Story:
Like previously stated, the premise of The Reflection is that several years ago, some kind of explosion appeared in the sky and was seen all over the world. Some people were hurt by it and the ones who survived are known as the Reflected. The Reflected soon realized that the Reflection gave them super powers. The story follows a young woman, Eleanor, and the mysterious hero X-On, as they follow a case of Reflected who are disappearing. They soon find a sinister plot that threatens the world and it's up to them to save the day.
The story premise I wrote above sounds horribly cliche, right? That's because it is. The Reflection's story severely lacks creativity and the story hurts from it. In addition, the pacing is atrocious. Most of the episodes feel like they take an eternity to finish. At the same time, you'll feel like nothing happened in the episode.
The show ends with a cliffhanger that I won't mention in the unlikely event that you'll watch this show to completion like I did, but the show is really banking on a second season for that cliffhanger to mean anything. I highly doubt that this show will receive a second season, so it just wasted a perfectly good ending on nothing. Thanks a lot.
Overall, I found the main plot of the Reflection to be really lacking and generally uninteresting.
Art:
The art is the main reason I started watching this show. When you watch this show, there are times where it feels like this is a graphic novel come to life. I enjoy the art style a lot and is one of the few good things this show has to offer. However, style can only do so much for animation. The actual animation of The Reflection is serviceable at best and at worst, you'll notice some horribly low resolution backgrounds. Another negative of the animation is the CG in this show. Yes, The Reflection has CG and it does not look good in the slightest. At best, it looks okay but when it's bad, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Sound:
The soundtrack to The Reflection is your generic superhero music. I mean, it works but you won't remember it all that much. There's only one song that sticks out in this show and that's I-Guy's main theme song, Sky Show. This theme was upbeat and fun initially and I quite liked it. However, as the show progressed, its charm quickly wore off on me.
Outside of the main show soundtrack are its opening and ending. I loathe the opening to this show because of how goddamn generic it is. Ignoring the horribly generic heroic music that plays in the opening, the opening itself is barely animated. It's just a bunch of letters on bright backgrounds. It's like the producers figured that it'd be a good idea to put in minimalist wallpapers as the opening in a desperate attempt to save money or something. On top of the opening being boring, both visually and musically, it lasts a minute and a half. I started skipping the opening by the second episode.
The ending is an ad for some J-pop group. It has nothing to do with the main themes of the show at all, nothing to do with superheroes or the characters or anything. It's blatant promotional material and I despise it because it doesn't even pretend to be part of this show.
Character:
Every character in this show is boring. There's really nothing special about any of them. The only character that maybe has an inkling of something interesting going on is X-On and even then, that's just because he's supposed to be "mysterious." As in, the show tells you almost nothing about him and it hopes you might like him as he is.
I didn't like him all that much.
Enjoyment:
At the time I started watching this show, it had a score of around 4.50, meaning that it was the lowest rated show of the summer anime season. My curiosity got the better of me and I figured it wouldn't hurt to watch it. I figured it couldn't possibly be that bad. After finishing it, I can say that isn't all that bad. There are certainly worse shows out there. However, you can only make your own fun for so long, like I did with The Reflection. This show is so slow and so horribly boring at parts, it's near impossible to have any kind of fun. That isn't to say I didn't succeed in making my own fun.
Near the end of the show, the major plot twist/reveal is shown and I laughed my ass off at it because of how nonsensical it was. It came out of nowhere and made absolutely no sense when you think about it for more than five seconds. Despite how dumb this plot twist was, it was one of the few times this show entertained me. Not because of good writing; it was actually the opposite. The bad writing and overused cliches this show has gave me something to work with, but at the end of it all, it's still terrible to watch and hard to enjoy.
Overall:
Was The Reflection the worst show I have ever seen? Of course not, there are worse shows out there. Was it the most boring anime I've seen this season? Easily yes. The only thing this show has to offer anyone is its unique art style. If The Reflection wanted you to feel like you were watching a graphic novel in motion, then it succeeded at that. However, that was probably its only major success as every other facet of this show is either mediocre at its high points and terrible at every other point it has.
I would not recommend anyone watch The Reflection. It's unoriginal, cliche and boring. And unlike Heroes, The Reflection does not have a writers' strike to blame for its poor quality.
