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A wild Masaaki Yuasa appears! Yuasa uses adaptation of a classic! It’s super effective!


Where to begin. As many of you know Masaaki Yuasa is one of the current leading anime directors. Always pushing boundaries wherever he can. His previous works have all been pretty spectacular, so when I’ve heard about him adapting Devilman, a classic 70s manga that shaped the manga industry as a whole and inspired numerous artists, I was pretty excited. And now after watching the series I must say that the hype is well deserved.


First of all Devilman itself is far from flawless. The series is pretty dated, the humour is ... awkward to say the least, the characters are mostly bland and the story itself is filled with ridiculous plot devices and asspulls up the…well ass. So I was hoping that Yuasa is gonna “fix” the flaws of Devilman and modernize it. And he did it. The story’s core message and plot stays mostly the same. We get some new characters and some new twists here and there. The story indeed is modernized but it’s done naturally. There are some iffy moments here and there, some plot holes and out of nowhere stuff but nothing major.


Biggest positive about this adaptation is added depth to its characters. The manga’s characters were shallow, at times almost caricatures. Crybaby gives everybody several layers. Even Miki who in the original was sort of a “thing” for Akira to protect/depend upon works on her own well here. No awkward “you’re making me horny” phrases and no creepy chuckling. This in return adds a lot of emotional resonance between you and the cast. The manga left me mostly cold, but the anime moved me in a ways I was not expecting.


The biggest negative is sadly it’s pacing. Yuasa works fast and story needs to keep moving, plus the manga itself was very fast paced (especially towards the end), but Crybaby has very strange pacing issues. It stays still at times when characters are having important moments but blitzes through important battles and some important plot points. This could very well be intentional so I am not gonna knock it until I’ll re watch it to determine if it was indeed intentional.


The production is obviously godlike, if this is what Yuasa with good budget is, I want more. Animation is more on model so this is probably Yuasa at his normiest. But that hardly takes away from the fact that the CGI is virtually undetectable and very well blended. The colours serve purpose as always and dictate the tone and mood of the scenes well without being too overpowering. Yuasa also somehow gets even better at directing. Camera work in the early episodes feels very real and the movements add to the overall message that the scene dictates. The music is great (Kensuke Ushio can have my babies) from hard synths to organs. I was expecting rock/metal style of soundtrack but I am not mad at all. Oh and there’s some rapping. And it’s great!


And now for my final point…the 18+ stuff. Yes there is extreme gore. Yes there is nudity and sex. And I love it. But some people might not, so beware! There are guts flying everywhere, people getting their heads blown off and there are nips, asses and even 1 uncensored female crotch shot. But this stuff doesn’t serve purpose of being there just as fan service. It works together with the story and builds characterization and themes. Plus there are some pretty drastic scenes. Definitely not for the faint-hearted. If you are one of those people, avoid Devilman Crybaby at all costs!


Ps. for Yuasa - Boy if you don't chill with all the meta jokes

7 years after the first time Masaaki Yuasa adapted Morimi Tomihiko's work comes their second dance. Does it work this time aswell? In short: HELL YES.


Night is short, walk on girl is set in tatami universe. There are no direct references just some Easter eggs but the world works on the same logic as Tatami Galaxy. Except this time it's set in Kyoto which means it's much more magical.


Our Raven haired maiden begins her journey through night and our Senpai follows while trying to "coincidentally" bump into her. The movie is split into parts that are all connected via it's main theme. The fate. ... We have two main characters who are completely different in terms of their views on fate. One just follows while the other makes his own. That is however not the single focus on the movie as it tackles multiple different themes. Love, age, time, sexu- I mean Johnnies.


Yuasa gets on his absolute A game this time. The directing is just masterful and the animation is some of the best I've seen in any anime. There are so many sakuga moments. And not just animation, the colour pallet, character designs, everything. Everything works just perfectly.


The music is fantastic, the sound design is fantastic, voice acting is top notch (with everybody favourite's HanaKana as the main girl)


Character wise it's another hit. We have two main characters who are completely different in terms of their views on fate. One just follows while the other makes his own. Senpai was to me incredibly relatable. Raven haired maiden incredibly likeable and the rest worked perfectly to support both their journies while experiencing some of their own. All of this climaxes during the last 20 minutes of the movie resulting into one of the most chaotic and fun rides I've had in a while. And that is my final point.


This movie is incredibly fun. Even if you remove all the symbolism, if you ignore all the production, if you don't care about all the themes. You are still left with very funny, quirky and colorful comedy that will leave you smiling and possibly drop a tear here and there.


