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What brought me here was a PV that an ad randomly threw at me as I was reading what this season had to offer (which is rare enough as it is). Given that, I'm genuinely surprised at how many poor reviews people have put up for this show. I don't write reviews before watching all the scheduled episodes, this one is no different, and I hope that you may just be one step closer to considering watching this after reading the following.

STORY: 8

The premise is simple, Aihara Yuzu, who's never actually fallen in love before (but pretends to her friends) is attracted to her practical ... polar opposite, Aihara Mei... who also happens to be her step-sister. The story is really about how they get along, and how they fall in love with each other.

The one-sided development is how I find most modern anime relationships go, where one character is madly attracted to the other and somehow they just... magically like them back one day with no rhyme or reason. You won't find that here, even if it seems that way at first.

ART/SOUND: 8

It's rare for me to see an anime that looks attractive, but not over-the-top flash/bang/glitter... maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. Given that, Citrus is very nicely animated, considering that the TV anime industry in Japan doesn't make as much revenue as actual licenses bought/Blu-Ray and DVD copies sold.

Some scenes look anatomically odd or some areas, PASSIONE thought it a good idea to pull out the stops on kissing sound folios that just end up making it awkward but overall I'm impressed that the production level animation looks this good for TV.

CHARACTER: 9

Alright, here's where I find a lot of reviews tend to miss the point and call the characters underdeveloped or downright undeveloped. What honestly got me hooked on this series are the characters, not the story, not the idea of yuri/shoujo-ai (girl's love)... but that's a nice bonus. PASSIONE did well to follow the anime closely to the manga frame by frame, and the storytelling style is to show, not tell.

On the outside, Yuzu is one of those "meddling teenager" characters who's always up in your face, being loud and rambunctious.
On the outside, Mei is one of those "perfect" girls who doesn't let anyone or anything bother her. She's that polar opposite, quiet, thoughtful and distanced.

Mei and Yuzu feel like real teenagers, with real problems and real, but not always practical and mature ways to deal with said problems. There's a layer of depth to the characters that you can't discern from simply watching they do as a passive viewer.

Yuzu is shown at the very least to be very thoughtful when she's not reacting to something. Mei is likewise distanced because of her fear of becoming too attached. These are things that real people do and personalities that real people develop because of things that happened to them!

TLDR; OVERALL: 9

The one reason I can't recommend this show is that PASSIONE made the intimacy almost one step too far from something that should feel nice to see, into something incredibly uncomfortable. Trigger warning for images of cringe and pseudo-assault. The "no-means-no-means-yes" is definitely bad for my feeling.

Cringe aside, there is a reason why these characters do these things. I think character development is the strongest point of the series, and it motivates practically every side of the story. There is a reason why Mei practically assaults Yuzu in the opening scenes, which ties into her development as a character, who she is, how she perceives affection (misaffection), and her image as someone cold and distanced for fear of hurt.

I recommend this show if you, like me are starved for a fictional character who if you took them out of their world and shoved them here, would behave 3-dimensionally like a real person. This is a rarity in modern story-telling.

The key to understanding the world of CITRUS is not simply to know the character... but to understand them as the many-faceted human beings that they are, even if they are fictional.

I do hope you give CITRUS a try. Be undissuaded by nay-sayers, and even yay-sayers like me. Please watch it if you can handle some uncomfortable moments, and develop your own opinions.

That said, CITRUS is now my new favourite item of the season so send me a private message if you'd like to elaborate on this mini-discussion about character development!

Normally I don't write reviews right off the bat without finishing the series, but 戯言遣い: クビキリサイクル (Zaregoto: The Beheading Cycle) a good one, I promise you!

To begin, this anime is the adaptation of the book with the same name. The author is NISIOISIN which should ring some bells if you are a fan of Katanagatari, Bakemonogatari, Nisemogatari and the like.

Story:

Well because this book is one of my all-time favourites, I won't spoil the story but I'm giving it a 10 because even if this is an anime adaptation, the story is more than likely going to be the same as the book (which I know).

Art/Sound:

It's ... fitting since SHAFT Studios paired with a NISIOISIN work in 2009 for Bakemonogatari, they'd be the same pair for Zaregoto. SHAFT as of late is also known for it's mind-flip animation and weird camera angles so this may be a good choice for this kind of story.

