Story
If we look at Kagerou Project, we get an engaging story with lovable characters which is told in an unusual and fragmented fashion through songs. Part of the charm is interpreting things in your own way and looking for connections and meaning. The complete story of Kagerou Project is still not told, and the anime is only a small fraction of the entire world and story. This is why, as a standalone product, Mekakucity Actors falls short. I watched the show with my boyfriend who knew nothing of the franchise and more often than not I had to pause episodes to explain more of the context. I imagine that someone watching this will be very, very confused. The story isn't bad, and it isn't as shallow as it is sometimes presented in the anime, but the anime does a pisspoor job of roping in new fans and really caters to those that are already familiar with the franchise.
Art
Eh. That's all I can say, eh. The art is ot bad per se but Shaft has never been my favourite studio and this isn't one of their best works either. The animation can be quite wonky at times, and the characters look worse than they do in the videos for the songs more often than not. There's a lot of stylistic choices to the art that don't always come across right. The whole world the story takes place in feels very unreal and empty because of the art style.
Characters
The anime has too little time to truly focus on each character enough and some characters get more screentime than others, sometimes unnecessarily so. While Kagerou Project is mostly about the characters, with the story as a means to showcase them, in the anime it felt the opposite way around and it didn't really work out because the story was already less than solid to begin with.
All in all, Mekakucity Actors is a solid addition to the Kagerou Project franchise, but judging it on its own merits it doesn't amount to much. Again, if the plot or characters interest you, check out the songs first, the anime will leave you very very confused, and also spoiled on quite a few things.