So what the hell are you waiting for? Experience this journey! Because night is short, so watch this bloody movie!

A wasted potential.

Atom: The Beginning had a great premise. Tell the story of Doctor Tenma and Doctor Ochanomizu as they create Bewusstsein, the AI system which will revolutionize robotics and will lead to creation of one of the greatest anime/manga icons of all time, Atom.

And we get that, but we also get a lot of useless filler. First 7 or 8 episodes work in repetitive episodic format. X Slice of life situation happens. Everything goes well, until something goes wrong. A106 saves the day. The end. This would've been fine if it built the characters of the show, or the world of the ... show. But sadly it doesn't happen. After the first half of the series we enter the second half which has continuous plot up until the very end. Aaaaaaand...it's not very good either. There is some action but it's bland. Characters are mostly uninteresting, the world itself is uninteresting. The show itself is uninteresting. We don't get to see how Robots deal with gained humanity. We don't get to see early stages of AI exploration. We get a fighting tournament.

Only episode which somewhat saves this anime from being completely mediocre, is the finale which at last brings some retrospective and contemplation.


As I said, the characters are uninteresting. All of them lack depth. All of them lack originality. Only Tenma occasionally shows deeper characteristics. But these moments are rare. Usually he's just a male tsundere/genius that doesn't act as genius. Hiroshi is the good guy, Motoko is the smug girl and Ran is the shy loli.


From the production standpoint it's fine. Music is good but forgetable, animation is fine (I am glad they kept the Tezuka's trademark noses) and CGI is actually pretty good.


I was looking forward to this anime the most in the last season. Sadly it disappointed me, but the final episode gave me a little hope for the future. If the series returns for another season, I hope this will be the path it'll take. Anime about beginnings of Atom deserves something better than episode about making udon.

Warm honesty. That’s how I would describe Fune wo Amu.

It is one of the “non-anime anime” as in it doesn’t really feel like anime. There are no over the top situations or goofy characters. Now that doesn’t make this anime boring. Matter of fact I enjoyed it quite a lot.

The absolutely best thing about this anime is its fantastic directing. Considering its premise and the fact that it is done by one of the lesser known studios, it’s just amazing how they were able to get a talented director to compose the storyboards like this. There are moments where I was legit amazed. If ... you find the premise boring, at least give the anime chance and watch first two episodes to get a feel of the amazing directing (especially in episode 2).

Plot of this anime is very simple, and yet it’s another strong point. As it tells a story of our main character’s journey across time the dictionary is worked on and published, we see a normal changes in life of somewhat normal person (albeit little socially awkward). Finding friends, falling in love, being challenged by your work. These things happen to everyone. By removing the aspect of unusualness, the series not only gains a lot of realism, but also allows us to observe real life situations and helps us providing possible solutions to said situations. But these solutions are not the universal right way. The series, while feeling very warm and honest, also has a little cold and sadness in it. Especially in the later episodes. And that is something I look for in anime. It has that real life feeling to it.

While the characters are not goofy or over the top, they are still entertaining and pleasant. Especially Nishioka who might be one of the greatest wingman in anime I’ve seen. The guy is just great. He’s the kind of friend everybody deserves. Our main character Majime is at first little robotic and stoic. But as he begins to work on the dictionary and as time progresses we see him develop thanks to his work. He found something he was predisposed to do. Our female lead is Kaguya (voiced by lovable Maaya Sakamoto). Kaguya is very solid female character. She’s very supportive but at the same time she’s independent. She’s a person. She doesn’t function as Majime’s safety net or goal. She’s not plot device or fanservice bait. She is god honest woman without any goofiness. And that is something I haven’t seen much in a recent anime series.

The character interactions are big part of why this anime works and flows so well. There is nothing holding it back. No boring moments, no boring expositions or dialogue. Everything flows well and I never had to check how much is left until the episode ends. It just grips you for 20 minutes. There are even cute interludes with dictionary mascots talking to each other.

Production is pretty good. The animation for whatever reason reminded me of IG (the character designs). It’s nothing mind-blowing but considering what this series is about, it is pretty fantastic. It could’ve easily been much worse, with less care put into it. Music is also pretty good. Orchestral sounds make the scenes feel more impactful and bigger (for example the “Make a good dictionary” scene in episode 2). There is no particular role which leaves a lasting impression when it comes to voice acting, but considering the premise of the series that would be almost impossible. However that hardly means the voice acting is bad. As I already mentioned Kaguya is voiced by my personal favourite Maaya Sakamoto and Majime is voiced by veteran Takahiro Sakurai who’s having a great year when it comes to voice acting. Reigen, Noboru-Sensei, and Majime. Nishioka is voiced by Kimiya Hiroshi…wait…Remi (who’s character from later episodes) is voiced by Chiwa Saito…what the hell? What is the Monogatari gang doing here?!?

