Let's start with the obvious. The art and animation is dogshit. You can see where the corners are cut in both cases. Any action taken never takes up more than five frames. A lot of actions are done with two or three. Whether it's a massive sword move or the movement of the hair. The movements are left stiff and lifeless as though they were animated by an amateur using flash for the first time. The art itself is a copy paste of any generic "how to draw anime characters" art book and a poor one at that. You can tell this thing didn't have budget but what makes this worse is how clearly this didn't have any effort put into it either. None of the movements feel well choreographed and everything is left stiff.
The expressions on the character's faces are a little bit better but not by much. Their faces aren't deadpan entirely but the simple fact is that though they convey expression they're not exactly animated. Expressions change with as little effort as humanly possible. The movements aren't animated. When you're watching say someone respond with shock in Jujutsu Kaisen for instance in the first 20 seconds of the latest episode you have a couple of frames shifting the head back, raising the eyebrows, the shoulders raising slightly, the eyes widenning a little bit. The small shifts and changes all working together to be a little bit more expressive without being over the top. You don't have that here. It doesn't exist.
Then again, it is 2020 and there does need to be some leniency for such things. With everything that's happened this year it's not hard to imagine how their work and their work ethic might be compromised. At the same time how badly this thing turned out is still disgraceful.
Then there's the padding. Oh boy, the padding. Okay, so here's the thing. We spend the first five minutes after the opening in the first episode going through our protagonist's real life. The first minute and a half of which he spends saying nothing and just silently brooding. The first time he says anything at all is when he's playing video games in his appartment. For comparrison's sake, the first two and a half minutes of the anime aren't in the manga at all. Unless it's in the novel, which it could well be, then this was added in post production.
As it stands, what takes three pages in the manga has now taken almost 5 minutes to see unfold. Then we have another 45 seconds thrown in just in him getting there instead of him fading out and finding himself there in a couple of seconds as they did in both the manga and literally two episodes later. These largely unneccessary additions are frequent throughout the entire series. That is ignoring the fact that when the animators have an excuse to make something take longer they tend to take it. The first quest lasts about 2 episodes, with each episode adapting the equivalent of about half a chapter of the manga. This is perhaps one of the more aggregious examples but comparing them and considerring the anime it's not an entirely uncommon thing. I'd have been fine with these instances of padding if they didn't make the characters worse as a result.
You see, Yotsuya looks a lot less competent in the anime than he does in the manga. He feels a lot less capable and has a lot more teenage angst in a sense. He's not a character you can take seriously which is well... Problematic because he's the main character in a series which is intended to be taken seriously. This applies to all of the characters in this anime honestly speaking. This is worsened by the changes in both the order of events and their subtleties. Every character in this show looks like an incompetent, brain dead halfwit in this anime as a result of the changes made. The worst traits are enhanced whilst the better ones are removed entirely. The content added in only serves to make me hate characters which I would have otherwise been okay with.
All of which only gets worse as the series goes on and decides to continue butcherring the characters.
The music is pretty boring and forgettable for the most part. There are times where it doesn't quite fit what's happening but otherwise it's not worth mentioning. Same goes for the sound effects. I haven't paid much attention to either one as there have been far more glaring problems with everything else in this show.
I wouldn't have watched it past the first episode if I didn't read the manga. I'll be celebrating it being over next week.
Overall, I give it a 2.
