Deep Insanity: The Lost Child

Seasonal animu review time

This anime right here actually picks my interest the first time when the PV drops. It shows a nicely animated scene and actually gives off some mysterious vibes to it, making me interested to watch it and thinking this could be a potentially good animu. But those interest starts to fade away right after the 1st episode drops, as it is one hell of a monotonous episode, and that monoton quality stays constantly as the episode goes on, at least on the first 4 episodes.

Let me explain why

The 1st episode of a show should be the starting point to ... introduce the viewer on what story the show would tell, the introductory of the world settings, main character introduction, etc etc. This show however, trying to introduce the main character and the world that the story takes place, in the most simple manner. I know simple doesn't mean bad in any way, but this one is just too simple to understand a single thing what the show is all about. Though the main character has a very slight improvement on the character building in later episodes.

I couldn't say the same thing about the other characters in this show though, even though the show trying to focus itself on the characters one by one per episode. Their backgrounds lacks information on how and why it all happens to make them got into the current timeline and be a sleeper. In this case, it happens for Larry, Leslie, and Sumire. Everything about them, as of the moment, feels flat and overall uninteresting. The only character that is a bit interesting to follow is Shigure, the main character, on how he tries to search information about everything around him.

About the story... wait, what story?
Okay as for the first 4 episode we're in, the goal for the MC on the 3rd episode is to assassinate a little girl, known as El-ceed, which he has met before in the asylum. From here on, the MC got confused as to whether accept the mission, or to deny it. This show doesn't even tell us properly what is the main goal of the show on the start, or even the goal of the main character joining the sleeper up until the 3rd episode. Even so, the build-ups here feels dry and doesn't even makes sense.

The visuals this show brings is okay for most part, when the CG monsters doesn't show up. It's bearable to watch. The character design is okay, nothing stands out, but it's not bad.

Nothing stands out for the sounds either except for the opening song. I like the OP, it's catchy and just enjoyable. The VAs did a pretty okay job I guess.

Overall, this is a 4/10 show. Confusing, bad choice of a style for the CG monsters, flat and uninteresing characters, and just boring to me. I did enjoy some moments from this show, but it's nothing special.

[Edit will be done on the final episode for further review]

Deeply Insufferable: The Lost Cause.

Deep Insanity is another anime with literally nothing to offer.
The story's premise is pretty much a Sci-Fi version of Danmachi. A strange, underground labyrinth world which produces strange creatures and resources appears and soldiers/miners are sent down by military and political organisations to secure its power and riches. The only problem is that the underground world is also responsible for Randolph syndrome, a madness-inducing illness which is slowly destroying humanity.

If you enjoy boring, forgettable characters fighting ugly cgi monsters then you still won't enjoy this turd. Shigure especially is an unbelievably infuriating protagonist to watch. A naive kid with a ... hero complex (and is easily swayed by military propaganda) but is so unbelievably incompetent on the battlefield that he puts the lives of his team at risk. That's not what I would call a routable protagonist. The team are equally as insufferable. The captain is a walking stereotype and the rest of the team are so stand-off-ish towards Shigure (they hate him as much as I do) that it gives the show no characters to get attached to.

The hand-drawn animation is fine, but the CGI monsters look awful. You only have to watch episode 2 where the team spends the entire 20 minutes fighting the boss of the wind temple from the Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker to understand how dreadful this show is...

So last night I had a dream that the team behind Tawawa on Monday released a Violet Evergarden-esque movie. A deep, philosophical tear-jerker, but in a world where all women have big booba and all men have no eyes. I don't remember if it was good or not, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all day and I needed somewhere to talk about it. Considering Tawawa on Monday is just an excuse to indulge in big boob heaven it's fair to say it probably wasn't good.

But that dream was way more interesting than anything Deep Insanity: The Lost Child has to offer. Seriously, what would the plot of a Violet Evergarden-like Tawawa on Monday movie be?... I'm intrigued... I'm not intrigued by Deep Insanity: The Lost Child. I would rather talk about anything else...

1/10 The Worst.

Spoilers be warned, though I find no incentive of hiding the full fact from all of you.

