Can Ci Pin: Fangzhu Xingkong

The Defective follows General Lin, Lu father and Lu son, the headmaster of a school of 4 underprivileged kids as well as General Lin's AI assistant. After getting swept up in the affairs of General Lin and losing their home planets, the team embark on a journey to learn of the connections to who colluded in the betrayal of General Lin as well as try to survive with large factions chasing them down. During their journey, the team make many discoveries as well as meet with powerful enemies and their large arsenal of Eden-grade weaponry.

Story: 4/10 (spoilers)
Many parts of the donghua were hard to follow because it felt like you were meant to have knowledge of the factions or people of interest before watching and some parts just didn't feel well paced. After the home planets got destroyed and we lost General Lin's female subordinate it made me question whether the series valued character development or plot progression since there was no great value added in either when both planets were destroyed - no empathy because it was way too early for us to connect with the plot/chars. When the students were hijacking the mecha at school, the guy that connected to the neural network should have suffered injuries for sustaining that type of information overload but he turns out fine and is even able to pilot mecha in the end of the show - This is probably plot convenience but it is essentially just one of the many plot holes in this show. The segment where everyone was gathered at the resupply station felt dragged out and added no plot value apart from showing us the initial home planets being destroyed and refueling the mecha - Only General Lin sets off and then Lu son after and by the final episode we are left with an emotional reconciliation, flashback and perspective from General Lin's sister. This sci-fi donghua has a vast universe with many factions and characters; The Eden was a nice utopia touch and I would've liked to see more of that type of technology away from Eden like the bio-chips. A pretty lack luster ending which suggests a sequel.

Art & Sound: 6/10
The art and animation were pretty good, I couldn't shake the basic cinematography in many of the dialogue scenes. It was essentially the same overused high, wide angle shot where a character walks into the frame. The fight scenes with mecha were pretty high quality and well structured, same with the spaceship fleets.

Sound was decent, I didn't notice much out of the series in terms of sound.

Character: 4/10
Character development isn't really the strong suit of this series, we are meant to understand the background and demeanor of our main characters upon their first encounter. Personally, there's still a shroud of mystery between Lu son (I'm going to refer to him as this because remembering his name is confusing with his dads) and General Lin; Their backgrounds aren't shown (apart from them first meeting) and their demeanor changes throughout the series making them hard to follow. The student characters feel like filler characters and I have a feeling they're expendable because they aren't being properly developed like General Lin and Lu Son.

Overall & Enjoyment: 4/10
After 2-3 episodes, the series got boring really fast since it tells us instead of showing us, many of the opposing characters feels empty because we are told information and don't grasp enough opinion before they are killed. I would have liked to see more badass fighting between main characters and enemy mecha instead of the characters panicking or having a training arc with the mecha.

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After watching the first time, i got interested enough to read the novel too. The anime is great as it is fast pace and the visuals and fighting scenes are awesome. The novels fills out a lot of interesting details that are not captured in the anime, with a lot of plots and politics involves it is therefore quite slow pace for the novel. but this is a deeply thought out story that puts a lot of effort in character and relationship growth. the relationship between the 2 main lead is really touching and sweet ... really wish i can see in the anime, but knowing the issue with china censorship, it probably wont really bring out the true sweetness/passion between the two. nevertheless, really hope to see the next season

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Since the only other review is relatively critical, I thought I would offer my perspective, which was decidedly more positive.

Story - this is based on a novel by Priest, who is always good for an interesting storyline. I personally had no issues following along, although I did watch in Chinese, and the subtitles are mediocre which may lead to confusion. Note that the original source was written as novel, not a manga, so I would caution against assuming each season will be a true "arc" the way a lot of Japanese anime shows are. Personally I loved the world-building and the exciting sci-fi pace, and the pacing style didn't bother me. For what it's worth, my wife also enjoyed this show tremendously even though she doesn't know much Chinese.

Art - this is your standard Chinese CG anime, but I would count it on the higher end. I loved all the character designs, and the two main leads are so pretty it hurts. The rest of the art was nice too - not exactly the pure art of, for example, MDZS season 1, but it really worked with the futuristic setting and looked good. I think the biggest issue art-wise is the fact that the rigging of the characters is slightly janky, which is pretty common for CG anime, and doesn't bother me that much because I've watched a lot of these.

Sound - the music was generally enjoyable, although nothing was super memorable from the soundtrack, but the ending theme is SO GOOD. I can't articulate exactly how much I love it, but it's this interesting jazz-inspired track, with a truly interesting melody, and it's sung by classical baritone Wang Xi. And the lyrics are very very good.

Character - this REALLY sold the show for me. Hand Butler (Zhan Lu) and Dad (One-Eyed Hawk) are the best, and I feel like this show is worth it for the two of them, even if you're not as interested in the rest. The original story culminates in the two main characters being a pairing, but this season is only a fraction of the story, so not much develops just yet, a nice slow burn. I also ended up liking pretty much all of the side characters who weren't intended to be villains.

Enjoyment - okay, look. If you have very strict standards and expectations of your anime, or if you read the book and have strong opinions on what an adaptation should look like, or if you dislike having to put story pieces together slowly and by yourself (and also not getting answers to all your questions by the end of the first season), this is probably not the show for you. But if you're willing to be open-minded and dive into a fun and interesting story, and you can overlook a few issues here and there, this show is very very enjoyable.


In summary: I really enjoyed this show and would love to see more seasons. I think it's worth watching if you are interested in the type of story it's telling, but there is some divide between its storytelling style and that of the average modern Japanese anime.

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