In the end, there is hardly anything bad you can say about this anime. If you are not interested from the start because of the “boring” premise, and you don’t really care about good directing you won’t like this series. If you are okay with its premise definitely watch it. It’s like a tea, an anime which allows you to sit down, relax, and slowly enjoy it.

Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu has been hyped to me as the best anime of this year. Mature historical drama with amazing voice acting and editing.

First lets tackle the voice acting which is truly spectacular. Especially during Rakugo scenes where voice actors shine at almost mindblowing levels. It really shows how great Japanese voice acting is. I am not japanese speaker so I can't really appreciate or criticize the rakugo perfomances but I can hear how the voice actors can jump between characters during the performance and it's pretty fantastic.

With that also comes the editing which smartly uses cuts and camera angles to enhance the ... rakugo scenes and I absolutely loved it. Really great stuff

The drama is good and not so good. I appreciate the maturity of the series and how it tackled themes of obsession loneliness and devotion, but the story itself is hardly original and at certain points it becomes kinda stupid. I am talking about the episode 12 in particular. The stuff that is happening here feels like forced end of the plotline because author wasn’t sure how to end it. It was just dumb.

The rest of production is okay. The music is great mix of traditional Japanese music and jazz. The animation is inconsistent. Especially when it comes to scenes with audiences. You have this beautifully drawn main characters and then the camera cuts to the audience and you see blobs with eyes. I know these characters are completely irrelevant but the difference of quality is truly striking.

Only truly interesting character to me was Kikuhiko who was greatly complex. Some people might say that Sukeroku was the best character, but to me he was just straight up Gary Sue. Sure he’s drunk and filthy and lazy but that’s about all that’s bad about him. He still performs godlike rakugo at the end of the day and everybody still loves him. He only has 2 interesting moments in the entire series, one comes out of nowhere but I enjoyed it, the other came way too late for me to care. Overall the cast is not bad per se and it obviously mainly focuses on the dynamic between the two main characters but there’s nothing notable.

I am glad this anime was created because it taught me about the great art of rakugo but outside of its setting the story is hardly original. Far from bad, and not so far from amazing but still far enough.

Yuri on Ice captivated hearts of its fans across the globe. Colourful characters, beautiful music and interesting premise kept people entertained throughout its run. There are however problems which stopped it from grasping its potential and becoming truly amazing.

As I said the characters, music and premise are the strongest points of this anime. Let’s begin with the premise. There aren’t many sports anime which have balls to start with an adult protagonist, let alone an experienced one. Our main character Yuri is 22 years old at the beginning of the series and he’s already skating at the grand prix final. He’s already reached the ... endgame. But he fails. He panics and in combination of stress and lack of confidence he bombs his skating program resulting in him finishing at the last place. The underdog stories are always present in sports series. But not many of them like this. Our protagonist is already amongst the elite. He’s already reached level which not many were able to reach. Yuri himself as a character is not original, but has tangible mature quality to him. He sacrificed potential childhood love to be able to skate at this level. Yuri in the first 4 episodes is pretty fantastic character who has arc of self-discovery and self-appreciation.

The rest of the characters are all gimmicky and fun. Victor is cool and extremely charismatic. He acts as support for Yuri and also pushes Yuri with his actions when it’s necessary. His relationship with Yuri is maybe little over the top (kissing skates was never so gay) but it feels like genuine relationship of appreciation. Yuri finds support and driving force in Victor while Victor finds passion, energy, strength and reason to continue work on ice skating. The rest of the characters are all different and have their own gimmicks instead of being just another rival. Yurio is Yuri with confidence, raised as future champion, expected to achieve greatness, but he’s still trying to appeal to Victor. He’s trying to receive his approval. Yurio’s relationship with Yuri is maybe little too dramatic but it’s easily excusable because of circumstances. Yurio is teenager whose biggest icon randomly decided to leave him and train this Japanese guy who failed miserably. This leaves Yurio in state of confusion and hatred for both Yuri and Victor. As the series progresses, via his own strength Yurio reaches emancipation from Victor and Yuri. He’s his own man. He skates not to receive approval but to win and prove he’s the best. That’s great development for a character that’s not the main focus of the series (especially in 12 episode anime). Every other character is notable in some way and some even receive development.

