The first episode of this show was awesome. I was expecting great things. We even got a teaser for his secret power. And then there's a time-skip, he's not around for two episodes, and they tell us the twist and the reason for it immediately.
I was expecting this to be some hybrid action/mystery show, but it honestly really isn't either one. It's more of a deduction show: watching a puzzle be solved. If you're going for this kind of Sherlock Holmes dynamic, you really need to be careful.
The stories are pretty basic, so already you're lacking the advantage of blowing people's minds. That means the predictable twists and turns you do have need to feel rewarding and fun. Lots of shows achieve this, but most of them benefit by using other elements like romance, comedy, or action to spice things up and take some pressure off of the mystery angle for the viewer. This show basically eschews those elements for something almost homeopathic, which means it goes all-in on explaining the business to Watson. And that's a bad thing.
This show is unimaginably boring. The characters are likeable, the scenarios are interesting, and the monsters are cool. But it just isn't very fun having an elementary schooler describe the 1000 page detective novel they just scribbled down every episode (not a knock on Iwa, I mean that's the writing ability level: "And then he did X, but it wasn't X, it was Y, but it wasn't Y either because it was really Z, but then B-san realized it really was X all along. Oh wait I forgot to tell you that Y is... Etc." And you're just smiling and nodding wondering why a stabbing is no needlessly complicated).
It really doesn't help that the other characters (like Saki) drag things out by repeatedly stating the obvious and recapping things over and over. I end up just waiting for the show to tell me its answer and feeling like there're plenty of problems with how it arrived there.
For example. If Rikka wants to create a god that can turn her back to human, why did she start by trying to create a serial killer? It seems to me like if you're starting from scratch anyway and can create any entity you want without restriction, you might as well and go for an approximation of your actual goal and not the opposite.
Next in our final arc here, Iwanaga is talking to all the redditors from one account. Why are they all stopping to listen? Any normal human would have gotten bored and stopped listening after the first theory. She didn't even begin her thread by saying she wanted to theorize about things. It would have been way more believable if each theory came from a separate account, making it look like a bunch of different people are offering different explanations, as opposed to one arrogant know-it-all.
Third, if it only takes a few 100k people to believe in a fictional ghost to make it real, how did the Glasgow woman disappear? How come every fictional ghost or character isn't always alive in some form? How come actual deities aren't already present in the world and capable of doing the miracles Rikka wants? How would shutting down a wiki forum even stop Steel Lady Nanase? Millions of people on the internet would ignore it or rarely/never use it in the first place, but still find believe in it themselves or find enclaves in supernatural communities on other websites.
The entire arc of the fictional ghost falls apart at the seams. I would normally overlook this as dumb fun that isn't supposed to be ironclad in its logic, but the entire show revolves around showcasing said logic.
Ignoring all of that; Saki is dumb. Really really dumb. You find out your bf is immortal, so you get traumatized and run away. Like she didn't even see him come back from the dead. She just saw some standard Wolverine shit. But they would apparently never work for some reason. Makes you wonder why they worked in the first place. Also she's a traffic cop. She writes traffic tickets. Why does she work with a detective? Why does he give her evidence and case files? Why does he ask her to investigate leads? She's not a detective. She's a traffic cop. Why didn't they just make her a freaking detective in the show?
While I liked the pairing in the first episode... I don't like the main couple anymore. It feels more like he's forced to be with Iwa because he can't be with anyone else (for dumb reasons). I don't feel like he genuinely wants it at all. Instead it just feels really sad to see him constantly reject Iwa. I just want both characters to move on at this point. But I don't think that will happen because smooth operator delivered a pickup line and held her hand.
I kept watching this waiting for it to get better. And I just felt like the writers sucked the life out of everything they created. Everything was just soooooooooooooooooo BORING. And they had so many cool creatures and ideas to play around with. I got excited at every new mystery, thinking that would be the moment when the training wheels come off. But every time I ended up looking at my phone waiting for the episode to end, so Iwa could shut the hell up for 5 seconds. I'll probably end up watching the second season. But I doubt it'll be better.
7/10 for episode 1. 3/10 for everything after. Rewatches would probably push it down another digit. There's reason why it took me 2 weeks to finish the last arc... >_>
P.S. I get the design choice, but Rikka is so skinny it creeps me out. Such a pretty face too. It's a shame. |
