[First Viewing Opinion]
Damn, do I love it when directors take on heavy subjects like the detrimental slippery-slope that is escapism/distracting and lying to yourself to maintain the comfort of familiarity, when overcoming stress and trauma actually requires the difficult acts of internal/external confrontation. Emotional poison like that often comes to head and will prompt the victim to consider escapes from life, which are entirely misguided and not all they're cracked up to be. The existence of these grim aspects of stress are fantastic motivation to represent the blissful escapism that knowingly/deceivingly leads stressed-out victims to their demise as a cute seemingly innocuous little dog that
...
will actually cut the cord to the telephone when the person on the other line is trying to tell you something extremely important.
Who's talented and crazy enough to step up to this difficult job of actually educating the masses on psychology that's relevant to their every day lives through symbolism, abstraction, and sometimes DOPE-AS-SHIT sound design? Well, none other than Satoshi Kon ｍｙ ｆａｖｏｒｉｔｅ ｇｕｙ！It feels great when artwork succeeds at changing you for the better, and the very first and last scenes of the show are definitely not the only parts that demand the viewer to apply its teachings to their own life.
I love the stylistic range of content that the series has, but my primary complaint is with how that content is organized and paced. To me, the series basically has two "modes:" 1 - displaying unique, kind of psychological-horror-esque instances of this toxic stress buildup in different peoples' lives, and 2 - an investigation through-line that leads to the explanation and climax of both the plot and moral through both literal scenes and abstractions. The series juggles both for the first 4 episodes with a stronger emphasis on the first mode, before diving much deeper into the 'main-plot' focused second section for episodes 5 through 7. The juggling act for that first section started to fall apart towards the end as it really didn't advance the 'Second Mode' plot enough for me to stay interested much longer or have hope that the series was going to eventually lift the curtains.
That uncertainty definitely impacted my experience negatively, but thankfully the second section swooped in just in time with that 'Mode 2' goodness to get those hopes up and keep me invested. The way that section ends provides a foundation for how things are happening but not why, which left me feeling a little stranded in the quest for explanations/interconnected reasoning. I subsequently entered the next three-episode section of Mode 1 stories feeling a little lost which got in the way of my enjoyment of the individual stories and how those stories reveal little details about how the antagonist force operates and impacts society. The feeling of uncertainty as to whether the narrative was as important as I thought it was had its second coming, bringing with it the notion that the series' overall content arc was disjointed before the final three episodes of the series. Thankfully that last quarter of the series had me in full enjoyment/investment, primarily because it made everything clear and tied it all up, but maybe I only enjoyed it that much because I had been without answers for so long, which is a strong counter-argument for the pacing/series-structure that I just spent these last two paragraphs criticizing.
I don't think the color-palette and general art direction matched the expressive versatility of the direction and shot-compositions, as there was a lot of drab color schemes that were probably essential to telling these realistic or dark stories but still didn't keep my eye glued to the screen. There are certain scenes in a certain setting that this complaint definitely does not apply, but it still stands overall. Also, sometimes the side characters initially seemed to have a little more personality than the primary ones, where the primaries felt like designed purely to serve their role in the plot/narrative. You'll notice a lot of softening language used in that last sentence because it really is just a small nit-pick; I guess certain plot-heavy scenes let the characters feel more like conduits for the plot/dialogue without maintaining their personal nuances which demand my attention and make me hang onto their words.
Despite this one large and two small gripes, everything I didn't talk about in this show is fantastic. All of its comedy feels purposeful or at least well-integrated instead of forced. All the individual stories have solid layered writing. So many small practical details can easily be connected to grand interpretations. I never would have guessed a series to so gracefully blend psychological/emotional exploration, horror, and mystery without ever relying too heavily on any of them.
Sabroshi Bro, you da bro. Your episodes subtly made me feel the same way your opening obviously makes me feel: intrigued yet unnerved in the worst best way possible. However, you have more experience writing for feature-length films rather than 13-episode long series', and I believe that shows a bit in your anime "Motzah Daisuke."
[My current overall feeling on this anime is an 8, but that is DEFINITELY subject to change by being bumped up to 9 after giving it more thought or re-watching it.]
Aug 19, 2017
Mousou Dairinin
(Anime)
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[First Viewing Opinion]
Damn, do I love it when directors take on heavy subjects like the detrimental slippery-slope that is escapism/distracting and lying to yourself to maintain the comfort of familiarity, when overcoming stress and trauma actually requires the difficult acts of internal/external confrontation. Emotional poison like that often comes to head and will prompt the victim to consider escapes from life, which are entirely misguided and not all they're cracked up to be. The existence of these grim aspects of stress are fantastic motivation to represent the blissful escapism that knowingly/deceivingly leads stressed-out victims to their demise as a cute seemingly innocuous little dog that ... 
Aug 8, 2017
the art is real purdy and the music is jammin and the direction is dope and when a chauvinist gets rekt verbally or physically i go 'eyyy' and when same-sex characters bond in a manner thats significantly more respectful towards same-sex relationships than other anime im like 'yooo' and when the art/direction broke its overall victorian-ish aesthetic to include more modern elements i was at first like 'eh?' until it lead to narrative surrealism to which i always go 'eyy' and the film format is a more succinct platform for the world-building in comparison to the anime which started to feel stale after almost 40
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