Let's start with the story,the story,it's complete bullshit.Humanity has been taken by titans,sorry,I mean,kabanes and it's living in train stations using trains to move arround
The setting it's really cool.It set in steampunk feudal japan,so it's more attractive than your typical japanese school setting.They use technology which doesn't clash with the time and the social structure it's simliar to feudal one but unfortunatly,it doesn't get explored and it's only used of decoration,it established that there're some groups to fight the zombies and something with the clans families going on but it doesn't get developed and the story only focuses on killing all zombies.The premise is interesting and attractive even though we have seen it a million times already but attractive indeed.
The pacing is really fast but chaotic,since thing move so fast there's no time to let the characters introduced and the events to sink it,so you don't have any clue of what's going on.
The writter is Ichiro Okouchi and this is double-edged sword,on one hand the writter was the same guy who wrote Code Geass and Planetes,on the other hand we wrote Valvrave,and unfortunatly,Kabaneri falls into the latter type.The story abuses the using of cliffhangers and plot twists to make you forget the complete bullshit of the script,Guilty Crown style.
Also,the zombie part is complete bullshit,nobody explains you a shit why they appeared?How?,and you can see,oh but it's a mystery,yeah,well nobody cares about them,at least in AoT they investigated about them and you got some information,eventhough,Eren's basement is still like in another galaxy.In addition,some random weird zombies and powers appeared just like "pum" and when I say that I don't want 2 hours infodump about the zombies but a least some information but no,the zombies only appered and the gigant zombies appeared out of nowhere and nobody explais a shit,the show doesn't care to have a little consistency,so the plot holes were getting bigger and bigger as the show gets dumber and dumber.Moreover,we started with a funny typical zombie apocalypse with trains and we ended with evil guys that want to kill humanity,super kabanes,injections that are power-ups.
Finally,we have the edning that ends this clustter-fuck of story with so many plot holes that it's not even funnywell,I previously explained that we have a bad,1-D guy,well he wants to kill everybody,he has a plan to do it and our MC tries to stop him which ended with him getting stabbed in the heart and threw into the water but he doesn't get killed because plot convenience,so yes he's OP as hell,later on,he appears in an island and he met some characters that disappeared some episodes ago and they went to kill the bad guy and save everyone,but before that,he gets a power-up with an asspull in a form of an injection that we don't know what it is or how they get it,but up to this point is just another plot hole in the story,after our main character got his asspull,he went to fight and he fights the big monster that is the girl that he loves being turned into a big kabaneri controlled by the bad guy but some how our MC saves her by screaming and running towards it.Then,we kills the bad guy and "yaay" everyone is saved and the bad guy followers' joins the good guys to go to the city that was supposed to be main objective of the series but they go together like nothing happens,it's not like they hijacked the train ruling them and even killing some of them.
To sum it up,the story it's a complete trainwreck.
The art and animation are amazing,WIT Studio is well know for making really well animated series like Attack on Titan and the Rolling girls.
The aesthetics pretty cool,because of it's setting the series has a really cool steampunk feeling to it
The charcter design is pretty as hell,even the zombies are beautiful,well,that's not true,but the character design is indeed really well done and we have here some waifu and husbando material
Also,there're a lot of character expression and setting details that make the inmersion even further.
The animation it's amazing with a level of quality which most studios are unable to produce,been only comparable to ufotable or KyoAni shows,the action is fluid and clean,the action is amazing and excites you,thanks to the animation and Araki's style,being the same as Death Note or Shingeki.
In conclusion,the animation and art are great and the best aspect of the show and thanks to the good staff it's enjoyable by itself
The sound is also really well done,let's start with the OP and ED
The OP was fine,the action excites you and the song was sung by EGOIST and is really catchy and lovely
The ED is amazing,the visuals are breaththaking and stunning with an amazing song sung by Chelly and Aimer attached to it.
The ost was composed by Sawano,the guy that gave us a collection of unforgettables soundtracks like the Shingeki ones or like the Guilty Crown ones,so yeah,it's good,it makes you excited for the action scenes and added to the great handling of them of Araki.
The sound is also get handled like to noises that the guns make and the trains,when they stop and its moving,the details aren't overlooked
The voice acting is also good,with the same seiyuu for our MC as the AoT MC,so there's a lot of screaming,the seiyuus did a good performance.
The sound department is really well done as well,like animation.
The characters are by far the worst aspect of the show.They're a boring copy-paste of the shingeki cast,the MC who wants to kill'em all(Ikoma),the super op girl that is interested on the MC (Mumei),etc,etc.They're one-dimentional and forgettable and most of them are annoying clichés like the rich and fragile girl.The characterization is also bad,because os the AoT syndrome,most of them are killed and the story and the "kill of the zombies" is the focus and nobody cares about the characters.The story also tries to add tension making you feel that nobody is safe but you clearly see that's bullshit,since the main cast is plot armor and op as hell and since this show suffers from the AoT syndrome,a lot of people die,so you won't care about them,only about their deaths,so the characterization doesn't existed.Moreover,the development is nonexistent,because the only thing that matters is the spectacle.You won't care about the characters,tou only will care about their deaths.Also,most of the characters aren't fleshed out in any way,they remain as cliches but to be honest,Mumei,gets some flesh out in the form of a flashback showing as how traumatic was her past but the character moves from a dynamic woman to a imoto thing,so her character suffers from a character regresion,ending the show like a damsel in distress like it's a LN adaptation.Then,we have Ani-sama,the evil bad guy with no redeeming cualities.
So,at the end of the day,we have a boring cast full of walking cliches and without any character development or fleshing out.
In conclusion,this show is a trainwreack (no pun intended) scriptwise but thanks to the pretty impresive animation and music it's really enjoyable
In the end,we have a show with really good production values but a bullshit script.
If you want something like AoT but with the consistency of Guilty Crown,go for it to rest that doesn't want dumb entertainment,stay the fuck away
Overall,I give this anime a 3 out of 10
For similar shows you can go Attack on Titan,for a zombie apocalypse and for cluster fuck of random bullshit with good production values you can go for Guilty Crown or Valvrave.
