Story: 1/10 (atrocious)
Seriously!? Who is this adaptation for? Studio 8-shit thought it was a great idea to horribly rush events directly from the VN for the first half, and then go anime original into a rushed incomprehensible second half. Like... if you don't have the time to adapt it and were going to make most of it original, you might as well have made it completely anime original. If you wanted to adapt the whole thing then trying to do it in merely 13 episodes was a terrible idea in the first place. The first half will immediately turn off people who haven't read the novel since it appears to be something generic with rapid tonal swings and horrible pacing. The second half only goes out of its way to give fans of the novel the finger by creating a train-wreck of several side routes combined into a weird anime original clusterfuck with only one frigging thing original outside of the source material. Finally if your a Key fan, you will be so emotionally distant from the generic underdeveloped characters that if you were hoping for the famous "feels" you won't even get that. There are many elements of the story that will probably seem incomprehensible to new viewers, and when you need the source material to understand what is going on, then it has failed utterly as an adaptation.
Characters: 2/10 (terrible)
Incredibly thin and underdeveloped. Like the other flawed Key anime Charlotte, most of them only have time to be defined by some single trait that is repeated for punchlines. "Pervert and lets be BFF generic" Kotarou, the ribbon girl loves coffee, Chihiya is a dumb jock, you have tsundere "don't touch me pervert" Lucia, you have "cute loli that defends protagonist no matter what" Shizuru. I don't even remember what they gave Kotori as a character in the anime. Two of the characters are given backstories with some scenes that feel like they were on fast forward... I am not even kidding, all of it is so rushed that even as someone who read the novel, I was BARELY able to follow, and felt disconnected pretty quickly. When you speed up events with no flow or breathing time, it ends up moving too fast for you to digest and process what is going on and what you should be feeling. The result is a rapid slideshow summarizing whats going on without giving you time or space to feel or care about the events on the screen.
There are only two characters in the show that could be somewhat entertaining. One of them is in it for like 10 minutes (Yoshino), and the other was the ribbon girl who ironically has the least personality in the original source material. The ribbon girl has an anime original circumstance that occurs, and there is a charm to her that sort of works for a single episode that I thought was passable.
However, it was when I saw the final episode that I realized how terrible the cast was treated in this horrid adaptation. You see characters being injured, dying, yelling and screaming in a chaotic battle with supposed high stakes in the air. Yet, despite having read about them for 50+ hours in the novel, I simply watched bored and emotionally disconnected from everything happening onscreen. I didn't care about any of these characters that I remembered liking so much from the visual novel. None of the charm, fun, or heart of these characters were there. They were became nothing but hallow shells carrying their names.
Art/Animation: 3/10 (terrible)
Rewrite looks ugly. The art and animation is somewhat passable for the first couple episodes, and then it takes a quality nosedive in the second half. 8-shit decided to make this show CGI heavy and the result is atrocious. It honestly gives Berserk 2016 a run for its money in awfulness. I hate the character designs, which look too small and way too "cutesy" for my liking. The character are very often off-model and look awful in motion at times. Tensho, the director, is also very weak at framing good actions sequences so even if your just there for decent spectacle it can't even manage that. Plus, a personal gripe, why is the lighting always so bright? Jesus!!
Sound: 8/10 (very good)
Like... the one saving grace? Maybe? Something good to say about this trash is the soundtrack that was taken straight from the visual novel...
Enjoyment: 1/10
I honestly wished this anime didn't exist. The fans of the visual novel and of Key deserve much better than this. I feel very bad for people who loved the original material and was expecting something good. Unfortunately this isn't the adaptation you were looking for. If you aren't a fan of either Key or the novel, I don't recommend this either since there are much better options out there. This entire adaptation needs a rewrite, and from a studio that doesn't rhyme with shit.
