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Jun 29, 2024
What makes a story good?
Is it the animation? Picture quality? Art style? Sound?
Well no, duh, its THE STORY!
And well, far too many anime seem to forget that... Honestly i'm not sure at this point who the target audience for this, and many other shows is, because it feels like i've seen this show at least twenty times over before ever watching it!
There isn't much to be said about it honestly.. What are the strong sides? Well, as i said, art, animation, and generally great production values.
What are the weak sides? The most important - story and characters! Well, if you can call them that, they're
...
cardboard cutouts at best - the stereotypical tsundere, the classic average anime protagonist, and his friend, the classic average anime protagonist #2... NOTHING new or original about them, you've seen it all a thousand times.
Same goes for 'the plot', not only is very little of it revealed this season anyway, but also, if you can't predict what happens next from the little that does happen, this is probably your first, or maybe tenth or so anime watched!
All in all, i can't say its bad per se, but its utter lack of originality and plot makes for a really bland time... And i'd probably not recommend it to anyone aside newcomers to the medium.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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May 26, 2024
There really isn't much to say about this show.
Production values? There are decent at least, nothing amazing, but solid... And that's about it
But story wise... Oh boy. This is one of those rare shows that somehow manage to COMPLETELY fail ANY sort of exposition and storytelling! I'm not quite sure how such an epic fail in basically the most important component of any media (story) was achieved, nor how it got this high a score as a manga and became popular enough to make it all the way to an anime.
To put it simply, there's absolutely NO story to go around on for about
...
HALF WAY into the show, and worse than that, not a SINGLE character that raises any interest or anyone would ever want to root for no matter the circumstances... Everyone's the bad guys, and not the charming, 'special', 'misunderstood' or otherwise interesting type of bad guy either, but the most generic type of bad guy, including MC. There's no redeeming qualities to any of them, or any endearing aspects to go on...
So what would keep you watching? My answer - nothing, hence this is a must drop in my book, 4.3/10, just for the production quality.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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May 10, 2024
Downward spiral would be the best way to describe this show, in more ways than one.
It starts off pretty strong, with great animation, if a bit cliche - you know what's coming from a mile away if you've ever watched some shows before. From there, it ramps up into a gritty show that slowly builds up its story and holds the mark...
But here come the 'but's. First of all, the starting holds absolutely no meaning, because having his kid get murdered too is completely pointless - we've not known the character, his wife nor kid for any amount of time, and having his wife
...
get killed would have the same impact, not to mention there's absolutely no introduction scenes to the kid in the show... It would make much more sense to hold onto the reason for his revenge until much later, and instead of the kid use the time to flesh out the relationship between him and his wife more as the series progresses and we get to know MC more, THEN hit the viewer with her murder.
Secondly, around the mid point, the quality takes a huge dip, be it because of the tonal shift from ninja arts and normal fights to sci fi and robots, the shitty cgi used for said robots either due to budget cuts or the need for it because they wanted to differentiate them from normal fights, or both..
And lastly the story, that is basically not revealed until the last third of the show, and turns out to be downright pathetic. There's basically three main silly little stories :
1, MC's, who's the simplest and stupidest, and i'd consider a substory - bla bla, ninja code says you can't love and have friends, bla bla, he fell in love anyway and got a friend, bla bla, he ran away into hiding, had a kid, and then he, his kid, and wife got murdered for having a family and leaving the clan, but he has an immortality 'ninja art' and now is on his revenge that he gets by the end
2, his friend, that's also basically a sub story - basically he also broke the code by being friends with MC and his wife, and they swore to be friends and stuff, but then ran away and left him behind. And he decides to kill MC, cuz he feels betrayed and his friend broke the clan law and other utterly idiotic reasons, but in the end decides to help MC
And 3, which is actually the MAIN but also LEAST fleshed out story - just a medic war veteran who saw too much horrors and decided to take over the world and FORCE peace lol, because that's DEFINTELY how things work! And for that he needed robots..? Idk, this part, like most things in the show doesn't make sense, as these robots aren't shown to be all that special, and the fights in them, if anything, look far weaker and slower than the normal ninja fights.. Also the NORMAL ninjas look more than overpowered enough to take on the world leaders as per bad guy's plan.
