Anime, as a medium, has a lot of potential. I recently finished watching Parasyte, an anime that, on the surface, doesn't seem very interesting. The artstyle was unappealing and the titular parasites were almost entirely forgettable. It looked like any other Sci-Fi horror anime, but when I watched it, I realized that it was so much more. Parasyte was daring, unique, and absolutely loaded with subtext (even if that subtext did become a little ham-fisted at times). I really like that show, even if it isn't one of my favorites. It earned my respect by exceeding my expectations. Now, to contrast, In/Spectre was none of the things that I just listed. Kyokou Suiri is wasted potential.
-[Not Daring]-
This show is so by the books that it almost writes itself. Protag-kun and Protag-Chan are very basic stereotypes. Even the side characters are basic beyond belief. There is absolutely nothing that stands out about the cast of this show aside from protag-chan's (rather irrelevant) bodily quirks.
The story is probably what stands out the most about this show. Yes, indeed, the story stands out for sure as a piece of drawn-out garbage. This show would have been much better off as a monster-of-the-week show about two likable problem solvers. Despite this, though, the staff decided that there would only be 3 problems for the entire season, and one of the three problems would take up 75% of the runtime. Now, if you ask me, that's quite daring. It's just too bad that their risk was rewarded with a 75% boring anime.
-[Not Unique]-
This show is basically the incest baby of GOSICK and Noragami. The characters are GOSICK, and the plot is Noragami. 25% GOSICK, 25% Noragami, 50% water. There really isn't a thing that stands out about this show. Not a thing. I really don't have much to say in this regard. How am I supposed to write about nothing? In/Spectre didn't invent supernatural culture, Lolita fashion, or self-insert characters, and that's basically all this show is.
-[No Subtext]-
Okay, so here's the thing. This show doesn't even have any surface-text. There was absolutely no meaning to be found in Kyokou Suiri. I've struggled (for hours now) to find any moral of this story, and come out empty handed. It just feels like this show wasn't about anything. In my mind, this anime was probably created to hype up the source material and introduce the characters to a broader audience. If that's the case, which it likely is, then I guess that it succeeded (which is also sad). Shows like this shouldn't amass an audience as great as this, but they always do, which is dumb. Don't worry, I'm not gonna go on my anti-weeb spiel in this review. I'm already tired of writing about this show.
-[Thoroughly Unimpressive]-
The story, as previously stated, was very poorly put together. This show could have maybe passed as a movie, but definitely not a 12 episode anime. The conflicts were drawn out and completely uninteresting. The romance subplot (if you want to call it that) is basically protag-chan meeting protag-kun, then a 2-year timeskip happens and they end up in a mostly one-sided relationship. During the 4 hours of runtime, none of the characters- not even the main characters- were fleshed out in any meaningful way. This ended up being fine, because as it turns out, they weren't even intended to be characters, just eyecandy meant to promote some shitty manga. 5/10.
