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Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova is an interesting show in almost every way, even though that interesting nature does not always translate into being particularly good.
The most quickly noticable way that Ars Nova is radically different from most anime is the animation. It is entirely animated using cg, a decision that makes it sometimes feel less like a show and more like an unusually complicated tech demo. This is a very subjective parameter, it didn't really bother me much, but some people might find it distracting or off-putting. Watch a trailer, watch one of the trailers for RWBY (they share animation styles), and you ... should be able to tell whether you'll like the animation for Ars Nova.
The character designs range from uninspired, in the case of the main character or the female lead, to very evocative designs that succeed in instantly giving you a sense of who the character is, like the design for Kongou, one of the primary antagonists. A minor character, Sou Oribe, really stands out thanks to the iron-man style mask he wears, but besides a throwaway line about it being for allergies, it seems pretty clear that it was really just put in to remind us that it's the future. The rest of the characters in the harem (and make no mistake, there is a harem in this show) are not especially interesting, but they certainly don't hurt the show any, especially a character that not long after her first appearance ends up in the body of a teddy bear, which is used for laughs just enough that it stays funny.
Normally, vehicle and world design in a non-mecha show is fairly unimportant, but in Ars Nova, we have warships coming out of our nostrils. The design is proficient and very fun to watch in action, where the full cg really shines. It is a huge credit to the production crew that they could get the animation of the people to the level that it didn't bother me, because it meant that there was no uncomfortable moment where things suddenly become cg. The warships seemed a little over-armed, given the hundreds of missiles that get fired on top of the massive WWII style cannons mounted on the ships, but given that the cannons were firing laser beams, it wasn't hard to shut up and enjoy the ride, and my suspension of disbelief stayed firmly in place. The world design beyond the ships themselves wasn't particularly interesting, but it didn't need to be. Maybe a little bit more to emphasize how stretched an island nation like Japan would get if completely cut off from the sea, but again, the show simply isn't interested in a gritty world, so I can get behind the aesthetic decisions.
The sound is average to good, with the OP being a highlight. None of the voice actors stood out in any real way to me, with minor exceptions to Manami Numakura as Takao and Yukana as Kongou, with Maya (by Mako)'s “It's a carnival” being a painfully cute earworm. The performances are somewhat hamstrung by the fact that the female lead is clearly being directed towards a very robotic, emotionless performance for most of the show, which makes the moments where she was trying to break out of that difficult to take seriously or value as highly as they deserved. The term “proficient” seems fitting, while no-one sparkled, there was no member of the cast that dragged the show down either. Sound effects during battles were great, although I would have liked the filters messed with a little more to make it feel more like we were listening through layers of water. Also, missing out on a tense scene with an enemy pinging with sonar searching for the cast seems like a true whiff on the part of the writing staff, and a sad opportunity lost. The insert music is all good, with nothing standing out a great deal nor was there a moment where I wished there was music when there was none.
The writing and story direction is sadly the weakest part of the show. The overarching theme of the show is the question of if the Mental Models (AI that are both part of the ships and independent from them) are, or even should be, human. It's well-trodden ground, and Ars Nova stays carefully within the path blazed for them by Ghost in the Shell in anime, Battlestar Galactica in television, and tremendously done in literature by The Bicentennial Man, by Isaac Asimov. The high themes are somewhat underwhelming as a result. The story is a rollercoaster of quality, with a strong beginning and a strong end, but a middle-section that both drags, and involves characters and storylines that are sadly extraneous. I liked the characters of Haruna and Kirishima, but their adventure is an unecessary sideline that would have been better spent giving more development to the main characters. Spend more time on the main characters, make the show as a whole better, and give Haruna and Kirishima (and their subplot) their own subplot, with room to grow and really matter in the overall narrative, instead of going and having their adventure and then going back to the main characters without really letting what they just did have any impact on the story as a whole.
The show is begging to have massive fleet engagements, but sadly we are teased by the beginning of the show, which has several battles that promise much more, especially given the increasing size of the cast on the protagonist's side, but we never get a fleet on fleet battle, and I felt a little bit cheated by that. If I want to watch powerful teenage girls smack each other around, the mahou shoujou genre is perfect for that, giving me warships and then yanking them away is just cruel.
The romantic arc (such as it is) fell a little flat for me, especially given the harem setup that really goes absolutely nowhere. The main character barely seems to have emotions, and given how busy everyone is with the plot, I can't blame him for not having time to manage a harem of warship AI, but again it felt a little bit like the viewers were being cheated by a clear setup without any dramatic payoff. The strength of anime over western television is the ability to have conclusive endings and characters that really grow and change, and the main character did not do this, nor did his romantic arc really have closure.
The miscellaneous parts of the writing, like the comedy, went over fairly well, the jokes were well timed and rarely were driven into the ground (shakiin!). There were no cultural references that I found overly difficult to understand, and the subs I used (Horriblesubs) gave me what I needed to enjoy the show.
Overall, I thought the show was pretty good, even if it didn't quite live up to its potential. Cut out some unecessary arcs and replace them with more development for the main cast (and more fleet battles) and you have an exceptional show, but as is it's “merely” good. A 7/10, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to turn their brain off and simply have a good time.

Put simply, Galilei Donna is an abject failure, a complete trainwreck of a show, and by merely reading this review, you have already wasted too much of your life on it. The show's premise seems full of promise, a complicated post-environmental apocalypse world with megacorporations and sky pirates and the ever-encroaching threat of complete energy collapse. Add to this main characters with pluck, and a story that concerns itself with a major historical figure, and you have something for everyone, be they fan of moe, mecha action, American Treasure-style clue-following, or a projection of what our world might become. All in theory. In reality, you ... have two meaningless protagonists next to Hozuki, who is one of the most dreadful mary sue characters I've seen in a professionally written work, and who doesn't even have the common courtesy to be adorable while doing so. You have mecha that show up rarely, and work so hard to match the bizarre obsession with goldfish that it ruins what little interesting design it had come up with. You have "clues" that literally boil down to an AI telling them where they go next, without even real sight-seeing eyecandy to show for it, before they just stumble over the next piece of the puzzle. Plus, we spend the entire show in either a strange version of Italy that's basically just like Japan with silly outfits, a Japan which is just Japan with a little extra snow, or the middle of a desert. None of it's pieces fit, none of the promise is delivered upon. Even the protagonists themselves have no real character development, with the non-Hozuki protagonists being actively ignored by the plot, to the degree that one receives literally no plot arc, and the other having an arc that consists of staring longly at a picture, being shunned wordlessly, and then throwing away the picture. The primary antagonist's hitman receives more character development and backstory examination than every other character combined, and frankly, I'd much rather have watched a show about him. The only even barely likable character is Cinciho, a sky pirate, whose primary trait that makes him amusing is being voiced by Hiroshi Kamiya.

Simply put, the story and characters are complete crap, the art ranges from below average to passable, and the only high points are a couple of musical pieces and the aforementioned sky pirate. To cap off this abortion masquerading as entertainment, the entire work is based off the creators mistaken belief that Galileo was actually Leonardo Da Vinci. 2/10, and may God preserve us from any additional content within this work.