Just who was this show made for, other than to promote Square Enix's brand new IP: Deep Insanity? No, not one, it seems. In all circumstances, this show is just outright horrible on every angle, and this is a classic case study of how NOT to formulate an anime that wastes everyone's time and money, resources of which are timeless and cannot be earned back.

For one, Deep Insanity hinges very heavily on its mixed-media themes, because without the context of either one of them, you would be very lost, ... and I honestly don't blame you if the anime itself doesn't really offer a lot to begin with, much less execute the "show, not tell" golden rule in a very bizarre and unsatisfying way. The context is that this IP has 3 forms of media attached to it: the manga, anime and the mobage, ALL of which are intertwined in one form or another to the central plot of the series as a whole, which tells of a world where humanity has fallen into comas as a result of the mysterious illness called "Randolph Syndrome". The illness spanning from the South Pole in this deep underground "Asylum", and the quest to go explore and find a cure or even find any sorts of treasure lurking around. And before you ask, don't ever expect "Made In Abyss" levels of lore in this one, you'll be severely disappointed.

The context continued, is that while the manga (named Deep Insanity: Nirvana, written by Akudama Drive co-creator Norimitsu Kaihou and Psycho-Pass screenwriter Makoto Fukami) features a boy immune to the Randolph syndrome and simultaneous an Antarctian trader journeying into "Asylum", and the mobage featuring a main character who's the only sole survivor of the syndrome, the anime itself takes place in between both mediums and treads that line with Deep Insanity: The Lost Child, featuring the MC Shigure Daniel Kai who joins the Antarctica Front as a "Sleeper", exploring the Asylum with monsters called "Scarred" and humans called "Exiles", the infected ones referred to as "Cultists". We basically see what the hell is going on within the Asylum and the Antarctica Front members as progressing plot unwinds to open up the big picture.

Except that the big picture itself...is just a burgeoning mess really, and for real. Shigure just feels like the typical MC in the mobage where we have full control of him as a character, but have no narrative control as you would in a typical RPG. Of all the choices he could've done, he is a blind follower whose dream is to be a hero, and not someone whom has exactly a sound mind to discern what's right or wrong. Instead, he is the literate definition of a new recruit: coercing and making friends with other Sleepers (Lawrence Larry Jackson, Reika Kobato and Sumire Motiki) whilst traversing through the Abyss with their leader Leslie Blanc. And man, does the experience don't get any better than this. If you need an example of a walking trope, these characters all are their own one-of-a-kind mind-numbing boringness, the biggest sin being Commander Vera Rustamova because nothing pops out from her mouth, only action matters to reach her goal.

The issue with setting up such plot where the Sleepers (and us the audience) only knowing that they have to exterminate the Scarred, while being silent about the true issue at hand: the psychological battle between Vera and this unknown organization with members of gay-centric Hayden and rabbit-tamer Nadia to target this "Child of God" The Lost Child named EL-Cee, whom harnesses the power to destroy the world. First come, first serve, that's it. So in the words of Gordon Ramsay: crap, on top of crap, on top of crap, on top of crap, on top of crap...it's not hard to see why the anime version of Deep Insanity is just that: an all-out dysfunctional atrocity. And knowing that Silver Link in-house scriptwriter Kento Shimoyama had his hand on this, with the horrible works that he has done before (Masamune-kun, Death March, Nakanohito Genome (this I can at least acknowledge that it's decent), KimiSen), I find it hard to swallow how does this guy manage to one-up himself by being worse and worse.

Speaking of Silver Link, not even head director Shin Oonuma can save this travesty, because this is got to be one of the worst productions ever done in the studio's history, and yeah, good luck with the karma of KimiSen airing directly in the same season last year. The production values just went ham on being too dark to try its best to evoke the depths of the Underground Asylum Abyss, and that in the process, just mysteriously gave up altogether, because it shows of the roughness and unpolished feel of the show as a whole. Even as a Kadokawa and Square Enix-produced show, this easily scrapes the bottom of the barrel.