Character:

Episode 1 covers maybe the first 2 or so chapters of the book so I'm not surprised no action happened. But I'm sure you can gather that 7 geniuses in their respective fields are gathered on an island and they're all unique as hell.

Other Notes:

Call me biased but so far, I'm impressed, the anime has at least in the first episode remained true to the book's storytelling pace. So I'll be keeping a close eye on this as it unfolds into the next year.

By the way, if anyone is interested in the book. Del Rey has only translated the first two books Kubikiri Cycle and the Kubishime Romanticist in English.

As much flak as everyone gives this show for being too similar to 進撃の巨人 (Attack on Titan), there are some interesting things worth noting. SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN FOR THE TLDR IF YOU'D RATHER SKIP AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT ANALYSIS FROM THE OTHER REVIEWS.

Story

Of course, as many point out, the story has lots of loopholes, unexplained occurrences and the like, which makes the storytelling weak. I think there are some interesting ideas going into this. I particularly liked the fusion between Meiji, Shogun/Sengokujidai and industrial steampunk. While all of the elements/ideas aren't fused together perfectly, it's passable that I watched all the way until the ... end of the series (and I've been known to drop the "popular" Shounen Jump ones like Bleach and Naruto for repetition and reuse of the same formula for hundreds of episodes, even if their storytelling is good).

Like all "like-iterations" of the same core ideas, it's important to recognize カバネリ (Kabaneri) as something that had the potential to be great, but fell short, partly because of the above flaws, but also because it lives under the shadow of Attack on Titan. The rest of this review is focused with the idea onward that Kabaneri is not the same as Attack on Titan, and shouldn't be treated as such.

Art

I'm an artist, while there's some awkward inconsistencies here and there with anatomical limits (especially when it comes to orchestrating battle scenes), it's well drawn, especially in an age where anime is a modern commodity and less effort goes into them than it once was in the 90's. I typically stay for series that are well drawn, or at least make SOME semblance of anatomical accuracy (I'm sure we can all do without the ecchi, unrealistic rocket-flop boobs - thanks for not putting that in).

Sound

What can I say - sound direction is great. I watched most of with headphones on and I felt my heart skip in certain scenes with the カバネ (Kabane) howling in the distance. Don't even get me started on Hiroyuki Sawano, because we all know that man is a genius at evoking emotion through sound.

Character

Suffers the same issues as the story really, low development, unexplained personality inconsistencies and the like. It does touch however on some themes about human nature that I find particularly poignant. They illustrated well how humans in general writhe in fear, not many of us are heroes, or can be. We all too easily descend into fear and madness, collapsing our own societies at the drop of a hat. We're talking ideology and rhetoric here, of people driven by fear, loss, grief, and emotions that all too often make even the most rational of us into the same kind of beasts the Kabane are - albeit of the breathing, thinking kind. It's also important to talk about naivety and how easily some following the ideology they believe in, even if they don't understand its consequences. Given this, while individual characters are weak, the overarching themes are apparent. Besides, what kind of character development can you get from a 12 episode anime anyway? Bring back the 52-series!

TLDR:

Yes, we all know it's Attack on Titan (if it fell short) and we all know that lots of people rated it poorly for that reason. That itself isn't a sufficient reason to completely ignore it. The story is passable, art is good, sound is great. Not once while I was watching did I make cross comparisons to Attack on Titan, to anyone who watches this, please don't do this series injustice by following with the majority opinion. Come to your own conclusions after giving some time to think about what it highlights AFTER you finish the series.

Honestly for all the bad rap that the previous critiques have given this show, especially the second installment, I feel they are undeserved.

CHARACTER/PLOT
Elements of the first series remain but there is a bit more character development. But if all you're looking for is character development and a wicked story with crazy plot devices, you're not gonna find that here. The passage of time in the plot direction is a little messy as it compresses days, weeks and possibly months into disjointed scenes, but it's not a bad thing as you can still figure out that time actually passed.

ART/SOUND
Instead the majority of the production budget ... is on the soundtrack (by Hiroyuki Sawano) and 3D mech generation, which is fluid and smooth compared to the likes of Gundam.

