Sep 26, 2016
Overall (7/10)
Right of the bat, I'm gonna say it's not a great anime, it really isn't. High Average at best, but cut it some slack. The 12 episodes given as screen time was just *way* too short to give the whole story justice. It's dark, but the nitty gritty details of the whole thing aren't really highlighted, they give you a few shots just to get the general idea. I'd say that they actually conveyed the main points and prompt pretty well, but as a lore enthusiast, I can't help but be disappointing with the lack of content. So much potential down the drain
...
probably thanks to them having to cut a lot of the content out due to this restriction. It would have felt better if they gave it 25 episodes. Pity
However, as a follower of the Muv-Luv series, I couldn't help but watch the whole thing until the end. It was refreshing to see and there haven't been too many mecha animes recently (relatively speaking) that i can recall.
STORY (6/10)
It tickles the history nerd in me to see someones take on a crazy question: "What if very anti-human aliens decided to visit Earth during the Cold War?"
An already unstable period becoming even more unstable! Perfect, what more could you want?
The world has just 'recovered' from WWII and everyone should be good with things, but humans aren't a peaceful bunch. Queue the Cold War! Red Vs Blue! But wait, the BETA appear, maybe people can finally get together, trust each other, and work as a cohesive group.
Nah, screw that, who needs that when you can get all the power you want? The Black Marks portrays the bad side of people and how dark politics and war can really get. Forget the romanticizing, if you're new to dark anime and you want to get a teaser of what the dark side is like, this series is a good introduction. See how humans are just as much a problem as aliens are!
I personally like stories like this, which is why i watched the thing in the first place. I find that Despair and Hope (especially in the middle of a war) are very exciting themes to any anime, and the onset of an seemingly unending alien force that wants to annihilate you, your family, your cow and every one else to be a good prompt for even more themes.
There are a *few* plot holes that i wish they filled out properly. Nothing major, but they did add one too many spoons of Deus Ex Machina for my taste. Then again, I could just be negative like that. Entertainment like this wouldn't be entertainment if it was completely realistic, so i think it went down fairly smoothly
Art and Sound (6.5/10)
The OP and ED aren't bad, but they aren't the best.
I'm sure they can get some peoples blood up, for sure, but
I'm just not the type to look at the music of an anime into that much detail.
It's SFX where quite nice. It sounded quite typical for a mecha/war anime, but not cheesy or corny.
The art seems like it's new-gen art on a budget. It fills out the basic ideas of many of the images, but some details were not given any effort, such as the deck of the battleships in one of the scenes, or the uniform details on some of the characters.
The art isn't stiff, however, and most (if not all) of the parts fitted well into the whole
Character (7/10)
I actually liked the characters in this one. I'm biased, deal with it.
Most didn't lack substance, considering the time of the anime and most of the 666th squad seemed to build on something at least. The members were given equal attention which made them fairly emotionally invest-able to the watcher. There were some lines, however, that didn't seem to fit and felt like they were put there just to give weight to the current event or character for that one single moment, so it was a little shallow.
Enjoyment (9/10) (Slight Spoilers)
I gave it a Nine for a few reasons:
-It's a dark anime. I like dark anime
-Mechas!
-Cold War Era + Mechas! Aww yeahh.
-Politics, an old time favorite of mine, grinds my gears cause it's a real and valid thing that happens. Always nice to see how the story ends.
-People actually die in the squad, It's kinda realistic!
-They continued Muv-Luv! Yussssss, i thought it was a dead series.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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