I am glad that I watched this.
I probably wouldn't recommend this to others.
I have watched this once, subtitled. I have only watched the anime.
I won't watch this again. I will watch the next season.
---- Positives ----
Each episode is entertaining, despite not particularly going anywhere, at a high level.
Although characters are mainly roaming around, albeit with organization-related tasks, there isn't much of a high-level urgency of plot in this series. Each win is a little win. Any high-level plot happenings are part of a seemingly eternal game of tug-of-war. Despite that, somehow each episode individually remains interesting to watch. There's good all-around execution.
Little effort is spent on ability details and interactions.
Ability analysis isn't the focus of this series, and we never find out much about limits of the abilities or how abilities interact with other abilities. I haven't seen any evidence that this series was trying to analyze abilities, so I think it's great how well such details were avoided, to make room for other character interactions. The lack of analysis is a good thing in this series, because ability details and interactions analysis is often done poorly when a series thinks it can juggle that and any other element[s]. As a prime example of an under-analyzed ability in this series, Edogawa's ability seems like it would be even more broken than any characters in the series acknowledge. He's never given insurmountably impossible cases, so we never find out his limitations. We only know that he has a case-solving ability, he only uses it on relatively tame cases dealing with local police, and that, in those cases, it always seems to be sufficient. But if their organization has any larger goals, it seems odd that his ability isn't frequently [over]used to drive the plot [or if it is, then this isn't made clear to viewers]. Later in the series, he ~is~ prompted to use his ability for one plot-intensive purpose, but none of the characters visibly have a revelation that what Edogawa just did was amazingly broken within their world of abilities. About the most we ever get in the analysis department is when Yosano briefly describes a major detail of her ability, which there was incredibly misleading foreshadowing for earlier in the series.
Apparently, the characters have real-world parallels.
I am not deeply familiar with literary figures, so I successfully pushed that aspect aside while still enjoying this series. If you like deeply analyzing a series, this aspect may entertain you.
---- Negatives ----
No aspect sticks out, positive or negative.
We spend a decent amount of time with Nakajima, Dazai, and Kunikida, in which we get only a moderate glimpse into Nakajima's motivations and past. We spend very a little time with the other characters, just enough to leave an impression. This series had the feel of Durarara!!, but with fewer core characters and less overall direction. It seems that the next season may continue this cycle instead of capping the character count and exploring existing character interactions, motivations, and pasts.
Opportunity for cancel: None, besides the possibility that analyzing the characters' real-world parallels may have added enough depth to make this an astounding work, even without direction.
Actually, it may have been better if they explained at least Nakajima's ability progression more.
Throughout the series, Nakajima displays varying amounts of control over his ability. This progression gets almost no acknowledgement by any character, including Nakajima. All we know is that at an arbitrary point in a pinch, Nakajima is able to bust out his ability to varying degrees.
Opportunity for cancel: Maybe. One of the good points of this series is its avoidance of ability analysis, but since Nakajima is the main character, I expected a least a head nod at his progression in controlling his ability.