COMPARISON
Gundam is the popular modern standard of all mecha/sci-fi interplanetary warfare, and if you're going to compare this to any Gundam installment, Gundam will win almost every time. But appreciating Aldnoah.Zero for its uniqueness instead of its similarities to Gundam is what will really get you the most enjoyment out of this show.

For one, combat in Gundam essentially boils down to individual duels between pilots in a warfare setting. In Aldnoah.Zero however, characters work together in combat and defeat foes that have obviously more advanced technology through ad hoc calculation and strategy.

Battleships in Gundam play a more active role and engage enemies with their own artillery. Whereas here you'll find that they are more of a resupply/comms station and do not engage as frequently.

There are obvious plot devices that span from the Gundam series of the 2000s and up, but for the same reason that Gundam is the modern standard, do not simply dismiss this anime as a 'cheap Gundam clone'.

As a longtime Gundam fan, I wasn't sure what to expect when watching Aldnoah.Zero but I can say I thoroughly enjoyed this series. Gundam is to Aldnoah.Zero like two games of the mecha genre, but have very different combat systems and UIs. So if you like mecha sci-fi in general, I do believe you will like this.

If you're looking for a show with heartstring wrenching character development, this is probably not where you want to end up, but if you like giant robot action that's a different category from the likes of Gundam, then you will enjoy this show.

I've been a fan of the Gundam series for many years and while Gundam as a whole focuses more on the emotive side of war and politics, the overarching theme is that usually the protagonists side possesses strong machinery more than the opposing side, that or both have equal power.

What fascinated me most about Aldnoah.Zero is that the Terran side has literally inferior ... firepower (and the first 5 minutes of the pilot make this very clear) compared to the Martian side. But each battle is fought with strategy and ad hoc calculation, something I found lacking in Gundam, where battles essentially boil down to either who is the better pilot or some macro-strategy executed by the battleship. On the other hand, the battleship plays more of a comms role in Aldnoah Zero, relaying between combatant units than frequently engaging its own artillery.

The mech designs are all unique, aside from Terran technology, which just comprises of two unique models, each Martian unit is distinct with its own unique set of skills. You'll notices that in Gundam each unit either falls into one of two categories: a samurai styled unit with a helmet shaped head, a V-fin and skirt armour, or a ZAKU-style unit (which the GOUF is a part of too), a mono-eye, tubing and heavy armour plates. In Aldnoah.Zero, an enemy unit can look like a bat, a gull, a beetle etc. in general shape, which is what did it for me.

The story is generic, lacking and raised a lot more questions than it actually answered, but hey, the artwork and soundtrack make it clear that it's main goal is riveting battle scenes, animated in seamless 2D-3D meshes.

The main thing to look at here is that if you are trying to compare this to Gundam, in general terms, Gundam is going to win almost every time, but looking at this in its own unique traits is what makes this show truly stand apart from other mecha sci-fi anime.

Although I was happy that most of the cast came back, it was far too confusing, even for a fan of the series like me.

STORYTELLING:
First of all, I'd like to say that it takes a little bit of reasoning and patience to deal with the storytelling as it switches back and forth between two different settings. It could have gone over well, given that aspect but sometimes the sudden change even left me wondering what just happened. It takes a while to realise what's really going on. Moreover, it's a decent concept but lacks depth.

ART:
The same art style that was used for the original 52 ... episodes is still present here, which makes me smile, the characters still look the same, minus the minor changes in hair length, indicating time.

SOUND:
I thought the opening and ending themes sounded great, and the insert songs fit in appropriately, if you were to look up the lyrics somewhere you'd see what I mean. The only drawbacks that I'd note is that somewhere along the lined is deliberately timed slower. Not that it hurts the overall but in my opinion, it would have been nicer if timed correctly. Oh, and prepare for lots of cheesy lines.

CHARACTER:
I really must confess that even though much of the old cast returned, there were a few quirks here and there which disappointed me. Though most of the characters were the same as the original series, a few of them were very out-of-character. I also had a problem with the shallow actions of some of the supporting characters.

OVERALL ENJOYMENT:
I must say that I didn't mind watching it but half of me liked the story while the other half wanted to stop and ban it as an insult to the original. Though it is necessary to watch the original 52 episodes first, I would say that when coming to this OVA segment, it would be easier just to stop before watching for those of you with low patience/tolerance levels.