MINDSET:
Shaft is being Shaft, in a very Shafting way and Shafting has become Shafts repeated Survival tactic to Shaft on the countless number of casuals and to call these people masterminds in Shafty Storytelling. And because I'm ready to Shaft on Shaft, what's my case and point? SHAFT.
SYNOPSIS:
Some NEET guy protagonist finds himself a chick robot who looks like Mikune whose trapped inside he's devices, and can move towards any electronic device to play around with. Then, Shaft hits the fan when he needed to replace he's keyboard, on he's way to find he's new keyboard he stumbles upon a terrorist group. After beating the terrorist group in (how I would conceive it) a dum and felt-forced manner, he stumbles upon these people who have superpowers, and when they ust the so-called power, there eyes turn red. After that, SHAFT VISUALS have taken over the entire narrative with plot points that never go anywhere, a story that is just as confusing as Pokemon, some cheesy BS forced drama, and SHAFT VISUALS make the entire thing look like a mess at the end of the series.
REVIEW:
Character wise, its rather shallow. Sure Shaft are no longer using there own archetypes for now, but instead there using actual Archetypes borrowed from the masses of shows, cloned to be milked! We have the quiet girl, the cool and relaxed male teacher, the one dimensional villain, our vanilla protagonist, the moe blob etc!
The drama, is surprisingly ok for the most part, as the majority of excuses for character back stories are well explained on why they acted in this or that particular manner, nothing worth shedding a tear or two about, even though it was aimed to make You emotional it felt more quirky because at that point, You already know the character well enough due to the fact that there shallow Archetypes for the millionth time! (though there were moments when the back stories were a little cheesy) So overall, that’s ok I suppose. There are again, some good side characters but at the end of the day, they are always outnumbered by the mass number of Archetypes.
The characters, barely get any development at all since there development is pretty much the back story, and the fact that there pretty much Cookie Cutter. This loses the effect of all the DRAMAtical moments the shows attemplts to pull of. There were also some characters who made themselves look really important for the plot, but they ended up being plot device characters.
(to add further insult) Also, one of the characters in the cover art makes You think he plays a large role in the plot, but he only gets like 15 minutes of screen time. That's how bad the cast was.
The story is quite suffice for its job at first glance, but the more episodes You venture, SHAFT VISUALS have already taken over! The plot was utterly all over the place, some weird side story about God is a woman and how she created the world somehow becomes the main plot for whatever reason, some Scientist was foreshadowed as the main villain even though we already knew whose the villain in the first place, and loads of other unrealistic mess because of SHAFT VISUALS.
You see, what the Anime tries to do, is to show You these cute and quirky characters, make them cry Your eyes out because of there back stories, then hit the fan half way through with sadistically confusing mind truckee of a plot! And have barely any room for any of the characters to have any sort of real character development for us to even give a damn about and state the excuse for development were the back stories!
I think we have one thing that most of us should really agree on before I get to the nitty gritty stuff. The modern pop art style visuals are still Shafty as there previous works are. If not, Shaftier! It looks as if Shaft put some more creative effort into this as if the animators and director knew the show is already bad in the first place, so they had to make it more of a Shaft museum than an actual work of fiction, with great and simplistic art, there signature style of using sometimes nonsensical imagery, wild colour palette, and fuzzy camera angles, just makes it a better show just for that!
Musical scores on Shaft have been very consistent for the most part, with some OST's (like Madoka Magica) being very above average, it has a very notable and catchy OP with a skip worthy ED, the rest of the songs, however, just don't live up with OP, it gets the job done, then You forget it.
VERDICT:
3.5/10 – For cookie cutter characters who went through slightly better directing.
3/10 – For a very confusing plot, that was mediocre at first glances.
7/10 – BECUASE SHAFT VISUALS
5.5/10 For a forgetable yet suffice OST, whose greates factor is the great OP
4/10 – For any sort of enjoyment value, its the art and a handful of backstories
LEGACY:
This show is definitely not going to make us remember for its character cast, story, and music. Just for the shafty visuals, watching this show can only be described as You going to a pop-art museum, your not there for anything else, You were just here to look at how much one would drug there mind to create some abstract visuals. Watch this show, just for that.
FINALE: 3.5/10 For SHAFT VISUALS, why three? Even though Log Horizon had similar problems at least it was a very good geography lesson, while this one is simply for the visuals, so if You ask me, I'd rather learn than to look at LSD.