Speaking of Kadokawa, this is the sole reason why I don't rate this show a pathetic score, just because of the euphemism of the OP & ED songs and their importance to the show. I have to conceit that Konomi Suzuki's OP is just quite mid that's fitting with the subpar visuals, but while the same also exists with Kashitarou Itou's ED, knowing his debut performance with Deca-Dence only raised my expectations, and the whole show IMO is worth it for the glorious ED alone.

When all is said and done, I've definitely gushed more than enough to "understand" this show because like many others, I just don't care that all for this mish-mash mess that does everything the exact opposite. Just avoid this one, it's pure atrocious and you would not want to spend even a second of this, even for caution.

Initially seeing the synopsis for the anime I was rather excited but after watching a few episodes the show seems to have none of the great qualities made in abyss (the one I kind of compared it to based of had), just a sad pit full on even sadder story building, characters etc.

The characters are bland and kind of annoying as well. You got the standard main character who wants to be a hero despite having really nothing going for him, a tsundere idol, the kuudere, some random guy side character who has no ability to feel fear and Leslie, probably the closest ... thing to a mentor the protagonist has. None of the character interactions haven't felt meaningful or opened interesting topics to explore, like at least Larry, the guy who can't feel fear, could. The characters are tolerable but they aren't good enough of a reason to watch the show if it has nothing else to offer.

The sound isn't bad, VAs have done their job just fine for the most part, the opening is pretty good and the BGM isn't that bad either, probably one of the strongest qualities of the series.

Art and animation: the artstyle is basic, the character designs are basic, the backrounds are basic, the animation is mediocre at it's best and with an anime that has a decent amount of fighting that really hurts. Especially since this far the show hasn't really shown there being any stakes the slow and poorly animated fight scenes just don't do it for me. Worst for last the anime also seems to enjoy using terrible CGI to save them most of the work, creating the monsters the main cast fights using that. There's nothing inherently bad with CGI but the quality of it just is truly underwhelming and makes the monsters look like they really don't belong there. Another issue is them not bothering to animate none of the monster taking any actual damage, they just kind of go and die.

Story: If you've read the synopsis for the show you know what to expect for at least the 4 episodes that are out. The hero want-to-be protagonist and his squad go and do some missions in a pit full of exotic plants and monsters. This far the show hasn't really given us any stakes or anything to expect in general. The characters just do this for their work hours and then spend rest of their time in the base doing nothing pretty much.

Overall the show hasn't been the worst one I've seen when it comes to any of these aspects I mentioned earlier in my review but as they all stack up it makes for a rather unpleasant viewing experience. I might update this review if I have the strength to soldier on and watch more episodes.

Deep Insanity: The Lost Child is the epitome of a "bad" show. It has a boring plot, looks ugly, and weird pacing and structure. Part of my dissatisfaction is likely due to the fact that the show was nothing like I thought it would be originally. The little synopsis given before the show aired sounded a lot more gritty and interesting. The actual show, was not. Whether that's the show's fault or mine, or if that even matters, is up to you.

If I was to sum up the story in one word it would just be "bad." It's really that simple, it starts out ... being a boring action story with some secret underground organization trying to do evil things, and then ends up strangely being a time loop show. I personally like time loop scenarios if done well, but one being introduced in the literal last 2 episodes is not usually a sign of a good one. This element was jarring and honestly should have been kept out of this show, all it really did was just make the plot slightly more complicated. The rest of the show was just really boring. The world it creates lacks any real believability, and could have really done with some extra fleshing out and world building. And the plot that takes place in that world isn't very good either. The first chunk mainly plays out like a really tame Slice-of-Life show, before devolving into generic action, that does have a few unique plot elements, but is honestly largely uninteresting.

The art is another one of my big problem areas. In all the aboveground scenes it looks ok. Nothing too special, maybe a nice background here and there, but really not that amazing by any stretch of the imagination. But belowground, in the mysterious "Asylum" everything looks like dog shit. The color palette switches to browns and sickly greens with a touch of faint purple. Everything looks ugly and disgusting in the Asylum, and instead of feeling like I'm looking into an alien world I feel like I'm gazing into a trash can that hasn't been emptied in a month. And don't even get me started on the CGI, which somehow looks WORSE than hilariously bad CGI shows like Ex-Arm or Tesla Note. Those shows were quite bad, but at least they were entertaining and didn't have CGI that looks as abhorrent as this awful show's.