This gives birth to more utterly redundant characters and subplots such as the useless Aryan looking Mark Zuckerburg evil CEO type that makes the robot stuff and his bodyguard Ninja that the Villain assigned to him and told her to protect, but then decided to kill because she FOLLOWED HIS ORDER and he didn't cancel it! (Utter lunacy), the bunch of baddie's henchmen that don't even deserve a mention with how idiotic they are (mc's firend one of them), and the near pensioner policeman along with his sidekick (new poliecegirl recruit who's a double agent) who was probably the best character in the show as far as her plot, story, fleshing out, and reasoning goes, but who got killed off for absolutely no good reason.
Final score - 5.4/10, just for the art of the first episodes, probably not recommended, unless you really like ninja stuff and don't mind stupid plots. And even then you'll hate the robot fights.
Frankly, i'd say it could have been a good show if they cut half the characters and the silly robot stuff, and the runtime to 6x30 or 6x40 min episodes instead of 13x24 min, but alas.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 30, 2024
EXTREMELY disappointing
Basically all that's needed to sum this up. Or, 'afk game' / 'autoclick adventure' as i saw someone name it.
I've read the novel, past the point the anime shows too, and its nothing to write home about... But the anime is on a whole other level of bad. The first contributor to the show being bad is the original story not being anything impressive to begin with... The second is the utterly horrid pacing - the prologue alone took 2 episodes, or 1/6th if you will. Next up in line is mediocre directing that doesn't rewrite nor make use of anything good in the
...
source material in favor of all the bad, and tries to adopt stuff 1 to 1... Especially where it doesn't count! And finally there's the mediocre action and lack of animation that said lack of action presents, which means you'll need to complete about 10~ episodes before you'll see anything remotely impressive in terms of story or action... At which point i'd say its basically too little too late.
Not recommended to anyone. 5.4~/10 is probably a bit too harsh a sentence all things considered, but the boredom and sheer degree of generity and mediocrity you'll experience watching this show would present it as a pretty honest rating.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jan 18, 2024
"Iz good"
About all that is needed to sum up the show, definitely recommended, especially if you like zombie stuff, but even if you don't.
But 'good' is not great, so... Here's why it isn't more than another mostly forgettable good-decent show that i evaluate at about 7.2...
First of all the great stuff - production quality. As far as that goes, its basically through the roof, some great stuff all over, from good songs and visuals for op and ed, to consistent quality of animation, even the backgrounds, which is no small feat for zombie stuff since the ruined backgrounds need to be all that more detailed,
...
and drawing a mob of zombies is no easy task, especially without any cg usage... Everything is well designed, memorable and colorful, the characters are very fun.
But, sadly that's all, the main part of any story, aka, THE STORY is... Well, bland. It started with a blast and a good idea overall, but aside the initial spark of originality with that, and the fun and comedy going on, there isn't much story or character depth, and it devolves into just one more forgettable story about random stuff, hence the name 'bucket list' (of the dead), most of it is just the characters fooling around with stuff they want to, wanted, or just got the idea of doing.
Not to say there's no character arcs of sorts and its not still fun and interesting to watch, but, as i said, its nothing too special. With the start, which is good and original its fun, as i said, realizing 'you're a zombie', working 24/7 and getting home just to sleep, and life being so horrible you're having more fun in the frigging zombie apocalypse and looking forward to it than your life normally was nearly a 10/10 start, and its very relevant too because many people feel that way too.
But its kind of a downhill from there, because mc who seemed to made an oath to only think of having fun and living life on his terms forgets all about it, being brave and forward one episode, a semi coward or insecure the next (with a couple cycles of completely unneeded drama), a hero in one more, and finally a literal doormop after he meets his boss. Its really weird and inconsistent with that, as well as the lack of worry and thought about his parents (for the others too, although they do mention them here and there for just a sec before forgetting all about it and going back to their fun) until they actually go to them where its suddenly becomes important.