Lastly I have to mention music because it’s truly something you don’t see every day. Every skater has two different themes they skate to and both of them are fit to each skater’s personality. And the songs aren’t just instrumental but have actual singing in them. This must’ve taken a lot of time and effort and should be applauded by pretty much everybody.

Now let’s address the shortcomings of it. First of all the production apparently had issues. The animation is highly inconsistent. From the amazing skating performance of JJ in episode 8 to horribly looking Phichit’s performance in episode 6. It probably took A LOT of time to choreograph all of these skating programs so I understand that animating all of them is not easy at all. Hopefully this will be fixed in Blu-rays.

And now for the final and biggest problem I had with this series. It’s structure. There is not much breathing room after episode 4. Characters are kind of forced to develop as they skate or shortly before they skate which removes realism and progression. This series should’ve had at least 24 episodes. I understand that selling this idea of male ice skating with experienced people as main characters was not easy by any means (even if it was created by Sayo Yamamoto one of the more famous and acclaimed female anime directors). However this just leaves me to wonder how amazing a 24 episode Yuri on Ice could’ve been. For example look at Ping Pong. There are only 2 major events in Ping Pong with its 11 episodes. This gives lots of time for characters to flesh out and set themselves for development even if they receive it as they play their matches. In Yuri on Ice, after the initial 4 episodes which serve as development and establishment of Yuri’s and Victors characters there are 4 competitions. There is only 1 episode that works as breathing room and its episode 10. Outside of that it’s all skating. With more episodes the development and progression could’ve been smoother and cleaner. And that’s my biggest problem with this series. Well made, better paced 24 episodes would reach potential height of 9 or even higher. As the series stands like this, its highly enjoyable ride which never lets you go but it tries to force a bigger storyline than it can cleanly process thus leaving you in a state of slight satiation.

In near future, your life is decided for you. In order to maintain great social system, sacrifices must be made. Utopia has its price; or maybe perhaps its dystopia?

Psycho Pass comes from the mind of popular anime screenwriter Gen Urobuchi (Madoka Magica) and Production IG. It is 2010s Ghost in the Shell. High concepts, heavy theme building, great production. But unlike GitS, Psycho Pass can’t (or doesn’t want) to work with its world in a proper way. From a plot standpoint Psycho Pass is somewhat solid. We have our bad guy with a scary plan and bunch of detectives who are trying to catch ... him. In between that we play this game of “is this ethically correct way of doing things” or “is this socio-political system worth the cost”. That is probably the biggest problem that I had with Psycho Pass. It becomes way too self-absorbed. Instead of trying to fully commit to tell a great story in an interesting setting, we are again and again being confronted with different moral questions and conflicts. The constant quoting of famous writers and philosophers further pushes this notion. I like smart quotations and cheeky nods as any other person, but it got annoying at times. If you want to include this sort of thing, you should do it in a more natural and smoother way. It’s great that Gen Urobuchi knows all these works, but it felt like intellectual masturbation at its most annoying times.

You may say “well they expect viewers to be smart and to enjoy all these talks about writers and philosophers and everlasting debates about whether or not they live in near perfect social climate or repainted mega prison” to which I say fair enough. This argument would work except for my other problem with the story. And that is present info dumping where it definitely shouldn’t be happening.

The group of bad guys are on their way to their big final destination. The apex of their plan. And what is happening? Info dumps to explain everything. It cheapens the overall experience. This keeps happening in almost every episode. Sometimes it’s excusable because we as the audience would be in complete darkness. Other times its plain silly and somewhat lazy.

There are some design problems I had. For example the Dominator guns make no sense in the story because they are direct contradiction of Sybil system with its rules and regulations. The techology is not original or clever by any means. Smartphones, holograms, robots. We've seen it 1000x times. There is really no attempt to be original. Hell, even the Dominator is similar to Lawbringer from the Judge Dredd series. But these are smaller cons and they don’t affect the overall score that much for me.

Character wise it’s hit or miss. Our main group of detectives are absolute cookie cutter team. The new girl who’s the audience character to whom we are supposed to relate and who is our eyes and mouth in this story, and the genius level badass detective who’s obsessed with this one hard case. There is steady development of our main girl Akane and I am really happy that at the end of the series we can see her as stronger person while still having most of her believes that she had at the start of the series. I am guessing that Kougami is supposed to be audience character as well on some level. He’s our inner consciousness. All of us want to act more like Akane on the ouside, and try to pursue the law, but on the inside we are more like Kougami and want to take law in our own hands. He’s little weaker character than Akane. There is lack of originality when it comes to the cast of good guys. So how are the villains?