The music ranged from ok to not present or forgettable, and was really not even worth mentioning in my opinion. The OP and ED were fine, but again, not really worth mentioning. Although I must say the OP has some of the most generic camera shots you can put in an OP, and a bit too much strobing for my tastes.

The characters were all pretty "ok." They were all pretty much tropes or archetypes that had been done before, with Shigure being the definition of a shounen protagonist (although this isn't a shounen, so I guess it's a little unique). The rest of the cast are a little bit more interesting, but none are really that deep. The one exception is Leslie, who was more interesting than the rest of the cast of cardboard cutouts. He also was a crossdresser, and not in like a femboy trope way, like a more representation-ey way. Whatever representation or empowerment this character could bring however, is kind of wasted by it being in this mess of a show.

This show suffered from a myriad of issues, but for me the biggest one was that it just wasn't even remotely interesting. And I don't think there is any greater sin an anime can commit than being boring. Because then, what's even the point?

I don't really watch a lot of "anime" I do however see a decent amount of animated shows. I loved the How to train ur dragon series, and full metal alchemist / Vox Machina are the 2 big shows I can't get out of my head right now. So I'm gonna scale my review between these, and the mess that's Deep Insanity.

Pretty clearly shows they made this show for one reason: to push some square enix game.

The plot is a slog, and even with a 1.8x speed modifier using a plugin in my browser, I can't sit thru another episode. The story has almost no ... actual depth, and all the show does is add more random "plot" that never actually amounts to anything. They constantly try to build suspense with near-death scenarios where no one actually gets injured, and there's 0 repercussions. Each episode hap-hazardly links together and ever other episode feels like filler. I can't think of one person who'd think the pacing of this show is tolerable.

The art-style, I mean it's "unique" but it's not "good". All I can poisitively say about it is it's different, in the sense that it seems even the producers of this show didn't know what they wanted to make it look like. Do NOT watch this if u value ur own time; bc it's a waste of it.

This isn't bad but the amount of little thinks that annoy me is too great.
The characters are nothing special, the main hero is just plain, tho there seams to be more to him that isn't revealed in the anime yet. The biggest issue for me is the bloody 3d effect that they just slapped on and called it a day. Not only does it make it hard to look at, it's in no way a improvement.
At the point I'm writing this there's only 4 episodes but I've watched enough to dislike it, I'm drooping it, if the story gets better at any point i ... might come back but for now I'm done.

-Return of the bad CGI the Anime-

*Has bad CGI. Need I say more?

*Has Boring Character and plot. Characters are more flat then the bad CGI, and with less content then the effort it takes to make new CGI Monsters.

*Is clearly banking off of the concept of Covid-19. Uses a generic made up type of virus/plague to help define the setting while also doing very little else with it. Anime came out during the Delta/Omicron variant of the Covid-19 pandemic. So it comes across as cliche and shallow.

Hope this saves you from wasting your time watching this hot garbage of a show. I know my time ... sure was wasted.

*Warning this review contains strong language*

Where do I even begin?

This series has been the bane of my existence for the past week as I slogged through every episode praying for the day it would be over. I've spent way too much time thinking about this stupid show even while not watching it, and I quickly grew to hate it so much that I decided I needed to make this review as thorough and as damning a critique as possible. To facilitate this, for the first time ever I actually decided to take notes while watching a series for the express purpose of writing a review ... of it. I usually just write my general feelings about a show when I'm done watching it, but I wanted to chronicle how I felt at the end of each episode so I could get real specific and personal about just how much I hate this trash.

Something to get out of the way off the bat: First and foremost this show exists as an advertisement for some shitty SquareEnix mobile game. It was never meant to be consumed in isolation. So if you're like me and you couldn't give a shit about money grubbing gatcha games you will already be behind the curb on understanding what the fuck is going on at any given time. My guess is you're expected to already be familiar with the setting. I wouldn't know because I refuse to do more research on this shit than I've already had to. This franchise isn't worth that much of my time.

