I'll say it straight up - this is a show designed for men. The male gaze is ever-present in every episode but is especially bad in the middle bits. It feels like the main female lead spends half of the show naked. David is naked often too, but he's not put in provocative poses and given full frontal shots like Lucy. Not to mention, David is supposedly 17??? Why are we showing 17 year old butt... ew. Yeah anyway, I don't like how this show treated the women.
Another point on how women in this show are treated - (this is a spoiler by the way)... the main female lead gets kidnapped and it's up to our hero to save her even if it costs him his life. She's the only one who can stop him from going completely insane (supposedly) because... romance I guess. It's all so cliche. We have all seen this before. It's what I would expect out of a typical anime, but this anime seemed unique and stylish at the start, only to turn heel and flop majorly by the end. David loses all of his relatability and it's hard to empathize with him when he keeps making dumb decisions. There's also a continuity issue - he is shown throwing up blood countless times, but then the next scene he will be well enough to use his cyberware again?? How is he not passing out from that much blood loss? How come when a character is shot through the heart, she is capable of walking to hide behind a dumpster, and have a phone call? There's only so much suspension of disbelief I can use here. I guess someone could argue that maybe she has cyberware that gives her better defensive capabilities, but even then, she is a human.
Lastly, the writing. I think this was the weakest aspect of the whole show. There was a lot of expository dialogue, which I get since it's a complex and fleshed out world. But I hate when a character is doing something and then another character is like "yo choom, x character is doing x thing!" It's like... yes we can see that. The screenwriting was just not up to snuff for me.
I had a lot of hopes for this show since I loved the game so much and the first few episodes were promising. It also reminded me a lot of Devilman Crybaby, which is one of my favorite anime, but it's just not at that level of quality. After watching the first few episodes I would rate it an 8/10, but once the ball gets rolling, the plot moves ridiculously fast (it should've had more episodes, 10 was not enough for a world this detailed) and the main character was disappointing.
My rating: 4/10
