I'm not going to lie, I'm a little butt hurt about this one. The first 20 episodes were at least an 8 in my book. One of the better Shounen anime I've seen in a little while. I couldn't understand why it had such sub-par reviews. At first I thought it was another World Trigger in the sense that it would take some time to warm up to it, but never get the chance to really shine because of a lack of support. Twin Star Exorcists is in a different boat.
I'm not a die hard manga fan, at all. As a matter of fact, I hardly read any manga, but I've watched enough anime to tell when a show has diverged from source material. There is usually a significant drop in progression, consistency, and intrigue involving the plot and characters. This makes it hard to rate overall, and I may wind up adjusting this review after I finish, admittedly forcibly, watching the last half of what appears to be an imminent train wreck.
Now the first 20 episodes weren't perfect or transcendent by any means. The community has every right to expect high quality content and admonish the not so high quality content, but I believe people expecting every show with the slightest bit of promise to turn in to the next Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood have their heads up there arses. I'm nowhere near that picky, and if my defense of World Trigger has yet to clue you in, I am also an uncultured swine who is easily entertained. Sorry, not sorry.
I like the cheesy anime tropes and running gags, even those that have been beaten with a stick repeatedly. Yes, those. Character obsessed with a certain food, mascot character, fan service character, hard-ass character that's really a softy, and I'm probably omitting a few in this series that have also been used ad nauseum. These might be deal breakers to some of you, but they are staples of the Shounen genre in my opinion.
I love the gritty side to the story. The deaths, the pain, the suffering are all well presented. I'm a sucker for that sympathetic shock value, and cheap plot twist producing deus ex machina, so much so that I can forgive occasional sub-par writing such as a horribly sudden and forced "This must be a power of the twin stars" in place of quality progression.
I liked the dub-steppish BGM, wasn't crazy about the intros and endings despite the fact some of the sounds remind me of some bands I like. Even though it's sung by a female the one intro feels kind of like a cross between Taking Back Sunday and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. To me at least.
The animation is okay in my book. Nothing breathtaking, but nothing detrimental as well.
I'm not a big fan of Benio's Seiyuu at times. Her voice gets on my nerves occasionally, but it was of a diminutive impact to me. Her character took me a little bit to warm up to and that may have contributed. Rokuro's voice really makes both the comedy and the serious parts work. You got a love-to-hate antagonist and a hard-to-hate-despite-being-a-total-bastard antagonist whom are both excellent 'bad guys'.
But everything that made this a good watch has disappeared post-haste as of episode 21. I expected a time skip but I didn't expect them to diverge almost completely from the ongoing plot. Instead it's some monster of the week bull shit leading up to a non-canon filler ending. My least favorite of which was a blatant Don Flamingo rip off art-wise. It is seriously like some video game shit. They just rendered him different colors. Its ridiculous that a group of employed individuals thought that was a good idea. Crazier yet, that idea was financed and came to fruition! That's almost as bad as doing a filler arc(s) longer than the canon arc. Naruto didn't even try that shit! Well they may have, they just didn't actually do it. Much like Log Horizon season 2, the series is beginning to feel like a dead waste of time. It's not terrible, for filler at least, it's just such an obvious downgrade of everything it already had going for it.
It's such a shame that so few series ever get adapted start to finish or accurately. *Sigh* Here's hoping this is a lesson learned for the anime industry. I won't hold my breath.