Here's how the first episode decides to set up the setting for our story. There's some brand new sickness going around that's killing people at an alarming rate and it's real bad. It's coming from a place called the Asylum, we're going to spend the rest of our time there and not out where people are getting sick so I don't know why it was even brought up. If I had to guess it was probably a vain attempt to parallel events happening in our real world in the last couple years so it can be #relatable. #killme. So in this Asylum place is some military operation where "Sleepers" are sent down into monster invested regions to do... fuck if I know. I don't think the show even knows what their goal is supposed to be, maybe cure that disease they were talking about? Except it's pretty much never brought up again because now they're just fighting monsters down in the Asylum for seemingly no reason other than fighting monsters. Maybe they explained it, but if they did it was not clear.

Our group of heroes are all very "special" in their own way if you know what I mean. I don't know if they were supposed to be written like a group of actually mentally-handicapped individuals, but that's sure what it comes off as. We get our protagonist who spergs out in his interview to become a sleeper, saying that he wants to do it because an anime told him to. That's not a joke or exaggeration, that is his actual in-universe character motivation that is supposed to drive the plot along. It would be hilarious if the setting wasn't trying to be so damn serious about it.

After our protagonist we get an episode each explaining the backstories and motivations of the rest of the crew he's on. We have a failed idol who now works in a military organization and for some reason is allowed to give orders, a manchild who actually has brain damage that makes him incapable of rational thought which he mislabels as a lack of fear, an aspiring mangaka probably fujoshi girl and the vice captain who- oh boy we'll get to him.

We're meant to believe that these characters are coming to be closer to each other when there is 0 chemistry between them. After each of their focus episodes they fade comfortably into the background and go back to having the personality of a sack of potatoes. The protagonist is the most generic, self-insert hero archetype I've ever seen. I've been watching re-watching parts and thinking about this show basically nonstop for the past week trying to write this review and I honestly couldn't tell you any of their names. Except one.

Leslie is I think technically the first character we get introduced to, even before the supposed protagonist, and the show sure likes to spend way too much time and focus on him. Yes him. Not they, not them, themselves or any other plural pronouns. You see English as a language has this problem. It has no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun to refer to indefinite pronouns. "They" and "them" are plural, despite Webster trying to redefine them as otherwise simply because of repeated incorrect use. I could rant about how stupid I think gender identity politics are until I'm blue in the face but this isn't the place for that, suffice to say that whenever I hear they/them being used to refer to a single individual I die a little inside at the bastardization of our language.

There's something that you have to confront when watching anime: English and Japanese are two radically different languages. The best choice for any viewer to get an authentic experience would be to learn Japanese and just watch the original. For those of us without the time or patience to put into learning a language ranked as being one of the most difficult for English speakers to learn, subtitles become a necessary evil. With no knowledge of Japanese, the person or group creating those subtitles becomes your only lifeline when it comes to understanding what is being said. It would therefore be that person or that group's responsibility, if being paid for a premium service, to provide the best possible subtitles for the experience. Why then, is it, that official subs from the likes of Funimation are always the worst thing ever and make me want to die.

