Reviews

Well, this certainly was interesting. A pre-apocalyptic world with both gothpunk, fantasy and sci-fi elements. Could have been a total mess, but the mashup actually works. Much thanks to the great graphic design that makes the dying ashes of the world really believeable. The strong cast makes for a great pallet to paint up the core structure of the setting and the music brings the mood to even higher levels.

Sadly, while the world itself is a masterpiece, the story that takes place in it, is not. It is a tale of the Journey variety, and an unusually boring one at that. The cast moves in a straight line during the whole anime, and although there are lots of characters, they all walk in the same direction. The only thing that varies is the constellations of characters, due to a lot of random and pointless splittings and re-mergings of the party. On the way, there are a lot of stuff happening, of course, but all the events point in the same direction, even those that by all logic should be just "random encounters". Even the lowliest housecat seems to have something to contribute to the heroes' journey. It all feels like a two thousand year old epic, where the art of storytelling hadn't come very far. Sure, it is epic as fuck, but at least as boring.

All in all, totally watchable, but don't expect your sense of dramaturgy to be challenged or even tickled in any way.