At first though, let me talk about setting, characters and the like. The show is set in a fantastical world, filled with magic bullet spells and animals looking like somebody had to much time on their hands while having to design a unicorn for example. This left at least the creature of the first episode for example to be a bit overdesigned, but also interesting looking. When you played any of the Tales games, you will fell yourself at home here. That though is also one of my major gripes I have with this show. If you are in any way familiar with these kinds of shows, you will find the world of Chaika to be quite boring and uninteresting. Designs of the creatures gets even duller, as the show progresses, so there is that. No upwards trend there, I guess.
Characters are for the most part nothing to write home about either. Toru is our standard anime protagonist for the day and does not have anything to him, worth writing about him here. Chaika herself seems to at least have an objective which makes her character a bit more thick layered, but her speaking quirk is the only mentionable thing about her in quite the same way. That leaves us with Akari, who has at least a bit of a character, even if she is all over the place in therms of consistency about her mood and such. She was the only character I was not indifferent to on the other hand, but that rather says something bad about the rest of the cast, than something good about her. The pseudo-anthagonist is generico-bad-but-really-just-honorable-boring-straight-guy bored me to bollocking tears and his party of sleeping pills was no different. The dragon I won't mention because the show did not mention even some personality about her either. Fair is fair.
Also their names...ugh.
Animation was quite solid for the most part. Some hiccups here and there, nothing really special overall, but serviceable. Character designs, like I said are a bit overdone sometimes, in therms of clothing and all. Characters might have to be distinguishable from the crowd of background people, but this went overboard and came off looking quite silly.
When it comes to the writing though, this show drops the ball almost completely in trying to invest me into the story. I got bored in the first third of the show and could not be bothered to be invested and thrilled right up until the final moments. They had one minor reveal, that could have potential, but nothing mind blowing or even something close to that. There was just so much potential lost and the concepts that were subject to the story were never that exiting or just too thinly spread across one or two episodes.
Never using Gillette ever again though, I mean jeez...why even? Can't you think of any other names or is that a weird thing I don't know about again? You tell me.
