Jul 31, 2020
Short review of GLASSLIP
A vaguely competently put together anime that’s about as compelling as a dead house fly
The meat of the story revolves around a group of 5 friends who are enjoying their youth before they meet some slightly awkward Kirito clone. This, for angsty tweenager reasons most 17 year olds would have moved past, causes the group to fracture and tension bubbles beneath the surface.
Unfortunately, this tension barely goes anywhere and serves only to make character interactions slight awkward and cringey rather than for any actual dramatic purpose. There is hardly any progress or character exploration through the show so this gets quite
...
boring after a couple episodes and insufferable by the end.
There’s also a plot about the MC and Kirito sharing some “Fragments of the Future” where they experience some shared hallucinations. This is presented as a mystery but did nothing to draw me in.
The characters range from dull to unlikeable with a couple exceptions. The MC and kirito are especially hard to watch, with every line of dialogue being some vague allusion to the gravity and ramifications of these “future fragments” whilst being as intentionally vague as possible purely to annoy the viewer. I had some hope for one pairing but they drank the thick-o juice about halfway through and with that went my last smear of interest in the main cast.
It’s a shame because the side characters were generally quite likeable and in some cases had more agency than the main cast. I actually quite liked the short cutaways of random characters just living their lives.
Art looks decent but not impressive. Has a natural style that I would usually like.
Direction is a bit all over the place. Has this weird motif of ending scenes with a faded still frame with some extra line-work which doesn’t really work and is more comical than anything else. The in motion directing was competent enough but never seemed to add anything to the scene. Sometimes it just seemed like the director wanted to try some random shot with no relation to the scene itself.
The sound track is royalty free classical music spliced into as many scenes as possible regardless of how well it fits. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t.
Tl;dr bad show with fake depth, don’t watch, 2.5/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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