Reviews

Jan 15, 2021
Apparently this show is a spinoff of something called "Swordo Artto Onrainu"... Never heard of it myself, but apparently it's a big deal in some circles. That attachment seems to be, as a person who has never gone near it, a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it's certainly brought a ton of eyes on something that clearly would not get much attention otherwise, being a budget-ish anime about not-lolis, guns and video games. On the other hand, it is a curse because the show effectively doesn't spend time selling this world to the audience at all. It is explained... but not sold. You are clearly meant to already care because it's SAO, and that is a great opportunity lost to make a setting that fits the story.

Technically, the show is competently enough made. Usually it's straight up good looking. Characters look nice. Backgrounds are actually very well made, I really like them, and consistently too. Then eventually something really sticks out as having totally screwed perspective or scale or being hastily drawn, usually the guns. It's kind of funny, in fact, when the show sells itself as gun porn but the guy who drew that AK or whatever clearly hasn't seen a gun in his life and it ends up looking like a misshapen children's plastic toy. Well, these days characters usually carry some sort of medieval implements as weapons, so it's not really a surprise if firearms fall out of the comfort zone of fresh faced animators. One thing I noticed is that in the ED art, probably subcontracted to another studio as is traditional, the characters look totally different. Better, I would say. I mean, damn, that's an epic thigh gap if you ever saw one. Ahem.

Sound design is pretty good. There was even a point where I really was stunned by how good it was. When some gunfire is heard and identified by the characters.... they actually sound exactly right. Like, if you paid attention to the sounds in the background, you could have literally come to the same conclusion as the people on the TV at the exact moment they did. Boom, you are instantly inside the fictional world, believing that the celluloid paintings you are looking at are actually genuine reality unfolding. Everyone in the industry take note. Music is pretty good also but also very light, easy, boring. AGAIN, I have to complain about the mixing. MAKE. THE. MUSIC. LOUDER. You know how movies make loud things loud and quiet things quiet? Yes, it's an insulated theatre, yes, they have massive audio equipment there. But people watch movies at home all the time and literally nobody complains ever that the audio isn't mixed to a monotone drone that turns into pleasant a white noise you can fall asleep to at a low enough volume. Gah!

The characters are all pretty enigmatic and not in a good way. In fact, the whole show has a "tell, don't show" thing going on. Partly it's the franchise spinoff thing, partly it's the story. But it's also a conscious or unconscious decision to not sell the audience everyone's motivations and worldviews. Things are just delivered: "This is how it is." and you should just swallow it. Not good. Should be much better.

Oh yeah by the way, almost forgot. The show has a whole bunch of utterly glorious jokes. It says PG-13 on the tin, and you can really get into that vibe after a while. Then the show suddenly unleashes a real Bruce Lee kung-fu punch straight into the gut by saying something that nobody under 25 could appreciate.

So you might wonder, since I have mostly said bad things about this anime, how and why the hell did I give it a nine? Well, for no objective reason whatsoever. I just really like it. It's my thing. It's made for guys like me. I like the characters not because they are well written but because I like them as people. I don't like the story because it's brilliant, I like it because it goes the way I like it. I don't like the world because it's diligently built, I like it because it has all the stuff I like in it. I don't like the art because it's high budget, I like it because there's a small pink girl with a machine gun. So einfach ist das.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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