Not much better. For the first part of the series we have the sort of “monster of the week” situation. A killer appears and detectives go after him. The main antagonist Makishima is a mix of Johan from Monster and Hannibal Lecter (the show version). He is the anarchist villain. Doesn’t like the system, tries to show its flaws, and tries to understand humans better. But even he is not written well enough. His endgame doesn’t really make sense once you finish watching the series. Why hasn't he done certain things from the beginning? He's smart but also physically capable to a point where he can fight highly trained police officer and street thugs. It doesn't really fit his character. Would Johan just say screw it and tried to kick some ass too? No he would use other people instead. Makishima somehow ends up being more and less realistic than Johan at the same time.

Production is somewhat disappointing considering this is IG. The animation is boring. The CGI is pretty bad in the early episodes (that is even if I watched the Blu-ray extended edition). Music is mix of electro and orchestral songs. Except for one sinister orchestral song there’s nothing really notable. Voice acting is fine

This was a good attempt at trying to create big sci-fi series for this decade. If the script was rewritten one or two more times and if the structure of the show was done better it could’ve been potential classic.

Space Dandy is dandy in space!

Space Dandy to me feels like a love letter to anime by some of its most famous artists. Watanabe Shinichiro, Yamamoto Sayo, Shingo Natsume, Masaaki Yuasa and the list goes on and on. Adding to its long list of amazing musical artists and one of the current animation kings studio Bones, lots of references, and you get an absolutely amazing anime.

The episodic format of Space Dandy works primarily with well-known concepts and premises. From the most basic such as a girl and a father figure going through adventure to the crazy ones with singularities and universes and dimension ... jumps. Obviously there are always interesting twists and animeesque elements. And the episodes hold up. With episodic series you always have a risk of having few good episodes mixed in with lots of boring stuff. Dandy keeps its consistency throughout the show and the episodes are so creative and entertaining that I could see an entire anime series built around most of them. There is one episode that felt very out of place to me (season 2 episode 8) but the episode in on itself was so interesting that I didn’t even mind the tonal change.

Dandy is probably one of the most iconic characters of the last years in anime. He is an asshole but he has heart of gold. He’s a pervert but a gentleman at the same time. He’s a badass, an idiot, a genius, maybe a god, maybe a loser; maybe even a singer and a dancer. Maybe all of it, or maybe none of it? Wait, who is he again?

Both Qt and Meow get an individual episode and are overall likeable and quirky. Honey and Scarlet are both sexy and ready to kick some ass whenever necessary. Most of support characters from individual episodes are great. I don’t remember any strikingly boring or annoying characters. That maybe is because the drives of Space Dandy are concepts and not characters. And that is to me the biggest flaw of the show (and it’s purely subjective). While I love high-end conceptual shows I prefer character driven ones much more. All of the episodes are basically a same thing over and over again. Dandy and the crew are thrown into specific setting and we see how it turns out. I fully understand why would people rate this 10/10. But to me it’s over the topness lacks honesty. It feels synthetic. That’s why I can’t go higher than very high 8

The production is insane. Lots of episodes are different and take the specific trademarks of key animators and directors working on them. And they go all the way with them. The designs are out of this world. Just the sheer amount of them and their variety deserves huge round of applause. The voice acting is pretty much perfect and has lots of famous names. The music is just spectacular. From synth sci-fi vibes to rock and punk to orchestral music. While the soundtrack is not as iconic as Cowboy Bebop’s it’s definitely one of the best soundtracks of the last half decade.

Space Dandy is just a gargantuan series full of love. This truly was a “project” and not a simple anime, and I fully recommend it. Not many series are crafted with such care and turn out to be this amazing. It is a celebration of everything that makes anime great. And I love it

This prequel movie to Space Brothers anime is definitely not for viewers who are not familiar with the original anime. However that being said, as a huge Space Bros fan this movie didn’t work much for me either.

First let’s look at the plot of the movie. It’s set 4 years before the start of the anime and tells a story about how Hibito (the younger brother) dealt with his astronaut training while Mutta (the older brother) dealt with his work problems and getting transferred to country side. It’s a promising premise and a great opportunity to expand the history and flesh out all ... known characters (most of the NASA characters get a cameo as well as some JAXA characters).

