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Mar 30, 2024
This review is a warning to everybody who plans to watch Shinreigari. If you don't like how the first episode went, you won't like the rest either. It's rare that I write a review. I gave this show 1/10 simply because I didn't like anything about it. It wasn't out of spite, and I don't hate it either. The characters don't look interesting, they come off as "annoying as hell" "pathetic" and "boring" respectively. Each has their own trauma to deal with, but in return the viewer has to deal with them. None of them has any motivation or goal to work towards.
The episodes have
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about 2 minutes of plot, no eerie atmosphere will save it. However, each one ends with a cliffhanger, desperately trying to make you watch the next. each episode is structured as follows:
"last episode on Shinreigari" reminding you that you just wasted 20 minutes instead of watching a 2 minute summary.
some artsy jazz inspired opening that I can't recall, not exactly good at selling the show.
Nothing happening for about 15 minutes, except for characters staring with all sort of noises getting louder, signifying that "this guy is not okay" and "btw this is a spooky show!"
A bunch of psychological and pseudo-scientific terms getting thrown around without any explanation at all. The author expects you to either ignore them, and think he's so clever or make you pause the anime if you're so interested. I believe all that time staring at nothing would have been better spent on explaining these terms, since the show already failed to set the mood anyway.
Each episode ends with "something" happening, want to know just exactly what? Find out next episode!
It's a very tiring show to watch. All that mystery, creepiness, and potential is lost because of the awful execution. If they cut the episode count in half, it might have been more fun. I don't recommend it to anyone. Before watching the second episode, ask yourself "Is it really okay to waste time watching 22 episodes of what ep1 was hinting?" Absolutely not, in my opinion. I dropped it after 5 episodes, save yourself the time and watch something else.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Dec 22, 2020
This show simply doesn't know what it wants to be, aside from a toy commercial it is.
There are a lot of themes involved, and even more characters. It's already a mess as you can tell. An enjoyable one for sure, but there's no clear direction at all.
It's set in a slightly advanced postapocalyptic world based on magic, with a single military school in focus. There's a lot of untold history here, but we're only getting snippets of the backstory. "there are magical enemies called huge, there are girls who fight them called yuris and this is the school they're going to." simple right? I'd say
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the synopsys tell you more than the show itself about the setting. Information given is very sporadic and sacre.
There's politics involved, but only surface level at best."the school exists, the girls are considered weapons, and a lot of people don't like it" it will honestly feel unnecessary.
There's yuribait fanservice. if you're looking for real yuri moments and shipping you'll be disappointed, be warned. Farnservice mostly exists as thigh shots only.
There's slice of life, which will drive you up the wall if you're here for anything else. But for a SoL show, it has way too much depression, action and story.
As you know, SoL shows live or die by the characters. There's a very good reason most shows have only 4 characters. instead of... 18 listed, but I know there's more of them.
Every character is bland, and most exist for comedy or as throwaways. This includes the two main characters, the silent angsty one with a past, and the happy go lucky generic moe one.
It's not a bad combo, but there isn't much interaction between them.
The show tries to show us emotional moments, the stress and sadness involved in fighting, which are almost immediately dismissed. "yeah it's there. next scene."
There are also cool action scenes with a few glimpses of sakuga, which I imagined would be the focus, looking at the toyline with transforming weapons.
At this point I'd like to say that the art and animation is really inconsistent. You can find amazing shots straight out of Hibike! Euphonium, while the next scene will be akin to Hinako Note.
You'll find cgi fights (they're not as jarring as usual), and amazing animation both. it never looks bad, but it never looks consistent so the change between the scenes are always sudden and jarring.
To sum it up: there's worldbuilding, sol, action, fanservice, politics, and drama. What isn't there is balance. The show can't keep it's focus for 5 damn minutes, and it tries to deal with so many things at once it's impossible to work with. On top of that, it seems to always prefer the least interesting topics. Dealing with something serious, that could lead to character growth you say? NAH, let's go somewhere to search for a random thingy instead. god save us from a few interesting moments, the audience might end up sympathizing with someone, or worse.
I expected better from a former Gainax employee, director san.
Final thoughts: there's potential here, but a show is more than just the sum of it's parts. Assault Lily is simply not coherent enough, it has all the elements to make something enjoyable and interesting, but no glue to stick it together. While all of these seem negative, I still enjoyed the show somewhat, the setting and the fight scenes are nice. Unfortunately this is more than I can say for most seasonals, which makes this show above average in my book. I would never recommend it, but it's not awful by any means. Still an easy skip, if you're looking for something with substance.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 5, 2019
Exo suits? check.
Urobuchi? check.
Let's go.
Obsolete is your standard war story full of sarcasm and indifference.
What's different here however is the format. 6x12 minutes.
It doesn't leave you with much space to tell a grand story or express ideologies.
Anyone who's hoping for character depth or such will be let down.
The staff did everything in their power to make this a coherent piece of work but they were heavily restricted by the episode count and it shows.
Limestone? Aliens? It doesn't matter to us humans according to Mr. Urobuchi, and there's really no time to explain them anyway.
The core of this product seems to be "Give a man a
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fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he'll wage war on his fellow men with fishing rods"
What we get here are pieces of war history. How it started and... that's it. There's no end, or climax.
The individual episodes all follow key events of this futuristic war, the background of the fractions and some people involved in the conflict.
In each episode you will get new characters who drive the story and drop a few lines of lore. The rest is mindless action with dubstep. Oh right. Skrillex did the music.
While the sound engineering and effects were great, the music was offputting as hell. Jungle dnb or tribal would've been more fitting considering where it takes place.
They went overboard with screen effects such as smoke, but the shading was really lacking. The action itself looks well done, but with not enough contrast it looks bland.
The art is... fitting I'd say. silky smooth 4fps cgi we all hate, with a realistic touch. It's sad that this level of mechanic detail needs cg because all the decent animators are busy with gundam.
It gives the whole show a very cheap feel. Pair that with how short it is, and the 4th wall breaking "Just like in my japanese animes" and you're left wondering why they're doing this exactly?
So is Obsolete supposed to be above anime, some higher form of entertainment? Is this how they meant it? because I'm sad to say it's subpar. Or the opposite?
We tried to make something akin to anime, and almost succeeded at times! yes, that seems more correct, sadly.
Honestly this show could've made it as a toy commercial. I'm not sure how many people will it reach if it's on a paid.youtube.service.
Don't you want the largest possible audience for your product placement, instead of those 10 people who paid for youtube premium or whatever it is?
The exosuits look cool. The story seems interesting, the execution is so-so, the runtime is the downfall of this show really.
Moral of the story? War bad. Humanity bad. 12 minute format bad.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Nov 10, 2019
This is a recap, if you're looking for new material or scenes you will be sorely disappointed. There's less than 10 minutes of new footage in this 1hour 20 minutes long movie.
There's no story to be told here, they find a mysterious box that they use as a plot device to start the clipshow.
The new scenes aren't fun to look at, they include real photographs as backgrounds, still pictures, and some chibi art.
I hope you liked the mmd+character songs in the series because not only you have to sit through them again, there are new ones.
Overall, I was bored all the way through since I've
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already seen everything back when the series aired. The scenes aren't expanded redone or redrawn, they just added a new voice track, with the characters discussing what's going on.
I can only imagine this movie as a brief summary for those who would willingly skip the first season before starting the second one. If it ever gets made.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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