Recap episodes are the stuff that the creators put in because they either don’t have enough material to adapt further arcs of set anime or they want to have newcomers who are interested of watching set series to catch up. Unless you are a long-running anime that has 50+ episodes I find the recap episodes to be pointless and lazy because honestly why would you watch 20-minute clip show that summaries a couple of story arcs that very often leave out important stuff when you can easily go watch actual episodes themselves.
What does this have to do with Beatless?
Beatless is a perfect example of how to not run a producing schedule. The reason I'm saying this right out of the gate because if Beatless was done by any other studio it would have been function-able but because this show was done by Studio Diomedea who somehow have a worst record than fucking A1 Pictures this show was destined for failure from to become a massive failure. The show itself was poorly written crap from the very beginning and it’s only made worse thanks to shitty producing schedule with its horrid intermission episodes which by the way are RECAPS!!!
One-hundred years into the future. A world in which society is mostly operated by humanoid robots called hIE. With the introduction of an ultra-advanced AI that surpasses human intelligence, beings that mankind is yet to fully comprehend made from materials far too advanced for human technology begin coming into being. Lacia, an hIE equipped with a black coffin-shaped device, is one of these. In boy-meets-girl fashion, 17-year-old Arato Endo has a fateful encounter with the artificial Lacia. For what purpose were these artificial beings created? Amid questions regarding the coexistence of these artificial beings and humans, a 17-year-old boy makes a decision…
To say that Beatless story is a mess is an understatement this is one of the worse executed and produced plots I ever heard the displeasure of watching.
For starters, the story is very dull and boring for the most part. I didn’t care about many events in the story because I was bored with them and I thought they were poorly executed. It doesn’t help that many of the story elements in Beatless were done better in other anime before this.
The pacing in the show is terrible as lots of the events in the just seem to drag out way longer than they should make some of the actions scenes very boring to watch. Along with the shows horrible pacing, the direction is just abysmal. It’s Darling in the Franxx levels of bad where it rather wastes it’s time on tropey shit instead of establishing its own world and plot correctly.
It doesn’t help that the fact that this show tries to be more big and complex than it actually is having the show takes itself too seriously with its themes, symbolism and heavy dialogue but it utterly fails thanks to this show horrible pacing, tone shifts and directing the show becomes very pretentious as a result.
The worst thing about this show that single-handy killed the show is the frequent intermission/recap episodes. For an anime that has 24 episodes this show has so many recap episodes it’s insane.
These are recap episodes alone killed the pacing and narrative as it only makes the show even more insufferable to watch. The moment I saw intermission 4 pop up 2 episodes after intermission 3 I wanted to drop dead because how can a show have 2 episodes of barely anything happening and decided to have another intermission based on these episodes.
The only good thing about the story is that it can be pretty funny at times other than that it’s a mess that is filled with so problems.
Now if you thought the story was awful you haven’t seen anything yet because the characters are somehow even worse.
Our main protagonist Arota is your typical naive character that we all seen before. He barely has any motivation at all and he just spends most of the series whining and being an incompetent idiot for the sake of it.
Laica is an empty husk of a female lead. She barely any personality at all other to just serve Arota and be waifu bait for the audience.
The rest of the characters are just walking cliches like the Arota’s annoying sister little Yuka who is basically a walking Imouto, Ryo the edgy smart childhood friend character to the spunky hot-headed Kouka who despite being the most entertaining character in the series is still a very below average character at best.
In short, the chararters in Beatless are just as bad as the story.
Moving to the production side of things Beatless are at best very underwhelming especially for an anime from 2018
For starters, the character designs of the anime are a big downgrade to the light novel where certain characters of the show are missing a lot of detail and polish. I know it’s not fair to compare the character designs from different mediums with each other but for this case, I couldn’t because the characters designs are a complete dumpster fire compare to the light novel counterparts. The best example of this was our protagonist Aroto where in the anime he looks like a typical nice boy while in light novel art he looks like more a serious threat.
It also doesn’t help the fact the character designs constancy goes off-model especially in the fights where the art constantly, for the most part, is at an all-time low.
The background scenery is terrible and uninspiring to look at.
The animation is below average at best as it has a lot of still frames, poor fight choreography at times and choppy movement.
If there’s is any silver lining for Beatless that saved it from being a total crapfeash it would be the soundtrack
The soundtrack is just a joy to listen as it perfectly captures the sci-fi setting well with its amazing use of dubstep and futuristic tracks that were played in this anime.
Opening 1 Error by GARNiDELia is a great and catchy opening theme that fits well with the first half of the series.
Opening 2 Truth.” by TrySail is amazing opening that I adore to death and it’s by far the best thing to come out from this anime.
Like with the openings themes both ending themes are great and catchy especially the first one Primalove” by ClariS which is my favourite ending theme of 2018.
The Seiyuus did a decent job with the roles that they were given and the overall acting is above average.
At the anime of this review, Beatless hasn’t got an English Dub but then again why would anyone even bother picking up this series since the series was a failure.
So there you have it Beatless is a horrendous anime.
It is likely one of the worst produced and scripted anime I have seen.
Other than the soundtrack and the kick-ass opening and ending themes there was not a single thing that I enjoyed about this show from it’s poorly executed plot, intermissions/recap episodes up the ass, shitty production values, stupid charterers and atrocious writing.
However, despite Beatless ended up being a train-wreck I will give the show this. Least you're not Darling In the Franxx.
