Full Dive is terrible and I'm the kind of person who enjoys the stupid dick jokes from Sentouin Hakkenshimasu and held them in high regard. One of the biggest issues with this is with the characters. My God, Hiro has got to be the one of the most insufferable whiny unlikable twerp in anime (not the worst, that dishonor goes to Ouma Shu). I'm not against the idea of having a loser protagonist, but you gotta make the protag at least somewhat likable in spite of their incompetence. I've hated Hiro all the way through and he never NEVER gets any better. The rest don't fare any better, apart from Alicia, Mizarisa and Matsuoka-kun, everyone is so thoroughly unlikable and annoying. It goes beyond "funny character quirk" that overstays its welcome, it's "beating you over the head again and again with how much annoying they are and how they never stop".
Then there's the humor. The awful humor. It's not that they're low brow or stupid, again, I enjoyed the stupid dick jokes from Sentouin. The problem is twofold, they're delivered by characters you don't like, and another one, they overexplain the joke, again and again and again. Yes, we get it the game is shitty because it's emulating reality, but my God, they won't stop egging you on it. The worst thing is, there are actually good jokes in this ruined by Hiro yelling and overly explaining the joke. Like, there's this one pretty good one where, after buying smoke grenades, Hiro couldn't use them properly because he didn't light them. The framing, the comedic timing, the pauses, everything was great! UNTIL Hiro decides to open his goddamned mouth.
Like, for every potential this anime has at being even remotely decent, there's a big BUT hovering over it. Like, I like the meta aspects and how it wants to subvert general isekai cliches, BUT, it's done in such an overt manner it ruins any subtlety or tact. I like Alicia BUT she's barely in the damn thing and she does overstay her welcome. I like that one plot twist near the end of the anime BUT the foreshadowing is so non-existent and it comes so suddenly to the point there's no buildup to it. I like having a loser protagonist as a change of pace BUT there is no payoff to him being a loser apart from terrible and repetitive piss and shit jokes.
In the anime, Hiro kept on playing that shitty game he was suckered into buying because of tits fairy, and in a meta sense I suppose I was the same for Alicia. In that sense maybe the anime is some kind of success. But most probably it was garbage to begin with and not some clever metacommentary.
3/10
