Ex-Arm is an anime that is largely misconceived. Look at all the people saying how godawful the writing and especially the animation is. However, they couldn't have been further from the truth. In reality, Ex-Arm is a visionary masterpiece with little to no flaws. Every single person involved with the anime's production was extremely passionate about it, and they put a monstrous amount of effort into making it incredibly profound and compelling. As a result, Ex-Arm has become the greatest Sci-Fi series of all time -- and possibly one of the greatest things mankind has ever created. PERIOD.
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Now, let's get serious for a bit.
Ex-Arm is originally a Sci-Fi manga written by HiRock and illustrated by Tonya Komi. Although not exactly amazing, the manga of Ex-Arm is actually quite entertaining from what I have seen myself. Along with good art, it offers some interesting concepts that are executed decently for the most part. The anime adaptation of Ex-Arm, on the other hand, is a completely different story.
The plot of Ex-Arm follows a high school student named Akira Natsume, who is dissatisfied for possessing no remarkable abilities and wants to change himself for the better. Unfortunately for him, though, luck doesn't seem to be on his side. One day while trying to save a girl from a group of delinquents, Akira is hit by a truck. But instead of dying, he wakes up to find out that 16 years have passed and he has turned into a mere brain stored inside a superweapon.
And then everything goes horribly wrong, if it hadn't already.
It's a no-brainer to say the main issue with Ex-Arm is rooted in its animation. After watching this anime, my standards for animation have become considerably low, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Ex-Arm has one of the most awful production quality I have ever seen in any piece of media, not only anime. Just show a clip or two to someone who hasn't heard of what it is, I guarantee you that they are going to think it's made as a joke. After all, looking at the animation, it's really hard to believe this was made with serious intentions.
Ex-Arm's CGI is spectacularly horrendous. It feels like the animators learned how to do CGI a few weeks ago and decided to experiment how much they had learned. And to be honest, it just might be true. Cars, trees, roads, buildings -- every single object of the show looks awfully made; some of them were most likely straight-up taken from stockphotos and other similar websites. Everything else seems like they were animated by a bunch of amateurs. Actually, never mind. Saying that would be underestimating actual amateurs. Ex-Arm is much worse than that.
I didn't know there could be bugs and glitches in anime, but Ex-Arm has proven me entirely wrong. Very bizarre bugs and glitches appear in the animation from time to time, and they are honestly a sight to behold. Unbelievably awkward zoom-ins and zoom-ups are a norm in the show -- they never serve any actual purpose. The shot transitions are a complete mess too; many of the sequences proceed without any sense of rationality whatsoever. And surprise, surprise! It is not the fault of the manga.
Action is the place where Ex-Arm reaches its peak. There are some shockingly hideous fight scenes in the show that break the laws of physics. The character movements are unnatural even when they are just walking or shaking their heads, but it becomes even worse when they are taking part in combat. The anime also likes to use fog and shaky cams a lot during the fight scenes for some reason, and it unsurprisingly looks horrible. Surprisingly though, the choreography isn't actually that bad, but why will it matter when everything else is completely unsalvageable?
The character designs are originally decent in the manga, but the anime downright butchers them. In particular, the 3D characters always look like they are having a stroke or something. As I mentioned earlier, their movements are unthinkably unnatural, and their faces are deprived of any kinds of emotion -- I get genuinely scared by looking at them sometimes. Occasionally, there are instances of attempting to convey emotions on the characters' faces, but it simply ends up looking even worse. And guess what? Even something as basic as lip flaps aren't animated properly.
Now, you might be thinking why I specifically said "the 3D characters". Well, because there are also some lovely looking 2D characters in this CGI anime, who continuously appear in the same scene as even lovelier looking 3D characters! How wonderful.
This inevitably brings up the question: What led to the creation of such a gargantuan disaster?
Apparently, the director of the anime, Yoshikatsu Kimura, is a live-action filmmaker who has never worked in anime before. Prior to being the director of Ex-Arm, he had no experience with animation at all, so this show was basically doomed right from the beginning. What's even more ludicrous, however, is that Kimura apparently refused to work with people who are actually experienced in anime, and decided to retain his previous team who didn't have any experience with working in anime either. In addition, he spent most of his budget hiring stuntmen just to shoot motion capture, and thus had very little money left to do everything else.
And as you would expect, a show that was doomed from the beginning somehow became even worse. Far, far worse.