The way the situation with his boss is resolved is really weird and anticlimactic too, i don't mean the fact they don't kill him or somehow get revenge, and even save him, which is ok, i mean the fact that for the show's start, about the zombie apocalypse being better than being a corporate slave, and him further being a doormat for a whole episode despite all of his resolve to live HIS life on HIS terms in previous episodes, after being nearly erased as a person again, he leaves with... AN APOLOGY, bowing as low as you can while standing up like the good little corporate Japanese slave he is... This is extremely disappointing and unsatisfying, and goes against the whole premise!
Luckily, from there its back uphill, with the show getting better again (lowest point being the episode with him being a doormat to his boss and apologizing at the end of it, as well as the couple other moments with really stupid drama and indecisiveness like the part with the stewardess, with our two heroes unable to secure a tiny group of people, and end up them all get killed by a single zombie, and then running away), but as i said, doesn't end up becoming anything special either. The baddie arc was kinda weird and weak though, also preachy and incomplete (there was more to it in the manga).
And then there's also the whole drama about the delays of releasing episodes, but frankly i don't care about that, they did a great job (with sadly not too great source material) and did finish it, that's all that matters. All in all, as i said, a pretty decent show, would still recommend it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 22, 2023
Okay so, i guess many people rush to rate this season high because compared to the trainwreck of last season it seems pretty good... But its anything but that! Starting off, i rate this season 4.4/10, and would NOT recommend it to anyone at all.
If you only watched the anime... Its just bad, not as horrible as i rated it, but not great either - tons of new characters appearing seemingly out of nowhere, all sorts of nonsensical stuff going on without any explanations given, and a TON of context missing due to the previous season being basically stolen with how much was cut
...
and how horrid it turned out to be. So maybe somewhere around 6/10, which is still somewhere on the low side.
But as a novel reader, this was downright painful to watch! Let's start with the elephant in the room... The story's antagonist. 3 seasons in, and we've yet to learn or hear ANYTHING of them! That is, in the anime, meanwhile in the novel they ARE mentioned, and by the end of this season where supposed to be known... But... Nope! And with next season previewing Kutten Rou, and Shielt Vielt, seems we won't learn of them in s4 either, if it'll even come at this rate!
But at the same time, we WHERE shown the people related to the main antagonists, just that, the anime felt like NOT MENTIONING IT AT ALL for the last two seasons! Them being Kyo and the two random dudes that attacked mc and the sword hero, which from the comments about those episodes i saw people where understandably very confused about. Putting that and the story aside, on a surface level, the season's not too bad - the visuals and sound stuff is okay, voice acting, most of everything is decent or good...
But yeah when you come back to the characters and story, it fails big time. The most interesting and fun parts of it where cut. The main antagonists? Cut. The characters all act completely different from the novel, as if they copy pasted and replaced Naofumi with the most generic shounen protagonist they could find, nothing left of his edgy, awkward, sharp tongued and self proclaimed villain self, nor of Raphtalia's sassy and rebellious attitude of verbal battles with him, putting him in his place, etc. At some point i even had to ask - WHO EVEN ARE THOSE CHARACTERS??? Some other major parts of the story and character arcs where cut too. So yeah, If last season was downright horrible, this one is just plain bad.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Sep 24, 2023
So, just like in previous season reviews, i'm putting morality aside, at least for a while, both because presenting different world views and moralities in different worlds and times is something that i think is interesting to explore and shouldn't be avoided, no matter how horrible they may be, and because both the people defending this show, and people criticizing it seem to be dead set on either defending the morality of it all 'because its a different world' and saying the critics are too sensitive, or insist on including said morals and making their negative reviews around those, as opposed to the actual flaws
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of the show (and its previous seasons), of which it has MANY... And si i will just review the show for its strengths and weaknesses...
Spoilers, its mostly weaknesses. So, starting off with the art... Its okay. There's certain moments with major dips, and overall its not nearly as good as last seasons, which i'd also say had their problems art wise with inconsistency and lack of good fights and fluidity outside a couple select moments (everyone likes to link Rujerd's tiny 'fight' where he's just standing there and wiggling his spear for a couple seconds while the camera rolls around him before he gets ko'd as if its some amazing feat of animation, which its not), but overall i'd say these previous seasons at least did scratched 'good' territory... Here its just okay. Voice and music? Its pretty good, as per usual for this show... Directing is fine. And... Well, that's it for everything i can praise or comment on positively at all!
