A few PROS hooked me from the start:
1.) I liked the opening and ending theme songs.
2.) It had a good cast of voice actors.
3.) The animation was fairly good with adequate effects and nice artwork.
4.) I also enjoyed the general concept of the story...
A school that teaches a duo system for combat, weapons that are manifestations of the soul, a main character whose soul manifests as a shield to protect rather than a weapon to attack with.
That all seemed fairly interesting.
5.) To top off, the cast of characters was pretty good to start out with...
Julie is adorable, bunny sensei provides comedic relief, you have a brain and brawn duo, and another duo of typical moe characters for fan service and harem aspects. The problem is that this cast never matures into anything else.
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So here's my view of the CONS:
1.) The main characters get very little character development, if any.
Julie and Tor are given back stories that are never fully explained nor used to advance the story. Their back stories also never receive any sort of conclusion.
Romance is foreshadowed at the start of the show but never advanced. I started to question whether it was ever canon to begin with or if I was just imagining things. Tor and Julie don't change much as a duo throughout the course of the show aside from their growing urge to protect one another. The show even reverts them to more of a father-daughter relationship than anything else.
The secondary characters get more plot development than the main characters too. Bunny Sensei goes from trying to murder the students to protecting them, Miyabi struggles to deal with her romantic feelings, and Lilith matures and learns to make friends.
2.) The secondary characters were not utilized to their full potential.
The little goth principal seemed promising at first. It made it seem like not all of the cards were on the table yet. As the show goes on however, nothing is gained from her character. She seems utterly powerless yet incredibly important for no reason. The show never gives her a back story or a shining moment. At first she reminded be of the "Witch of the Void" (Natsuki Minamiya) from "Strike the Blood" but that comparison ended at the visual level.
The moe duo of Tomoe and Miyabi seemed to only exist to create a harem. I was hoping their character designs were going to be used in a more clever way. It's honestly fine to use tropes and cliches as long as the creators are self aware of this and can poke fun at themselves for it. Use them ironically, try not to have them take themselves seriously, or at least have some sort of intelligent humor behind their incorporation. Saekano, Seitokai Yakuindomo, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, No Game No Life, Outbreak Company, and various others are good examples of this tactic.
Brains and Brawn never really do anything important. They don't receive any character development and just seem to be there.
3.) The battle scenes begin to feel repetitive as all of the characters are inexplicably unkillable and the same villain is reused throughout the entire show.
No matter how much a character is injured, they just magically survive for no reason. There's nothing more annoying than when a show overplays the near death experience. I was even annoyed with how Aldnoah.Zero ended season 1 with what appeared to be 4 character deaths just to have every single one of them be just fine in season 2. But unlike Aldnoah.Zero, Absolute Duo seems to do this every single episode, does not retain any of the injuries as permanent, and makes no effort to explain away the damage taken by the characters. The biggest problem with this is that because no one ever dies, the same villain is fought over and over again in the show. At least if they actually fully defeated the villain there would be some sort of forced plot development by having new opponents appear.
4.) Not much plot development.
Honestly the story seems propped up by the introduction of new characters and occasional scene changes. At the end of the show no one gets revenge, there is no romantic progression, the power feud between organizations isn't settled, "Absolute Duo" is never really achieved or explained, the loli goth principal never unveils the master plan, no one graduates, and we still have no idea why the government is even bothering to train exceeds. The story has an interesting setting but lacks any sort of purpose.
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Overall this show seemed like someone had a good idea for a setting and character cast but then never bothered to develop it at all. It just seems like someone wrote an awesome proposal for a series and then sold it off to be turned into filler.
Another big reason this anime may feel so disappointing to me is that all of its PROS are presented right at the start with all of the CONS showing up one after another until the end of the show. There are other shows with just as many PROS and CONS but because they are mixed together and go back and forth, the viewers tend to feel more like they are enduring the CONS to continue experiencing the PROS. Absolute Duo's PROS are all front loaded though so it's all downhill after you get hooked at the beginning.
