I don't usually write reviews, but this time I kinda ended up having commentaries for every episode, so I thought might as well post them here.
First off, the opening and the always-different endings were really fitting and good. I'm not usually a person that gives bonus points for a good soundtrack, but this time the soundtrack was either so good, or the rest was so bad that I think the OST is the best part about the whole anime. Heck, I discovered this anime from listening (and loving) to the ending of the seventh episode called "Too late" by Nene, Inori Minase.
Rating this was a pain, since there were different directors and this anime was really "artsy" to me. So my rating is going to be the average of all my ratings for each eipsode combined:
1st ep: 5/10. It's the intro right?
2nd ep: 6.5/10 Damn, nasty follow up. I usually hate splatter but this time it's necessary for the build up. MC seems to get influenced by the girls dreams "vibes". (Or maybe the directors give a shit about some consistency in his "personality"? I don't know.)
3rd ep: 6/10 Decent at least, but at least a complete opposite of the 2nd episode. Maybe it was good, but a bit too clichéd overall.
4th ep: 3/10 What seemed so promising at first ended as absolute garbage. What a shame. It's still a big problem in our society, so they had a solid base to build on. But all that build up so that MC can say 2 sentences and it's all over. I don't expect smart dialogues like Bakemonogatari or something, but please, "Ganbaru-zou" a bit more, will you? Jeez.
5th ep: 7.5/10 That one was good! I mean, everything was pretty OKish, I wish they didn't give part of the end so early in the middle away. Loved the end. Good shock.
6th ep: 2.5/10 Again, even worse than episode 3, they have that (clichéd) but real base theme and do this really cool semi-climax (in the bathroom, that scene, I don't want to spoil, don't even know someone would read this garbage I'm writing here, jeez that's a big ass sentence to fit in parentheses) but they totally ruin the whole thing midway. As if they switched the director to his 7 y.o. son. F.
7th ep: 8/10 Beautiful. Super cool animation. Nice story. Beautiful sleeping beauty. Emotional and truly a fitting "dream". Such a cool end, revealing the stuff and atmosphere in the hospital. THAT ENDING. I LOVE.
8th ep: 7/10 Pretty good. Felt somewhat realistic. We finally get to know about the MC. About time.
9th ep: 3.5/10 OKish base theme, but execution was utter trash.
10th ep: 5/10 They really ran out of money that episode. Jeez, that animation was pretty much at most 3 different pictures a second. Also I don't know if that episode was a bit too smart or a bit too stupid for me.
11th ep: 4.5/10 And I even counted in the bonus points for this weird, cool ending song.
12th ep: 4.5/10 To be honest, I didn't think 18if would give a proper connection to everything that happened. I wanted to know what's the thing about the MC. I don't know how I feel about that "dream in a dream" thing though. Somemight call it creative.
13th ep: 5/10 But the point I want to get to is, I don't know but in the end it really feels like those anime that show that Japan love Christianty (or at least parts of the bible), so much that they need to always rip some loose pieces out of these stories and fuse them into their own. It could end well, but this time I didn't in my opinion. I consider the whole story to be mediocre to even bad.
I would recommend this to someone who cares about a fitting soundtrack and is used to watch weird stuff. If I would have to describe 18if in one sentence, though:
a.k.a. TL;DR:
"All the budget went into lavish 3D affects and good music."
Overall (average rating of all the single episode ratings): 5/10 (Wow, who'd've guessed)
I apologize for this crappy "review". It isn't really a proper one.