This raises another question: How did this show get the green light to begin with? It baffles me to think that everyone was perfectly fine with putting it on TV. I just can't imagine that anyone with half a brain and properly functioning eyes thought it was good idea to air this crap. As we have already established, there is literally not a single thing about the animation that deserves any praise; it is objectively valueless. And still, a fair amount of money was spent (read: wasted) on making this show and it was released as an anime for thousands of other people to see. Bravo, Crunchyrolls!
Okay, we get it. The production is complete garbage. But what about the story? What about the characters? Of course, to nobody's surprise, Ex-Arm fails outstandingly there as well.
As I said before, the concept of the series is actually interesting. I honestly think it is a somewhat unique take on the Sci-Fi genre, and given proper directing and execution, it could have been turned into something actually good and interesting. But obviously, the anime doesn't have of that. Due to the budget's ludicrous misuse, major corners are cut in the storyboard, and "major" isn't nearly a strong enough word here. Simply put, the anime takes everything good about the manga and completely gets rid of it.
There is a detail in the manga that contributes to worldbuilding? Cut that out. There is an elaborate monologue that adds more depth to the character? Cut that out. There is a plot point or element that provides a better understanding of the story? Cut that out. There is a conversation between the characters that makes perfect sense? CUT. THAT. OUT. Make sure to cut as many corners as possible, even if it makes everything unbelievably stupid and nonsensical. We have to compensate for my brainless spending, you know?
There is barely anything in Ex-Arm that could genuinely be called "storytelling" or "narrative". It is one of those shows where a lot of things happen in every episode, but you don't have a single clue as to why and how they happen. Furthermore, it has some of the most mind-boggling plot twists I have ever seen in anime -- mind-boggling for how stupid and predictable they are. Honestly, if the standards for writing are this low, I might as well be one of the greatest authors to ever exist. Hell, probably an online story generator could write something far better than this. And I repeat, it is entirely the fault of the adaptation. The story actually makes sense in the manga. Million times more sense than the anime, at least.
Silence is powerful, but Ex-Arm takes that a bit too literally. Several action scenes, where something playing on the background is more than just necessary, are barren of any music. You can only hear the characters making awkward breathing and panting noises, and on two or three occasions even worse, there aren't any noises. Everything is left completely, utterly silent. No tune, no melody, no sound effect, no breathing -- no nothing whatsoever. Nothing but pure silence.
Again, breaking the laws of physics is apparently child's play for the characters of Ex-Arm.
The occasional sound effects and tracks used in the background are also meritless; saying they are "uninspired" and "unoriginal" would be using the words too lightly. The score is repetitive as hell; two or three tracks are played over and over again for the entirety of the show. The ending song is barely passable, but the opening song is awful and sounds like an amateur cover of a 2000s' boyband song (though I gotta admit that I kind of started liking it ironically after a while).
If there is one thing to praise Ex-Arm about, and I think it is quite literally the only thing, it will be the voice acting. Most voice actors of the show are actually very competent and have worked in various anime before, which is apparent through their performance. But as they say, you can't fix something that is already broken. And Ex-Arm is far more than broken; it is crumbled to the point of no return. So, despite the involvement of several talented seiyuu, there are more than hundreds of extremely awkward monologues and conversations due to the poor excuse of a script. Now imagine how many more there would be if there wasn't a cast of experienced voice actors.
In terms of enjoyment, I have a sort of love-hate relationship with Ex-Arm. Occasionally, I was laughing my ass off because of all the wrong reasons; at other times, I was contemplating suicide. Initially, everything about the show was so laughably bad that I had a great time watching it, but the "novelty" wore off very quickly. It took only 3 episodes for the anime to stop being funny for me, and it instead became very painful to watch. I might have even started losing my sanity at some point. At best, Ex-Arm is ironically funny; at worst, it's complete torture.
In a way, Ex-Arm is truly ground-breaking. It completely breaks the limit of how atrocious the production quality in anime can be, and will go down in history as a fantastic example of what you absolutely should NOT do while animating a piece. Ex-Arm lacks even the most fundamental aspects of animation that make animation, well, animation. Despite having a decent source material at hand, it consists of a storyline that is sheer nonsense and characters that rival cardboard cutouts in terms of dullness. It is irrefutable how marvelously bad it is.
At the end of the day, Ex-Arm is a disgrace for everyone. It's a disgrace for all the people who worked on it, it's a disgrace for all the people who spent money on it, it's a disgrace for the original creators who had to see their work get so badly butchered -- it's a monumental failure in every regard.
Calling Ex-Arm an anime is an insult to anime as a medium. It's just offensive. Utterly offensive.