Everything else meanwhile, aka the most important part really, being the characters and story, is not just sub par, but downright horrible. Starting off with Rudy, who was never an interesting character to begin with, being just your average Japanese mc with all the usual traits (shy, polite, respectful to higher ups, insecure (aside perverted moments), etc), aside his introduction as scum, which seemed to be there for that redemption story that never comes, and which the anime tones down as much as it can (in the LN and WN he's MUCH worse). And with it toned down, and with a newfound 'wholesome' twist on it all (which wasn't in the WN at all) even in previous seasons he's reduced to next to nothing, but in this season outside a few select moments (which mostly come down to comedic moments and his 'relic' and roxy's statue), he's somehow even worse. In the start he's a husk of even that lacking character, convinced he was dumped, and wandering about aimlessly and looking miserable (think gurren laggan depression arc, but more spineless and far more useless), despite the previous season showing otherwise and seemingly suggesting he learned his lesson about being a shut in, figuratively and literally.
And this brings me to the first arc of this season, the depression arc. There's not much to say about its first half, he just takes on jobs alone (offscreen) and with another when they decide to take him, acting extremely passively and quietly. Then we get a certain 'violent mind reader' as i call the character trope, aka someone that comes in, sees through his fake smile and constant politeness, and says they don't like them... To a complete frigging stranger they basically never saw or crossed ways with! After Rudy snaps, releasing his emotion and pent up anger, and punches him in the face a few times however (which strangely enough seems to hurt RUDY'S HANDS more than Zoldat's (super lazy naming btw, as usual, zoldat being 'soldier' in slavic languages) face) he does a 180 and suddenly goes full on 'bro' mode. 11/10 writing there lol
The other 'important' character is some other random girl around his age in that adventuring group he was in, which hates him at first, then starts to like him for no reason, and when he saves her, decides to give him her virginity... Because yes, that's how these things go lol! With the side effect of being dumped being ED however, when he decides to fuck her, he can't get it up... So he's once again crushed, and the strange girl whispers 'scum/garbage', cuz yeah, its TOTALLY how someone would react in such a situation! Newfound 'bro' comes to the rescue and suggests a few solutions but none work, then, after a drink, he gets mad starts to badmouth this bitch (and sorry, i can't exactly describe someone who acts in those ways any other way), with her standing behind him. After some drama from her, our 'hero' just decides to end it all there and then, because that's TOTALLY how those things happen! Zoldat saves the day (?) despite having less than half a second to react, SOMEHOW... Oh, and since this whole arc has been changed a lot and is basically an LN afterthought, we'll never see this girl again until the very end of the show, many, many seasons away (if they get that far)! Totally worth the time, right?
And next up is the magic academy arc. Basically the usual 'shady god' guy tells him to go there. He refuses. He tells him he will cure ED there... AND HE AGREES TO GO IMMEDEATELY! Quality story right there~... So YES, the whole following arc, and the whole major story driving force in this WHOLE SEASON in general is mc's ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION! What happened to the previous one you may ask? aka finding, rescuing and reuniting his family? Eh, who cares right? At best an afterthought. Not like it was a major driving point in the previous season's second half, and will be in the future! Oh wait. Should i say any more about how 'good' that arc turns out to be? The whole thing is basically made of several minor stories in the academy with a ton of time skips in between and the usual 'school life' crap you've seen a thousand times over in other shows... All on the background of his childhood friend pulling off a superman on him and being unrecognizable by merely wearing sunglasses and a different hair color... And pretending to be a man. Their behavior is exactly that of any other school romance show btw - never ending useless drag on, although it has a slight reasoning behind it and actually goes somewhere by the end at least... Which doesn't make it any less bad though. As such, Rudy and Sylphie are just as boring and insufferable as the characters of any other school romance. What makes the whole ordeal even worse, is that due to the wholesome twist they keep putting on, and the time skips, also hiding his inner thoughts unlike the WN, there's MAJOR interesting world building and plot points that's been completely discarded (which was also a major issue with s1 part2, but that at least had SOME redeeming factors elsewhere)!
