At first, I wasn't all that curious since I didn't even know anything about vocaloid, but as I began to watch it, I also began to look for the source material, then the manga, the novels and finally here I am, a full-fledged Kagerou Project fan, and it was all thanks to this anime.
Story-wise, it does a fairly decent job. It takes the stories and characters found in the songs and it gives them a voice, puts them into dialogue and it does that in an amusing way. It starts out as a pretty straightforward story regarding a NEET called Shintaro who decides to leave his house for the first time in two years. From there, it starts getting more thrilling as it gets closer to revealing the truth behind the "eye powers" of some of the main characters, who formed a secret group called "Mekakushi Dan"
However, I will say that the story has a few issues regarding the pacing of the episodes. Kagerou Project is a really big series with a lot of content that Jin had to put in 13 episodes. Therefore, there are times when it feels like the anime will rush through certain plot elements or downright ignoring them. I won't deny that this can be the biggest problem with the story. That said, it's not something that I found to be a joykiller. Even with this poor pacing, most of the episodes still present a lot of exciting moments that will just make you forget the fact that a lot of songs that could have made it into the anime but sadly it was just turned into some short exposition to wrap things up.
Oh right, did I mention the songs? This anime takes a lot of covers from the vocaloid songs and puts them into the episodes. Songs such as Kisaragi Attention, Otsukimi Recital, Lost Time Memory and Ayano's Theory of Happiness (Sadly, this one is not as good for budget reasons) all made their way into the episodes and they sound amazing, a lot of those covers were really well made and they make up a fantastic soundtrack.
As for the animation, it's fine, I guess. It's definitely not bad, I really love the art style used, but the animation quality is not as good as other shows coming out these days in scenes that require a lot of detail, it's all incredibly choppy and it lacks fluidity. It's not bad, but it certainly feels like it could have been much better. Then again, this is Shaft, their animations usually feel rather unfinished, so I shouldn't be surprised
Overall, I had a pretty good time with this anime. Sure, the story feels a bit rough around the edges and it could have definitely improved from more episodes than just 12, but I still consider the story to be good and the overall anime to be incredibly fun to watch.
