Michael Bay-sama would use an interesting concept and find as many ways as possible to milk everyone's money untill it runs dry and then move on to other concepts. To be honest, the producers tried to avoid this technique and seemed to care about the source material since various mechanics from the original game are present. But, having to squeeze hours of content into a 1 cour series is a Herculean task and usually, despite the ambition behind a project, things go downhill as fast as Hollywood producing shitty cliched romances, low-brow, unfunny comedies that people will overpraise more than they deserve and schlock action films.
When the show starts, it is a classical "Whodunnit", Cluedo mime where everyone has to find the person who was murdered. But the interesting part starts when the classic Cluedo ends up being a battle royal of high schoolers organized by an anthropomorphic teddy bear whose merchandise you already have, but you will never admit it. And if this is not enough, the characters are all trapped in a high school for talented students where each one has their own unique talent/skill and the only way out is by killing each other. This already makes it stand out from your typical caliber of psychological, mystery anime and you have a promising start. So what went wrong?
Well, after a person is murdered, a trial is held after a specific time given for the students to search for clues where the students have to decide who is the murderer. The first ones were a delight to watch but later on they became very repetitive and the main protagonist is the only one who can figure everything out because everyone else is denser than Ichika in reasoning. To their credit, they kept trying to make each trial unique but this is how each one went: People suspect an innocent, Sherlock-kun (Naegi) thinks about it, the rest talk about bullshit, then Sherlock-kun guesses everything correctly and murderer gets executed in horrific ways. I am not joking. This is the formula that is repeated every time and the executions were good but later on they lacked the same punch they had as in the first few because characters are not developed properly ending up giving no shit about them.
Speaking of characters, we all have to acknowledge the elephant in the room. The main protagonist, Sherlock-kun, is a scaredy character-less Macguffin who is the only one with actual brain cells in the whole show just because the plot demands it. White hair emotionless waifu (Kirigiri) is also smart but she is mostly useless and does nothing in the show to help. The rest range from ok to cringey. But, I really liked that they each represented a specific stereotype of a person and their appearance helped us understand more or less their main trait. I.e. Hifumi is an eroge-crazed otaku, Junko is your typical, spoiled, diva-esque model, Togami is your typical rich preppy brat that you want to kick his balls etc.
Although the characters are not terrible per se, they are very poorly used in the story and you feel absolutely nothing about most of the cast because the show does not give enough time to connect with them.
The visual department is ok. The only thing I have to say is that the characters look weird and the producers pay great hommage to the game by adding mechanics present in the game and the executions look really creepy and horrific in a good way.
As for the auditory department, it was average. OST and ED were decent but the OP is terrible and irritating.
In conclusion you have an average anime that could have been better if handled with more care and it lasted longer. It is exactly like the first dish you cook in your life. It is not that bad but you could have done it better if you avoided some beginner traps and mistakes.
Overall: 5.58/10
Alternative recommendations:
-Mirai Nikki: Same mistakes but with less good visuals and better music.
-Death Parade: Instead of a battle royale, it has games where you risk your life and whoever loses will "die". Fate of the losers and winners is decided by a third person known as an arbiter. Great audiovisual experience although it falters a bit in the story and characters aspect in a similar manner as Danganronpa did.