The couple of more interesting characters that pop up are barely present, aside one that is actually important to the MAIN plot of the show and not this shitty season, but that's less than just 1 episode of 12. So, as you see, even outside the morality questions both sides like to bring into this debate (in which i also lean against the show, as i can't exactly root for someone with the mind of a 40-50 year old man being excited by 7-12 year old girls even later on in the show, during and after his supposed 'redemption', although i still find the rest of the world setting interesting), its and extremely badly thought out and dull story... Which brings us to the verdict - unlike the first half of the first season, i would NOT recommend this one to anyone.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Aug 26, 2023
Shortly and simply put, this is yet another entry in the 'i don't know why konosuba was good so i'll pretend its the writer' series.
Now, i love konosuba, don't get me wrong, both the initial series and the movie. But there's a slight difference between me and most other fans - i read, or rather TRIED to read the novel! And well, this brings me back to my previous point - konosuba, the novel, along with the other artist's works are simply... Not too good. What made the show good then? The staff. About half the jokes appeared out of some changes in writing and
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freedom for the voice actors and their individual talent, as well as great directing and understanding of the source material and comedy, expressive and silly animation work... They took an 'ok at best' product and elevated it to greatness.
The result was the great initial series we all know. But it also brought the problem i mentioned earlier - attributing the success of the series to the original writer instead of these additional and very important factors. The consequences? Other studios picking up other works from the author, thinking its the source of the success of the series, without allowing the same freedoms, without having the needed talents nor putting in the same effort, resulting in the 6/10 "kemono wrestler", 7/10 (and even that is overrating it imo) "combatants will be dispatched", and lastly this little 7/10 prequel, all of which aren't nearly as interesting nor funny as konosuba.
Now don't get me wrong, this prequel, and other shows aren't BAD by any means and also have their moments, but all in all, they're just average and not special in any way unlike the show which made them happen.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 24, 2023
*spoiler free review*
Now, let me start with that i'm a sucker for apocalyptic and post apocalyptic stuff, so both from the description and trailer, i was already nearly sold and going in with high expectations, especially with the visuals looking pretty interesting...
What came of that? The show almost completely betrayed that description and my expectations of it being the said genre! Am i disappointed though? Absolutely not. In fact its one of the very best things i watched in quite a while, even if there's definitely quite a bit of room for improvement, and won't be as interesting and pleasant to watch for many, as
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it touches on some rather unpleasant topics.
In short, there's a need to alter the genre and description of what it is about exactly - while post apocalypse definitely plays a factor, its not at all the focus nor nearly as apocalyptic as the standard you'd usually think of when hearing the term. Instead, it'd be much more accurate to call it an adventure and mystery anime with psychological aspects.
Downsides - as many other anime, its incomplete, as in both the fact the manga goes on and the story isn't resolved, and that, due to the nature of the show, leaves FAR too many questions, that's on top of the show being decently convoluted, so much so that i think a second watch would be useful for most. Some episodes have noticeable animation and other quality dips, some story bits in both the show and manga don't make too much sense and/or could be handled better, and finally, there's the hard to deal with topics.
If you can handle heavy topics though, and with decent chances of a second season coming, i'd say its definitely worth a watch!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 26, 2023
Spoilers ahead...
And well, let me start this off by saying i wouldn't recommend this, not even as a standalone.
First lets start with the elephant in the room... No, not the CGI, the lack of the black cat mascot! ...
Just kidding, but not fully, you already know something's off when that thing's not there anymore aside a hard to spot easter egg or a few.
The CGI. Yes its studio orange, and yes, people love to sing them praise, but i personally found beastars pretty choppy and robotic in many scenes, while decent visually. Similarly, while the land of lustrous was pretty good looking, especially the hair,
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some of its scenes where pretty choppy too, and the shot composition wasn't always great. So where does Trigun land?
