All right... Let's take it from the start:
You can read the anime description to get a feel of it from the anime page, but I will tell you how I understood the plot. The anime takes place in another land, in a city called Hellsalem Lot. Formerly known as New York City until a certain event transpired which made our world collide with another and now all sorts of creatures are trapped with humans within the borders of this city which is protected by a barrier of sorts. So for 3 years, they tried to get along and live with each other. Meanwhile, an organisation called 'Libra' is formed to punish evildoers [usually non-humans] and there is another organisation that caused evil. Think Justice and Injustice League kind of. Our main character, Leo, goes to this city to understand more his newly obtained ability "All-seeing Eyes of the Gods".
From the plot alone the show seemed promising to me and I watched the first episode. In very few words it was about Leo going to the city, meeting the Justice League... I mean... Libra, and because they liked his ability they recruited him; along with his monkey kind-of, sort-of sidekick. I think my explanation was fairly straight forward. Here is my problem though: the anime has a problem... Well, a few actually and they are big ones. The tone, narrative and pacing are all over the place. The narrative especially is very unfocused and left me scratching my head and scream 'Explain. For the love of GOD, explain." It stopped, then continued somewhere else and then went somewhere. Meanwhile, the events didn't really connect at all or had no purpose to them.
It would be like me trying to write this review and midway announcing I'm going for ice cream or something, only to come back five minutes later and changing my mind to wanting a waffle and then realising I had no money to begin with so I'll just stay here and write this review [university life in a nustshell]. But man, I wanted a waffle. Kind to think of it they should still be delivering.
...
...
What was I talking about?
Right...
'Kekkai Sensen'
It caused me a headache to understand it. In the next few episodes, the show relaxed a little bit and we start getting to know some of the characters and to be fair there are many cool characters. They have problems as well but I will explore that in the next paragraph. So episode 2 till 7 or so were more straightforward. Following the 'villain-of-the-week' plot while we established some characterisation and context. Not a lot, but some. I thoroughly enjoyed the episode with Leo and the mushroom that ate burgers. [That's a sentence I didn't think I would say today.] While the climax was approaching though we had more and more problems arising.
The characters as I said before, and trust me there are a lot of them for a 12 episode show, were there. But they weren't fully fledged and the show didn't give me time to understand their motivations or if they went through a character arc. Just when you are about to understand how a character thinks, talks etc they throw you another one and some times, they never even come back. Hell, the main character goes through stuff at the end and I can't for the life of me tell you if he has changed at all.
There's so much stuff that wasn't explained either. For example "What is the great collapse?", "What and who was the king of despair?" "What was the point of the organisation apart from seeing them 5 times when they did nothing of significance?". Just uuuugh...
The final episode was extremely confusing.
Good guy?
Check.
Villain?
Check.
A town ready to be destroyed?
Check.
A motivation for our main character and villain?
....
Oh, wait. There is none. Yes, the hero wants to stop the villain and that's motivation enough but... I never understood why the villain did what he did. What he hoped to accomplish? Was it just mayhem for the sake of mayhem? I'm okay with that but I need to know...
Maybe I didn't get it but I saw other reviews and other people were just as confused so I know I'm not the only one.
I'm going to leave this review now as I feel way too confused to continue. Before I stop I want to say there are some good things about the show. The art and soundtrack are extremely nice. When we have the time to get to know the characters they can be fun and I enjoy just chilling and watching them do... well the same. But I feel the anime needed to take a step back and breath and let us do the same as well. A fight between hero and villain can only be awesome if their motivations are clear and I can understand what drives them. Unfortunately, I didn't get that.
Final thoughts: The anime has a very good soundtrack [seriously loving the ending one]. The animation is pretty and fast paced but unfortunately so is the plot. It's a confusing one and unless I am assured that the second season takes a step back, I think I'm going to skip it.
