The basic premise of the show is as follows: A war over territory and power is waged on a newly-found continent of Patria. The sides in this war are the North and The south. The North is losing, so they create a squad of mutant supersoldiers to turn the tides in their favor. And they do. But now the mutants, or as the show calls them "Incarnates" are losing their minds and are going berserk, so their former leader Hank Henriette steps up to kill his former comrades.
Sounds interesting? Well, I got some bad news for you. The execution of this idea leaves a lot to be desired.
Story.
I'll start with the story, since it's already outlined previously. The show follows the Monster of The Week premise for the majority of the episodes. In each of them the MC finds, fights and kills one of the Incarnates, while Schaal, his frienemy, stands around and does nothing. Episodes lack substance, both visually and narratively. If you've seen one of them, you've seen them all. I can't stress enough how few surprises they actually pack. Will Hank kill that guy? Yes, he will. Will any other character do anything? No, they won't. It's like that for about 10 of the show's 12 episodes. The finale is underwhelming ever compared to the rest of the ordeal, cleary suggesting that there will be a sequel. Because of that it lacks any sense of resolution.
Characters.
The protagonist Hank Henriette, who looks like someone's furry OC (don't steal) is the only one of them who actually does things. He kills all of the Incarnates, save for one (and even that is up to debate), he makes moral choices, he moves the story forward. He does so much, that this show could literally only have one character and nothing would've changed. That is not to say he's a good character. He's honestly decent. Compared to the rest of them, at least. Design-wise, his human form looks like your typical mid 2000s edgelord. You know the one. The coat-wearing, haircolor-changing, revolver-wielding sadboy, burdened with the loss of a loved one. I couldn't help but thinking that the authors were a decade late with this design.
The other protagonist is Schaal Bancroft. She's the worst character in this anime season, let alone this show. Throughout the show she does NOTHING. She is a daughter of one of Hank's pals he had killed earlier, so it's understandable that she despises him. Or should despise him. Upon meeting the MC she almost instantly forgets she's supposed to hate him, and follows him religeously instead, while sometimes saying that like "killing the incarnates is totally bad, maybe let's not do that?". And yet she does nothing to stop it. And when you think she's finally about to do something useful, syke, think again! Well, at least her design is nice, I'm really into it.
The others. I'm just gonna put the rest of the cast here, since they're equally useless, but not actively bad on their own. There's a big tiddy lieutenant and I think I have a pretty good idea of how she even got the rank in the first place. Outside of being a butt of most jokes, she does nothing. We never see her fight, and never even see her command the troops on the battlefield. Why does she even exist? Beats me.
Claude Withers, who is the main villian's younger brother, is yet another character only pretending to do something. And to be fair, a couple of times his actions led to some consequences. Not bad, concidering what show he's a part of. But most of the times he's led by the plot, and saved countless times by the one and only Main Character.
There are also two old dudes with mustaches, I can't differentiate between the two, so there's that.
Cain Mudhouse. Or maybe Madhouse, the sub isn't sure about that one. The antagonist of the story. He believes that the Incarnates have been had by the govt and in reality should be the ones who rule over the country. It's pretty standard stuff, but it makes sense. As a character, he's a mustache-twirling bad guy, with no redeeming qualities. If there's a puppy to kick, you can be sure he'll kick it. His abilities are (do not steal) teleporting behing you, exloding peoples's heads, mind control(?), turning into some kind of red mist, making copies of himself, being invincible, (except for when the MC hits him like really hard). He is utterly OP and yet we have no way of knowing the extent of it, making the fights lack any sort of weight, as the audience has no idea what is even capable of hurting him.
Sound. It's alright.
Animation. This is one of the ugliest shows of this season. The characters are often misshapen, they look like stickfigures when more than 5 feet away from the camera, sakuga is almost non-existent. The perspectives are often warped to the point that at certain times everything looks like it was drawn by a school kid. Not often, but it does happen. Oh, and the incarnates themselves look like they came out of a saturday morning cartoon, both design-wise and animation-wise.
So, is it worth watching? Hell no.
Is it worth watching ironically? Well, there's this one moment, when Schaal's father comes back from the war as a FUCKING DRAGON. She stares at him for maybe 5 seconds, he extends his claw to her, she touches it. And then she's instantly cool with the idea. Hell, she seems to be loving it. It was surreal. But outside of that one thing, this show's not even "so bad it's good". If anything, it's so bad it's bad.