This is sadly where the movie falls apart. The focus on both plotlines turns uneven. Hibito’s plotline is cut short 70% into the movie and we then get to see the consequences on one of the key events in the series. This event is fully fleshed out in the anime so I don’t really have a problem with them cutting it short and straight up skipping it. Mutta’s plot however suffers greatly because of this. The first half of the movie is mostly about his transfer and him becoming familiar with his new environment. Mutta then obtains a goal and works on it for the rest of the movie. We however don’t get to see this work. Only short montage of it. Which is pretty sad considering we don’t get to know the new characters outside of the most basic of visual gimmicks (cool older dude, cold intellectual with glasses, young woman who’s fan of boy bands) it’s not that I really care about them since they are non-canon, but if the movie introduced them I would like it to work with them. Mutta’s plotline is resolved with quite a significant jump (as I said there’s a short montage) and that’s about it. The movie then ends with a short connection scene that redoes few scenes from the first episodes of the anime.

The movie suffers from 2 things: uneven plot and cheap writing. As I already said the plotline is all over the place. What’s worse is however the cheap writing. You know it very well. It’s when a movie tries to retcon stuff into the source material. We get introduced to few key elements at the start of the movie only for them to work as plot devices and winks towards audience at key moments later in the movie. I am usually indifferent with this kind of stuff but this time it just felt so cheap to me. Not that they are horrible but they bring a sense of predictibility with them which somewhat ruins the enjoyment for me.

Quite honestly I think this movie should’ve been a short OVA prequel series of 6-8 episodes. The plot would be done more cleanly and the cheap writing could be justified with better pacing.

Which brings me to my next point and that is production. Considering this is a movie, the production is quite mediocre to straight up subpar. Voice actors do good job but it’s nothing really special. The drawn animation gets pretty funny at times (especially the scene with tractor on the field, I had to include the picture because it’s really funny https://i.gyazo.com/2902c80a153dba2619107f9dafa3bacd.png). The animation is mostly on the anime level. It’s not unwatchable by any means, but it’s not really movie quality either. The soundtrack is the soundtrack from the anime. Mind you, it’s been quite some time since I’ve watched the original anime so there may be some new songs, but nothing significant from what I’ve heard.

This is fans movie only. If you are thirsting for more Space Brothers watch it. It’s not BAD but it’s not really good either. I would say add 1 to the score if you are Space Bros fan.

Shinsekai Yori left on me an everlasting impressions. Both good and bad at the same time. Frankly I don’t remember experiencing feelings like these while watching an anime.

A dystopian tale about a group of friends slowly but surely untangling mysteries of their society. More than interesting concept full of deep themes with moral and ethical questions that will leave you thinking for a long time. So why the bad impression?

Well mainly because even though the concepts and setting are top not the plot itself is at first really boring. And not in the good way but in the “oh my god when does this ... end” way. There are straight up plot conveniences and troll moments in this anime. I am not sure why this is (perhaps the source material is better) because to me it seems like there are two anime going at the same time. The incredibly rich philosophical series and the filler fluff series. What’s worse is that the directing in this anime is bad. Really bad. At first I thought it’s something like Akiyuki Shinbou’s. But sadly soon enough I understood that it’s not intentionally artistic but it’s unintentionally bad. Transitions between scenes are absolutely abysmal. There is a scene earlier in the anime which left me scratching my head (chase scene in episode 5) and once again sadly scenes of this kind are not rare in this anime.

Another bad impression is the characters. They are very bland for the most part of the series, sometimes acting completely illogical or straight up bizarre (looking at you episode 8). Thankfully later in the series they become more interesting and the main character becomes complex.

Last bad impression (I promise) is the production. The music is great and the first ending is fantastic (and surprisingly good when it comes to visual structure). What however is not great is the animation. It is smooth but the colour pallet is just straight up bland for most part of the series. I am not entirely sure if this was intentional to invoke further feeling of dystopia but considering the fact that there are colourful and interesting scenes in the series (not many) I do not think this would be the case. The character designs are boring outside of the leaders of committees and few other characters. Some of the clothes looks cool especially the outfits MCs wear later into the series while they aren’t in their school uniforms.

As I said at the beginning of the review, I don’t remember experiencing something like this. Very boring parts followed by grippingly amazing moments. If the characters were more interesting, the story didn’t suffer from so much dumb moments, and the overall plot would be smoother this anime would definitely deserve all the praise it’s getting and I would personally recommend it to anybody. However bad directing and inconsistent plot followed by not good visual production significantly lowers the score for me. If you don’t care about production or conveniences add 1 to my score.