Animation wise, its usually better, aside some scenes that do the Japanese 3d 'anime' favorite and start dropping fps to something like 10, or even lower at somewhere around 5 at some points, taking it to a slideshow, which with 3d, that doesn’t morph and stretch to accommodate for that, ‘makes your eyes bleed’ because you can’t follow the motion at all. Thankfully these slideshow moments aren't frequent, and the rest is decently animated at a high or acceptable fps... Animations? Well, very few are robotic, so that's a win. Depending on the scene, some are okay, some are honestly great, some are… TOO fluid, to the point of being literally cartoonish, especially with Vash losing traction with the ground, literally or figuratively (air walking/running)… But these are mostly around the show’s first two episodes that are more lighthearted so its not really that big a problem.
But if that was the 'somewhat good', here comes the 'somewhat bad', or simply bad... First of all, the camera motion. As often is the case with 3d CGI, it takes far too many liberties and moves all over the place in ways that make no sense and don’t contribute anything, or even disorients and gets in the way of your understanding and enjoyment of the scene… Zoom is overused for no good reason as usual too. Second of all, the shot composition itself and the camera placement are pretty bad, which makes for some pretty bland shots most of the time, and ones that don't accentuate or inform you of much as the viewer, which is, well, bad. Lastly, the character design, visuals, backgrounds…
Now that's where the worst part is. Along with the bad shot placement, the backgrounds that vary from poor to good can make the scenes very plain. For example 2 second 2 tone photoshop gradient 'sky' or desert ‘backgrounds’ of similar horrid quality… Or great DRAWN backgrounds that get mere seconds of use and perhaps even with zoom so you don't really see anything! The character designs themselves... Well, i'm personally not a fan of some, others are good, but overall they're decent. What's NOT even close to decent is the detail and models outside the face. The cell shading light renderer effect turns the clothes into really bland, stupid looking 'concrete tubing'. Doesn't help that whichever program was used for making the show doesn't allow for dynamic cloth either so its as stiff as said concrete. Coupled with the lack of detail on clothes, it makes the character two tone featureless ‘clothing tubes’ stand out from the relatively well detailed and shaded backgrounds, and in the worst way too, something that could easily be fixed by giving the cloth elements SOME textures and/or more details like pockets, patches, scratches, and other decals.
Oh, and the action scenes kind of fall flat because while some bits can be pretty good, for example Vashe’s close range hand to hand combat… MOST of the time its just him and others running around pointlessly, with the camera flying, panning and generally flailing around, storm trooper bullets sometimes sprayed in their general direction. So what do you get overall? Well, despite all i said, its definitely watchable, and doesn't look all that bad, but it doesn't look great either. Guess 6.7/10 if i'd have to score the visuals alone. So, if the visuals aren't really the problem (they ARE a part of it tho, since bad shot composition impacts storytelling negatively, and with the bland action scenes, it hurts enjoyment too), WHAT is? Well, its the directing, scene composition, and STORY.
And so let's skip right ahead to said story. This is a weird reboot-prequel kind of deal. People often complain the original anime had a lot of filler (which it kind of did, but not really since a lot of the filler where expanded short post ending bits and other things that WHERE there, just not as long, and the ones that wheren't where still pretty high effort, interesting, and added a lot to the world building and feel the show's going for), but here… Its BASICALLY ALL FILLER! As in, almost entirely made up because pre-July we’re not really told of anything in the manga, and this show went ahead and made a WHOLE season out of that ‘material’ it either made up, or combined with existing stories or parts of them while also moving them in the timetable to make an unholy mix of badly written and badly developed story and progression!
The way almost every episode plays can be described with one word - lazy. You do not get any big mystery and a sense of wonder from observing and learning about the world, you get FACE STUFFED with exposition about where they are and how they got there (human race survival plan, aka ‘arcs’ crash landing on the wrong planet that's just a desert you can barely inhabit due to Knives sabotaging the face flight and with the oblivious help of Vash, which now becomes a major plot point). You get told pretty much everything about Vash and project seeds in the first episode, the only ‘reveal’ being why Knives went haywire (learning the independent plant girl before them was dissected). The conflict and action is also extremely straightforward and boring.
