Rewrite is another list of animes done by Key yet is another anime NOT done by Kyoto Ani, instead taking up by 8Bit (Grisaia no Kajitsu) and along with the 1 hour first episode special, LA thought Rewrite might be another Grisaia no Kajitsu and really...that's what LA got, just add in Grisaia no Rakuen and you get Rewrite.
Ok, so for that statement to make more sense to you, let's just move onto the plot.
Really with what the premise and poster gives you, it's sort of gives you a typical harem plot with a perverted anime main protagonist with the occult club as a base to make "goofy comedic hijinks".....it does...until you remember what the first episode gives us. Really the cliche and "typical Key" part comes to the first half of Rewrite. The first half of Rewrite gives us a sorta "get to know the setting and main protagonist", the main protagonist Kotarou Tennouji voiced by Masakazu Morita is your typical perverted snarky main protagonist you see in Key and at first he's a pretty bland main character, as for the harem, they are your typical harem fair, the childhood friend of Kotori Kanbe voiced by Chiwa Saito, Lucia Konohana voiced by Risa Asaki the clean freak tsundere, Shizuru Nakatsu voiced by Keiko Suzuki, the precocious mature loli, Chihaya Ootori voiced by Saya Shinomiya the ditz and Akane Senri voiced by Eri Kitamura the occult club president and "Ribbon Girl" voiced by Kana Hanazawa who has a link to Kotarou and really LA had two favourite characters in Rewrite, Akane and Lucia and LA will go into detail a bit later. But for the first half, because the setting and premise makes them very cliche and stereotypical of visual novel fair, the only exceptions really go to Lucia and Shizuru as we get their character development arcs during this.
It's where it comes to the halfway point where things really change and all these wild plot threads come together. The anime really gets it's foot into gear and gets to the "one part something bigger" LA said at the start of the review, because of this, it goes into HUGE spoiler territory, if you want the short of this, the something bigger goes into either trying to save the world or destroy it with the occult club members divided because of it, it's also because of this we get to see Akane and Chihaya's deal and reasoning to the Occult Club and this last half of the anime is why LA liked Lucia and Akane, Akane for her character development and fleshing out the plot, Lucia because she became a badass. The last half also finally brings us who this Ribbon Girl is and the obvious hints as to who she is and even she gets a bit of character development (it makes sense as this anime is based on her route).
If anything the last half of the anime focuses on both the world building in which Kotarou didn't see from his typical highschool days as well as bring into light that his "normal highschool days aren't as what they seem". The world building does get REALLY serious to the point of "world destruction" and can be either a mood whiplash from the highschool hijinks or you'll like it taking this turn. LA however really liked how they ramped this up and as to how the main cast are ALL affected by this (and develop them at the same time).
The overall problems with this anime from both sides of the plot is this, it has filler episodes with typical cliche visual novel fair, cliche characters that do evolve their characters though Kotarou is the only exception due to his "justice" beliefs and wanting to protect his occult club members, sure he develops himself but in a very cliche way and is a more spectator for the majority of the anime and really Kotarou is the biggest crux to this story, you either think he's cliche and boring or you see his struggle. The other problem is that due to the change in tone Rewrite has it has some rather inconsistent pacing which can be rushed or slower than usual.
The animation is by fair from decent but it's not horrible either, heck even the CGI monsters are typical and wildly weird looking but not to the point of being outright horrible. The animation on it's character designs from the anime poster alone shows us it has some decent vibrantly bright character designs. Really the animation is all over the place even if the animation has no errors or problems to it. 8Bit is trying but it's obvious the animation isn't the best element to the anime and can be easily another flaw in Rewrite.
The voice acting be all means is decent across the board, LA didn't really like any voice actor in general as all their vocals were typical fair, but if you had a gun to LA's head, LA would pick LA's favourite characters, Eri Kitamura as Senri and Risa Asaki as Lucia. Not much to talk about in the voice actor department..NEXT!
The ending was rather depressing to say the least, LA won't spoil at all, but it felt like fate couldn't be changed for all these characters which lead to this......."ending". Thankfully there is a second season in the works which can hopefully work to it's advantage, but for a *cough* bad *cough* end it was abrupt and outright depressing.
Rewrite as LA said is a mixed bag and for a visual novel adaptation by Key but NOT done by Kyoto Ani but that's the least of it's problems, Rewrite has it's strengths and obvious weakness shown throughout this and there isn't much LA can say about this adaptation, it's mediocre at best, poorly handled at worse and the second season announcement, LA realize why they are doing that, but for the first season, it doesn't help with this "route's" adaptation if the final scenes of Rewrite is anything to say. Mediocre is all LA can say, it's not horrible or great either...it could have been better.
