So with that, I'll give a sort of summary of my thoughts with no spoilers, because I feel like my thoughts conflict very much with both the people who like and dislike this show.
TL;DR
In my opinion, this show is basically Madoka Magicka without the crushingly obvious plot hole inherent to that show. It jumps off the deep end in a very similar way, has very similar themes, and overall is just as obvious with it's themes and symbolism. Where this show is ahead of Madoka Magicka to me,is in that it embraces how absolutely ridiculous it really is. I found myself laughing at the "serious" bits in this show just as often as I did with Madoka Magicka, but unlike that show, it did manage to grip me multiple times, especially near the end of the show. Yes, it's melodramatic, but it never tries to be anything that isn't melodramatic, and at times it's melodrama can be genuinely intriguing and scary. While it might not connect with you on an emotional level like it wants to, it's a good show for people who aren't smart, but want to feel like they are. It's also got some great action and character designs in the actions scenes themselves.
Actual Review now (slight spoilers):
For most of the show, there isn't much to really talk about. It's a fairly interesting story of a girl, Mato, trying to make friends and live a normal life, intercut with battles of people who seem to represent the main cast fighting with various metaphorical weapons and settings, as well as a separate story in these action scenes that up until the end has very little dialogue, which is nice since any dialogue there would be redundant and grating.
Now, like I said in the TL;DR, this show does in fact drop off the deep end in terms of plot in the later half. It doesn't necessarily have a plot twist per se, but more of a plot explosion. It gets taken from a highly melodramatic school slice of life show with metaphorical action scenes intercut to a ridiculous multiple dimension style show where the fate of the world with the metaphorical world and emotions of every girl on the planet at stake in the space of like 3 minutes, if you start counting from when this plot point gets brought up. While I'm not a huge fan of the direction that it took, I can respect where it ended up, instead of completely dropping the ball. It also managed to do something that not many shows of this kind actually pull off when they have these sorts of plot explosions.
It actually provides closure.
In terms of the over-the-top melodrama this show loves to soak in, I can get behind it. One, because I can laugh at it. Now, many people think that laughing at melodrama intrinsically means that you don't like it, but to me, when I laugh at the over-the-top shupa sherioush scenes in a show, it's because I get it. I get that it is a logical extreme. And in this show it does work, because when you are in middle school, you are crazy. And the characters that create the melodrama have a right to do so, except maybe for Kagari and Saya. The other characters that create the drama have extreme emotional problems that were drawn from some truly Elfen Lied level trauma, to the point where some of it is actually funny how bad their lives are. Kagari, though, broke her legs and had to live much of her life in a wheelchair, but can suddenly walk once some sense it brought to her, and she has become a very anti-social toxic person because of this. Saya, on the other hand, is a normal person, through and through. I myself have gone through what Saya has gone through, and she has virtually no reason for her sudden heel turn half way through the show into super creepy territory. Overall, though, I find all the melodrama not so out of place, just because of the nature of the situation. These are psychologically scarred people all trying to get through one of the most confusing parts of their lives, where they think that everything already matters more then it really does, no matter their psychological condition.
In a way the setting and the characters age saves the story for me.
So the action. Now, I'd like to say that CG is just the worst thing ever. And that's coming from me, the guy who loves Arpeggio of Blue Steel, the dumbest CG harem action show of all time. The problem with CG is that it all too often looks too artificial. And I know, anime is animation. It's artificial by nature. But I can still tell that Humans drew the characters and the back grounds and the characters within them. With CG, it feels like the human element is taken out of the equation entirely. That being said, they pulled off some of the best CG I've seen in this show. It was to the extent that for the first 5 minutes or so, while the intro scene was in CG, I couldn't tell. I'm not a huge fan of the idea of CG being used in just the action scenes, though. It seems like a very unnecessary stylistic choice. That being said, it's fine. I actually kind of like how the CG in the action scenes takes you out of the show, so that the very visceral violence on screen doesn't clash tonally with the overall light-hearted real-world scenes. Instead it serves as more of a departure from it, and just a spectacle to watch.
As much as I do like this show, I never cared about the characters.
Now, that's not saying much, considering it takes a lot for me to care about a character, and anime tends to be focused on getting it's massive plotlines and other aspects more then it does having you actually care about characters. What I'm trying to say with this paragraph is that the show works despite the fact that I couldn't necessarily connect with it's characters.
Overall, yes, it is a giant mess of a show. But I love it for that. I love that it tried to pull some crazy nonsense, and did despite the consequences. It is a train wreck of a show, I will not deny that. I will, though, say that it can be admired for what it did do, as this isn't a story you will find anywhere else or executed as well.