It's not just the They/Them situation. That was just a constant reminder that I was reading official subs from a company that wanted to appear progressive. Never mind that Japanese has no pronouns for the most part and the subject of a sentence is usually implied by context or a given title. Never mind the fact that your gender identity bullshit would be mocked openly in Japan and localizing it to western sensibilities in disingenuous and frankly xenophobic. Even ignoring all that the rest of the subtitles are just riddled with errors and unprofessionalism. And these are the official ones from Funimation! A supposedly premium streaming service! I found one place where they used less when they meant fewer. That's like 5th grade English, and it wasn't being used intentionally to accentuate a characters speech patterns or anything it was just straight up improper grammar. And that was just the example I chose to write down! But back on the subject of Leslie's name they constantly refer to him as XO. I was so confused at what that could possibly mean, at first I assumed it was another bizarre gender term. Listening closer I realized the word they were translating into XO was fukutaicho. I'm not going to pretend I understand all the intricacies of military terminology but at least in Japanese I can tell you that fukutaicho or 副隊長 just means lieutenant, vice captain, second in command, or something similar. For some ungodly reason they've decided to localize that to hell and back by changing it to Executive Officer. I don't know if that's supposed to be an equivalent American military rank, but it sure as hell doesn't sound like a second in command. And why not abbreviate it as EO? Why the hell did they decide to constantly refer to him as multiple people and as XO? It was such a clusterfuck of bad dialogue I was genuinely confused about who the characters were referring to most of the time, which is counter to the whole purpose of assigning pronouns in the first place! I wish they had just referred to Leslie exclusively as Leslie in the subtitles if they were going to be insistent that Leslie couldn't just go by fucking HE! FUCK!

I know I'm getting so heating over basically nothing, but as mentioned subtitles are the main connection most western viewers are going to be able to have with a show originally in Japanese, so it's really important to do them right. When you have these little hiccups along the way it starts to detract from the viewing experience and if they persist it starts to build and build until it becomes unbearable and you wonder why you didn't just pirate the one with fansubs. How is that the hobbyists doing something for free somehow manage to do a better job than multi-million dollar licensing companies that should have plenty of resources to pay teams of translators? Oh wait they don't pay their translators shit. $80 an episode regardless of word count. Fuck Funimation.

What is there to even like about this show? Well I took a couple of quotes that out of context are kind of funny. "that's because you're smart and smart people don't go into politics" was one, "I just watched anime and pretended I was some kind of expert at it, when I wasn't" was another. That second one describes me pretty well. There was also actually a pretty funny line right at the beginning of the show. They show a bunch of storefronts with signs saying nobody with [disease name] was allowed to enter and everyone is going around town wearing face masks and looking paranoid, and one guy has his face uncovered looking unconcerned and says "Aaah, there's no saving a city when it gets this far. people who are gonna get [disease name] are gonna get it, and there's nothing you can do to stop that."

Like I said that's all taken out of context and doesn't mean there is anything of value in this train wreck. I would rather eat the rotten asshole of a road-kill skunk and down it with beer than be forced to sit through another second of this fucking disaster. I didn't even get to how bad the plot is or how there's some time travel bullshit shoe-horned in at the last minute out of nowhere. 4/10 and if you know me you know how bad that is. I gave 8/10 to fucking Sword Art. Let that sink in. I'm done, please never make me think about this series again.

Just plain awful. When I first saw the title and cover visual of this anime, I *thought* it was going to be really good and exciting, but when I watched the actual show, I quickly lost enthusiasm and enjoyment after the first three or four episodes. I was duped, the title was a bait. I expected stuff to be more intense and suspenseful.

First, the story was boring and not interesting, the characters just going on missions down the labyrinth fighting monsters with cringe CGI animation and some sort of evil underground organization that doesn't much catch the viewer's attention. Later, the series enters a time ... loop in the last few episodes, which was boring and unenjoyable as well.

Next let's talk about the characters. We have the supposed protagonist who wants to be a hero but in reality is naïve, timid, incompetent and almost somehow useless. The female idol character looks cute but she was annoying and talkative. The Leslie guy who crossdresses looks very cringe, and the Larry boy who can't even feel pain acts like a jackass in the team, especially towards the protagonist. Then there's the Kobato girl who is a good artist but is not appealing either. And last, we have the squad commander, Vera, who was honestly the *only* character I got interested in because she's hot and a badass in combat.

The OP and ED were fine but not worth fully listening to.

The art and animation looked alright too but again the CGI monsters really are not desirable, which makes you want to unsee them so bad.

Lastly and worst of all, the synopsis of the show was a total dud. What a way to exploit the real life ongoing pandemic for a made up virus/disease in the story as an idea to catch the attention of viewers, it didn't go well unfortunately.

All in all, watching this show was very regrettable and is a good example of "don't judge the book by its cover". To conclude, this is basically a sci-fi ripoff of Made in Abyss.