The Good:
This story is intoxicating. Even in episodes where very little happens, the cold pause at the end of every episode is a cue for personal reflection. Lack of action and slow pacing is somewhat bothersome, but it is used well to cause viewers to better feel and experience the moments of amnesia and loss experienced by the characters. The slip of time, the slip of memory, and the emptiness of loss are well expressed through imagery rather than dialog, and I found that to be interesting, although some effectiveness was most likely lost in the process.
The Bad:
I found myself muttering "That's selfish," more than once and can see the selfishness that was ubiquitous in the characters and the culture. Perhaps this was the writer's intention, but it did leave me lacking in compassion for certain moments that probably could have used a little more of my compassion.
The drawing and animation of the characters always felt a little distorted. It is an interesting style, but could also be a little distracting. That being said, there were still some very powerful images and sequences that make up for a lot of the faults.
Although it may be unavoidable due to budget/time/technology/not sure, 3D animation was a little too obvious and awkwardly sat on top the the highly stylized 2D drawings.
There were moments of information overload. I can understand there may be a function or meaning to just dumping a thousand years of history, science, and various information all at once, but reading it through subtitles was a little difficult to say the least.
Everything else:
As a point-of-view piece, I would just like to note that this follows the stream of consciousness of the main character, Saki. Unfortunately, as with many stories that also follow narration, there are simply pieces of the story missing; i.e. when characters are not around Saki, you have almost no clue where they are or what they are doing. Nonetheless, the anime holds very faithful to the stream of consciousness storytelling, and information is revealed as it would be to the main character, leading to what many would say are plot holes. I'm not sure if these would be plot holes or simply differences in the conclusions drawn by the character and reality. Either way, it can be a difficult to follow if watched too casually.
The morality of the story was very vague and left open to interpretation with nudges in many directions; however, I felt that "scientists" were demonized a little too much, but I suppose everyone was demonized a little too much.
Overall:
I am happy I watched this anime. I watched the whole anime over the course of 3 days, and it managed to infiltrate my dreams in very interesting ways (not horrifying ones, thankfully). It's a dark work for a mature crowd and is a dystopian future tale that is well-suited for today.
