Reviews

Starts of as a masterpiece, has ups and downs but doesn't really hold up. Then before the final arc, gets all plot twistish in a great way, renewing my hope in it, only to go downhill from there and almost goes to offer an ending that is pretty cool, but then totally screws it up in last few minutes. I was so stunned by the ridiculousness of the ending that I thought there must have been some catch with it like with Oreimo or Toradora endings, something that requires googling if one isn't particularly perceptive. But to no avail. Even Clannad didn't pull this big of an asspull.

Actually I don't know of a single anime to pull off this outstandingly retarded ending, well, other than Oreimo if taken literally. On the other hand, it's possible to pretended last few minutes didn't happen... and that fixes it considerably. So from now on let's pretend it ends at 22:02, for the sake of argument. Now that that's out of the way, the second biggest problem were the siscon jokes and crazy mom jokes. Those were just so extremely out of place and unnecessary. Third biggest problem would be one guy that's just evil for no reason at all. Bad writing! No!

There is a lot of non-seriousness juggling with seriousness in weird ways, but it kinda works out, but then when crazy nonsense action gets added to the mix... managing your expectations gets a bit confusing. It might be a bit innovative in to which lengths it goes with serious-silly-crazy juggling, and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, and such thing depends a lot on the viewer. So how was this then actually really enjoyable to watch for the most time? Because KyoAni damnit.

Those stupidly high budget production values are worth it on their own. This especially goes for action sequences. Though bobduh doesn't consider action sequences to be good, I do feel the need to point out how extremely gorgeous, rich, creative and detailed they are. It reminded me a bit of the way they handled action sequences in Munto, which were also gorgeous (for their time).

And with every other production aspect being on this same level, it just makes it an enjoyable experience. Humor has some extremely good moments, as well as moe having some extremely heart piercing moments. Characters generally feel good, as with any KyoAni work. I loved the fast pacing of the plot. Even the pacing of SoL and silly banter was exceptionally well handled, and it did wonders for executing excellent humor timings at places. Biggest downfall is wasted potential narrative-wise. Still recommended to anyone who's a fan of KyoAni style. I even didn't mind the usual silliness of magical fantasy setting due to show being well grounded in characters.