+ / - The production value is of very high quality. The animation for the fight scenes is clear, crisp, and smooth. This, for the most part, makes this decent enough to watch and enjoy. The best I can compare it to, for me, is Guilty Crown, which is amazing, visually, but has subpar plot and characterization standards.
- As for characters, few are well rounded. There are essentially four female characters that matter, all of which are there simply to look pretty and be protected. Even the Captain of the Blue King has to be protected three times in this anime by her subordinates all while striking some jarring and uneeded fan service fueled pose. The other main female spends a lot of her screen time naked, which I'll leave at that. The other two main females, three if we're somehow counting the static student council president as a character at all, spend their time not saying much and having no true motivations of their own. There is some neat and intriguing interplay between the clans and clansmen which I appreciated, and it was one of the few things they kept me watching, actually.
- The logic behind half of these characters is near impossible to follow. For example, you should know by reading the plot synopsis that people are trying to figure out who murdered a beloved Red Faction, HOMRA member. Everyone believes it to be Shiro, so they target him. However, every time clans get together, they intrinsically fight each other, letting Shiro go almost every time. I couldn't figure out why they couldn't work together to kill the same person, which is still poignant at the end when they have a shouting match over who gets to kill who. I still don't understand why any of this could have been avoided using words and properly explaining situations. Character logic is very easily picked apart, such as a character disliking people who don't play by the rules...and then goes around and acts 'extralegally' because he's somehow above the laws that govern everyone else.
- Plot is thrown together haphazardly with this same degree of untraceable logic. The villain is simply a villain who does villain-y things. Every character does what they want without proper rounded motivation as to why they were even friends with so-and-so in the first place, or why they are so suicidal and reckless. Mostly, as a viewer, you're going to be served a 'just because' attitude underneath it all, which I find flippant and boring. About the only character who seems to understand himself and has the better character development arc would be the Black Dog. Even then, with him, I'm not sure how he exists at all since before the story he should have had his powers nullified with the death of his old king. Or how these people didn't get slapped with some sort of copyright infringement from the creator of D.Gray Man. I'm being humorous with this - but Kuro is totally Kanda Yuu.
- They made a Nazi a good, sympathetic character. I take severe issue with this and it shouldn't need much explanation as to why this is a problem. His whole motivation resolves around "I thought I was doing a good thing by making a super weapon capable of eliminating massive amounts of the population" which is just...haphazard writing. And completely unjustifiable. Yet, we're supposed to feel sorry for him. Why the writers did this is completely beyond me, aside from "the Allies were awful because they killed someone's sibling", and it's quite possibly the most awful portion of this anime's storyline.
+ The themes deal with loneliness and isolation when dealing with higher powers, but without the proper support of exposition and explanation, it just barely makes it as a plus. Many times during the show I found myself shouting for someone to just explain things already. Many plot holes could have been shored up with a simple sentence, but we're left with 'just because' to fill up the cracks. Still, it's a surprising theme, and adds a strong tone of tragedy to a lot of character's actions.
+ The first and second episode are the best out of them all. These were the truly enjoyable episodes, and I wish the rest of the series could have played as such. They were, after all, why I started watching it, going in with the expectations I had.
You should spend time watching this. Just do not expect masterpiece and emotionally evoking material. If anything, watch it because there are pretty guys in suits and they fight some things and there's strong shonen-ai scenes if you're into that sort of thing.
Otherwise, avoid it. There are better series to invest time in.
