As a manga reader of the same series, i had unhealthy expectations to the anime, i feared they will cut to much, will struggle to get the emotions through or fail at the art style; in short: a cheap knockoff just for the name, which happens unfortunately to many animes. I couldn't be more wrong and so happy about it.
First of all: If you know anything about the plot, besides maybe the first Episode, it will diminish the enjoyment, the reveal, the twist and the mindgames by a lot. So, go in blind, don't read any summary, don't look up pictures, just watch.
Did they cut things? Yes. Did they use Cgi? Yes. Did they change some scenes? Yes. And here i have to already cut and say, the director, sound designer and the animation just works and they did a tremendous job. Despite the cuts, everything gets through, the music is not just there, it complements the story and the animation is effortlessly able to create suspense, fear, sadness, happiness and everything else. The CGI is used beautiully in the background modestly and looks actually good (i say that as someone who actually hates CGI in Anime because it is mostly used in a cheap way). It's like the whole team actually worked as a team and sat down and discussed things.
This is a character based and dialogue heavy Anime, the focus undoubtetly lies there, which means if you can't connect to any of the protagonists and even antagonists you will probably not enjoy this as much. But i would say, give it a shot.
In conclusion this Anime is an easy 10/10 for me and not only that, i think it is at least in my top 3. Someone really cared about this and i can feel that. Thank you for that.
