To begin, Comet Lucifer starts with a somewhat interesting, even if cliché, set-up to its plot. Our MC, Sogo, travels into a mine in search of a rare crystal that his mother once mentioned and stumbles upon one of particular interest. Thus he meets Felia, the girl who the anime has clearly set up as the main love interest. And there you have a basic summary. So we’ve got an alright but cliché boy-meets-mysterious-girl scenario, a childhood friend who is not-so-secretly interested in the MC, and the makings of what could be an interesting plot to come. An additional note of praise for the rest of the series, the Mechs themselves are interesting and the fights (mostly) well done.
So where does it go so wrong?
At the simplest level, Comet Lucifer fails because, in essence, it hasn’t really developed anything in regards to its characters or plot and is content to sit around shoving low-context mech battles in between sub-mediocre Slice of Life scenes. The tonal whiplash one receives while attempting to watch Comet Lucifer is enough to cause major fractures in all seven of your neck’s vertebrae.
Likewise, the characters are a massive failing point for the misguided Comet Lucifer. Mainly in the sense that their actions don’t make a whole lot of sense. From actively parading around the mysterious mystery girl with telekinetic powers around town (despite the fact that there are clearly people trying to track her down) to not trying to figure out why she has any powers at all (or pressing for any sort of backstory), MC and his childhood friend(zone) companion simply don’t cut it as rational actors. Additionally, the characters don’t really have much personality (other than basic tropes and stereotypes) so as a result watching them is dreadfully boring.
Unfortunately, the character actions and personalities don’t get any better as the episode count increases. This itself magnifies the previous problem of the Slice of Life scenes; with characters being an essential ingredient to a good Slice of Life, the lack of any character building hurts Comet Lucifer in multiple aspects. These scenes only serve as a boring intermission between the passable mech scenes, which unfortunately are too few and far between to make up for the rest of Comet Lucifer’s failings.
So what can we conclude about Comet Lucifer thus far? Well, it is bad, and not worth the watch. Truly, Comet Lucifer lives up to its name, for it may very well be the spawn of the Dark Lord, sent upon anime viewers to drive us to tears of boredom and torture them with false assurances of promise.
Do yourself a favor, dear reader. Don’t waste your time on Comet Lucifer.
