What do you get when you mash well thought-out ideas from other great sci-fi cop shows into a stew and then leave that stew on a oven that's not turned on? A cold mess. ID:Invaded as a product is a cold mess. I can't help but try to understand what people are praising about this and wonder to myself if we even watched the same show. Yes, it's not awful and in a landscape of established IPs and forced squeals/remakes having an original anime come out is fantastic, but is the bar set so low that this show is considered good?
I suppose we should talk about the good first. Despite my initial bitching if you enjoy sci-fi/cop shows this anime isn't awful. It'll scratch that itch you have and maybe even keep you going with its case of the week (2 weeks) set-up for awhile. The mystery isn't always hard, but they do give enough to them that you find yourself playing along with the show to try and figure out who the killer is this week. On top of that the character designs are worth praise given how distinct and memorable they happen to be, as well as the animation which although no Ufotable dose keep itself from feeling like they lost budget. Even if some of the shots are laughable bad.
As for the bad.....well where to start. The final big bad of the show John Walker has absolutely NO mystery to it. By episode two you could make a guess and I promise you you'll be right. A child could figure it out which makes the whole shows over arcing mystery (who is John Walker?) a complete bore. The character development is almost as bad. Only really given to our main character Sakaido all the other characters take a backseat till the plot calls for them to actually do something. Yet, when we reach our final few episodes and major (?) deaths start to happen we're supposed to care? I honestly found myself laughing when these people were dying and the show was playing the super sad music like it mattered. On that note the last two episode drop so much exposition that I'm honestly truly baffled that a studio green-lit this project. Nothing in the last two episodes feels natural and spending every five minutes to info dump so you can understand what the hell is happening you loses all tension the show had going into the finally.
I won't lie, I fell behind on this show (and others this season) and ended up marathoning the past six weeks of this show. I'm glad I did because if it wasn't for that ID:Invaded would have ended up dropped. This show isn't good. If you want to spend time watching 13 episodes of an anime in this genre please go watch something else. Psycho-Pass, Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor and if you've seen all those shows and REALLY need something new then fine. Try this show. Maybe you'll find enjoyment out of it. Or at least enjoy watching concepts from better shows get so badly botched. After all their's enjoyment in a train wreak.
