enjoyable if you want a more realistic approach to the genre.

Initially I stumbled ... across this series on youtube and after looking it up, I was very much put off by the full CG animations and low review score. But after some consideration I still decided to give it a shot. The main gripe I have with CG animations is that they always feel like the cheap option that lacks detail and just kinda gets thrown in and ruins the immersion. This is absolutely not the case for Obsolete, arguably the exact opposite even.
The amount of detail that is put into this anime is pretty much unprecedented, at least when it comes to military weaponry. And even the Exosuits were designed with a very practical concept in mind which makes them seem much more in line with reality than most mecha.

Now, animations aside, the story is also quite interesting. While the focus is still on mecha fights and military warfare, a good chunk of the story is about the political side of things. This is both a positive and a negative in my opinion. I enjoyed that part, and especially the different ways that it was presented in, but it felt rather slow and will likely bore a majority of viewers and is next to the CG likely one of the main reasons why this show has such a low score. And even though it takes an episodic approach, there's still an overarching story line, so the abrupt ending without much explanation makes it feel like they wanted to produce another season but didn't get enough funding.

Overall I still enjoyed the anime for what it is and what it tried to achieve and can at the very least recommend it to any military nut out there that's tired of the typical moe military and wants something more life-like.

This story is very basic : aliens come to Earth and trade blocks of rocks for Exosekeleton robot suits. Humans soon use them for war.

The story never goes much deeper. We get glimpses of different countries and the conflicts depicted here and there.

I enjoyed the series for what it was : a combat, action-packed short series of 12 min for each episode. The weapons were cool, same for how the machines were animated. I liked it a lot because that's what I wanted.

But the human characters aren't moving naturally at all and the frame per second is quite low. You don't see them outside of ... their suits so often so it's not that bad.

Overall 7/10 for me

*** Updating after second season , Jan 2021***

3/10. What a troll story. The last episode is an insult to all viewers. Instead of giving us a conclusion, the studio put some loli fighting in space for 12 minutes to troll us. I wish I were lying.

If you don't believe me, skip directly to the 12 episode. Do NOT WASTE YOUR TIME with this one

Pt 1:

So Gen Urobuchi came back to anime for a YouTube anime and it's one of the laziest things I've seen from a show this year. Maybe that's why he named it "Obsolete".

What if in Kado, Aldnoah Zero or the netflix godzilla, the aliens just dropped off Knightmares for some MGS4 PMCs and war refugees from Jormungand, FMP or the Psycho Pass movie to run through half rendered Expelled from Paradise fights with an 08th MS Team theme? All while preaching about the profit of war in a way that feels like both an anti-war PSA and a recruitment video?

Forget characters. Forget story. Just straight-up ... contradictory preaching amidst poorly put together CG mech fights with uninspired designs and tactics. What a mess. The laziest thing Gen Urobuchi has ever written, blatantly ripping off himself and others without putting any work into developing the ideas he's throwing around. Also it looks like shit.

Pt 2:

Ep 10 was an ok "jump the border" story, Ep 11 had some underwater lighting, and Ep 12 just abandons the whole show to go full anime. Overall, more enjoyable than the 1st half.

Do not watch the English dubbed version! The voice acting is just bad. The actor's cadence is just unnatural most of the time, with many weird gaps in sentences. I understand that one of the main goals is to match the lip flaps, but there were soooo many times where characters mouths weren't even visible and the cadence was still off. Even the inflections and sounds of the voice actors were bad. If it weren't for the fact that this started airing in 2019, I'd seriously think the voice acting was actually A.I. generated.

I think the other reviews have adequately addressed the plot, so ... I'll just say I'm disappointed in it. I think the core of the plot was really interesting, but after episode 8 the studio just gave up on it and decided to start telling short stories that were almost entirely disconnected from the core story-line.

The only positive for me is the visual design of the show. I actually like the CGI in this. It was clean and consistent throughout the show. I also really like the designs of the suits.

First of all this is not an anime, this is a commercial to sell some model kits. It act like very serious, know all about world politics anime but its just extremely one sided, 80's b movie type anime where our hero can shot down all of his enemies from his mecha without dying and he just learn to use mecha 10 minutes ago I am not kidding. And they try to show anime is very realistic but it is not, you will feel like you are watching rambo with a mecha. Such a disapointment for me I thought this would be the best Real ... Robot anime but I was wrong. Go watch something else your time worth much more than this.