Art 7/10
The big attention getter is the art and animation, the PV and other aspects led to this anime getting SUPER hyped before it was released, which has, inevitably, effected my impression. Although action episodes are rather spaced out the base line of quality is there, and the action is generally pretty entertaining, there are integral flaws that i'll get back to when discussing characters though.
Story & characters 3/10 & 4/10
There are 2 major issues with the script, forced achronological order and super dark moments that absolutely don't fit except to help prop up the unearned "psychological" tag.
So my theory is that the biggest contributor to the writing, its hard to tell with several directors and character designers, was very character focused. writing out a few really strong characters and then trying to tie them together with a bunch of less well thought out characters in the spirit of other zanier and less serious action sci-fantasy.
Speculation aside the result is, very few characters you're endeared to and a lot you really couldn't care less about. It doesn't help that the writer can only do like 2 types of personalities (a variation of stoic and an obsessive). They come together in a messy arc with very straightforward, to the point of killing suspension of disbelief, themes.
Everyone is always on the same psychological page, characters praise each other for their wit and intelligence, you can practically see the writer patting themself on the back with every cringe moment in the dialogue. Its a wonder that this work can be called psychological when each arc is pretty much just one cardboard cutout delivering yet another "reason you suck (or alternatively their hope in death)" speech to other cardboard cut outs.
It also doesn't help that the action episodes always use a mix of mind control, electricity, and super strength (boogiepop the only exception) to get over what always ends up being a violent confrontation, all justified due to some overbearing organization.
I could go on but I think I've already rambled enough
In the end, if you like light novels that are super dialogue heavy, or are just getting into anime, this has a lot of what you might like. Its tries to be really clever and the "twists" might actually have some meaning to you. Otherwise its just another edgy flick.
