And there is, but it's buried deep under an extremely thick layer of pure unabated rage.
I'll just say right now that I gave TAW exactly 4 minutes of my time. Because in 4 minutes everything was said. I watched Shinsekai Yori from the same studio, an anime I considered to have an excellent story and good characters but generally terrible production values and design. This is the same. Except the story and characters are shit too.
So why am I writing a "review" from 4 minutes of observation? Because it was, and I'm not being ironic, enough to be sure of a number of things:
-This anime is godawful stupid
-This anime is godawful lazy
-This anime is just godawful, but with a special taste for mixing pretentious hardcore with stupidly stupid(I would have said lighthearted but come on, it's more stupid than anything)
Story: A bunch of teenagers fight with swords because plot and the hero gets every girl on his penis. Think it's not enough? It's literally the entire plot of season 1. I checked. 1/10
Art: In less than 4 minutes I saw a bunch of random 3D models in a generic blurred background. More than that the art in general is generic and lazy, the characters look nothing fantastic, they have a pink-haired girl with long hair in there and they manage to make her look sort of ugly. Considering that long pink hair is pretty much my exact taste in anime girls, I don't even get how they managed that. 3/10
I was told the soundtrack is good and I want to believe it because less than 3 mins in I heard a super happy theme that was the most misfit and tone-shifting thing I heard in years. At 0:00 you're in a fight, at 0:05 the girl is crying in happiness and thankfulness, at 0:10 she's about to launch a fireball at the protagonist, and at 0:15 you're hearing the happiest theme there is. Was this even made by humans or computer generated by a first version AI attempting to appeal to us? So yeah it's a good soundtrack but if this is how they're going to use it, then 2/10 and holy god will anything about this not be completely lazy and sucky?
Characters: In 3 minutes I met:
-The teenager girl who is into a fight against a masked guy and says "sorry x" after she loses and dies
-The teenager guy who x was, who is the most generic here-to-help-all guy who's also crazy strong and is flustered everytime a boob is even hinted at
-Teenager tsundere girl with pink hair who manages to go from tsun to dere in less than 10 seconds then back to tsun then pulls a magic blast and destroys everything. And who could look a lot less shit.
-The teenager director(?) of the school who's as smily as her tits and sex drive are huge.
I would put 0/10 if possible, but I guess it'll be one. Pathetic is certainly a good definition, there is NO EFFORT at all. I won't even dignify this schlock with the word "characterisation", but at the very least, if your characters are shallow, make them fun. Here the production values are so low, the story is told in such a slingshot way, that even something as simple as a tsundere character comes off as false, and as not fun. I mean come on, could you get any lower for a professional studio? Actually don't answer that, I'm afraid of the answer.
Enjoyment: 10/10 without irony again. If I could swallow this inane schlock for more than a few minutes I would probably find an extremely powerful sick enjoyment out of hating this with every cell of my body. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, I can't, and I have less terrible things to watch.
Overall: I didn't stop 3 minutes in because it was shit. If that was it, I'd have stood it to at least the end of the episode. No. My mind refused to carry along with this tremendous piece of lazy, barely shoved out crap, after two lines:
-After this event(the genostella children), the world was changed and a new order was made by [insert organisation whose name I can't even remember and who controls Asterisk Island]
-Due to the changes, a new morality was born in the world
-And now, panties
WHAT? ARE YOU ACTIVELY TRYING TO FUCK WITH MY REMAINING BRAIN CELLS?
You literally took 3 sentences to go from "a new world order" to "a new morality and set of social values" to "PANTIES"!
Do the people who put this mindless crap on the market even know that you can't throw stuff like "new world order/new morality" without actually showing how or what? That's like saying "and thus the greatest soldier ever was born". But then we don't see the soldier, we don't know how he fights, or even for whom.
I have never seen such a sharp, poorly done storytelling in my entire life. I literally dropped it right then and there, paused the video, tried some more but the damage was done. In less than 4 minutes I was convinced that this wasn't just generic and poor, it was also horribly told and had absolutely no idea of what it was talking about. And lots of shows are generic and mindless, but this one is lazy and veeeeery poorly made to boot.
If I ever want to hate anime, I'll be sure to come back to this.