Compare it to the original anime which kept you in the dark on the fact this is the same universe as ours, and isn't just some steampunk - sci fi- western fantasy until like a third of the way in, presenting very little to go off of until the big reveal about how they all ended up on that planet in the first place and the show's antagonist, also showing up also about half way in, and the comparison makes stampede which is completely straightforward and replaces ALL THAT with just stuffing exposition dpwm your throat in the worst way look simply pathetic. And that's in the grand theme of things, each individual episode of the original is also far more well structured, often raising interesting questions, sometimes concepts, showing various sides of Vash and adding to the mystery of this man and what exactly is going on...
There isn’t much story sense to it all is what I’m saying. It starts out, mercilessly dumps exposition, introduces the villain in episode 3, and sends the crew of 3 on a pointless crusade to ‘find’ Knives, aka just travel to July, picking up Wolfwood on the way. WHY is that the villain's plot? Who knows, Vash doesn’t seem to have absolutely any plan about what to do in the confrontation. Why then does he even GET to go on that trip when Knives wants to use him as a gate, and could easily just ABDUCT him there and then in episode 3, with the current version of Vash being far weaker than the manga or 98 anime, and Knives being far stronger? No idea.
Now for the flip side of the story – characters… Also interactions and overall writing. Who is the most well written character in the WHOLE SHOW? Knives. DESPITE STILL being written pathetically and making very little sense, and appears for less than a quarter of the show! Yes, its that bad. What is his motivator? A childhood based hatred for humanity after seeing the dissected girl, learning of the plant ‘final runs’. This is the decently written part, and the one that makes sense. But how about the part where he continuously gaslights Vash about it being his fault for crashing because he helped, supposedly crushing him mentally by saying ‘he did it for him’? Vash was FRIGGING TOUGH AS NAILS in the original, there's no way this lazy bs would work with him! And the fact he both supposedly cares for him, but also doesn’t mind killing him, literally, or by turning him into a plant? That part doesn’t make a lot of sense at all.
What about Vash, the frigging PROTAGONIST of the show? Nope, he simply doesn’t exist. Forget the witty, goofy guy he was before, (also he can also apparently regenerate and shrug off being shot now, because why not… where’d the lasting injuries come from then..? as a tradeoff i guess he can't dodge/manipulate bullets or do the other cool tricks from the original, or simply doesn't try because that takes effort to think up and the people wrting this are horrible), now he’s quiet, sad and not at all well explored either. His pacifism? Its just a fact you have to take at face value because its source – the dialogues with Rem that’s the very core of his being has been cut entirely. So WHY is he a pacifist that would go to insane extents to protect anyone, even the bad guys? Eh, WHO CARES RIGHT~? How do you learn he's a pacifist then? Its just a sliding mention with no real weight lol. No comedy or lighthearted behavior from him aside the very start too. Nor any friendly fun interactions with Wolfwood and Meryl either. Speaking of those, Wolfwood, aside his couple episodes with the steamer, orphanage and flashbacks also pretty much DOES NOT EXIST. Well, guess he shoots a mutated kid when the winds change and Vash is close to talking him down, cool. Not that Vash who supposedly takes it hard seems to really care in literally a moment (the next episode).
Meryl exists to an even lesser extent, being there seemingly just to sometimes react to things happening in the most lazy, boring, and non memorable ways, nowhere near close to what she was like in the manga and 98 show. You might say its expected with her not yet being developed and it being the prequel, but, what’s the point of even having her in a central role then..? Her partner, a new character and useless drunk, is just there to be the narrator, dump exposition and questionable dialogue, then die, which is supposed to help her grow somehow..? And well, lastly, they also barely talk and interact inside this small group, making for a very dry and weird experience, unlike the much more fun, interesting and loud main cast of the manga and show. So overall we get HALF a functioning character (Knives) that’s missing for most of the show, and three-four ‘main’ characters that are less developed than most side characters in other shows... And frankly downright PATHETICALLY written to fill in for the rest of the air time!
I could start unwrapping specific examples of how this plays out horribly, and how these decisions in writing suck, and the ways they make the characters react to things makes no sense, also how they changed the powers and characters further toward being more boring, but, I think you get the picture by now and its already a rather long piece. Final verdict – a rare 3/10 (just for the somewhat decent 3d and new designs) and NOT recommended at all for absolutely anyone.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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