First, let's talk about audio. The soundtrack is a sloppy amateurish hodgepodge of cheesy guitar riffs. Unlike other attempts at this like Trigun, the guitar work is simply obnoxious and clashes with the overall aesthetics of the show. There's not much "rock & roll" or action in the series, so I think chunky guitar riffs were a weird choice, and the poor execution makes that more apparent. The English Dub is mostly good but there are a few intolerable performances (like the programmer who talks with a puppet) and some slight less grating performances front and center (the main character).
The art and animation is fine, and the characters are varied enough in design that you won't be mixing them up. There is quite a bit of CGI that surprisingly holds up for its time, though I wouldn't call it appealing. Environment details are a bit lacking in detail. Where Genshaft's art is mostly lacking is having any unique style or sense of identity. The only unique piece of art in the show is the mecha that the main character pilots, and frankly it's hideous. Normally in a mecha anime, you can hope for some cool mecha and ship designs and mecha fights, but those are notably absent in Geneshaft. The ship and its interior are unimaginative for the genre. The main enemy for the series is... a giant ring. So the only action you'll see in this show is a poorly-designed ugly CGI mecha shooting a laser at a giant ring. Very disappointing.
The plot is contrived, and the writing is bad. Most of the setting is explained in text in the first few moments of the show, and then repeatedly hammered into you for the next 13 episodes. It seems like you can't go a few minutes without some character talking about DNA. You would think in a world where human DNA has been intentionally altered through Genetic Engineering that either people would be less obsessed with the topic, or at least humans would be profoundly different from each other in a way that creates conflict worth discussing. Instead, the show mostly boils down Genetic Engineering to a linear hierarchy where some people have superior genes to others. There is one notable exception where there are a class of human who suppress their emotions to enhance their reasoning abilities, though it's implied that this is done with drugs rather than genetics so even that detail manages to be disappointing. The topic of Genetic Engineering and the political and cultural world of the show set up so many interesting and easy areas to explore, and Geneshaft manages to neatly avoid doing anything interesting in this department. There is also some light politics in Geneshaft, though this is also very surface level and unoriginal.
Character development is also weakly done. The characters aren't original, memorable, or even endearing. After wrapping up the 13th episode, I felt no attachment or emotion towards anyone in this show. One thing I was pleasantly surprised about is the lack of fan service. You would think in an anime whose premise is humanity maintains a 9:1 female to male ratio that the viewer would be bombarded with fan service, but Geneshaft steers clear of romance and sex almost entirely. The topics are lightly touched upon but ultimately the world of Geneshaft appears to be asexual. I know some viewers will find this disappointing but personally I find fan service and harem anime to be distasteful. All the characters are in spandex so you will see a lot of butt and breast outlines, but as far as anime goes, Geneshaft is very tame.
Geneshaft isn't terrible, but it's not good. It is a tolerable anime that lacks originality and fails to deliver anything interesting to viewers. Watch something else.
