Reviews

I feel like most of these anime are written by teenagers. So many are catered around immature (or even toxic) depictions of love, power fantasies, shallow themes/characters and/or edgy ‘maturity’. Jinwoo has no depth and is just a teenager's image of what being badass is. The other characters have one character trait that they play off as being thematically deep like ‘she’s scared of dying’ or ‘he’s caring but knows it’s dangerous’. If you can describe an entire character’s conflict with one sentence then that character needs work. I feel like people only think this show is mature because there are government policies, business jargon, blood and killing, people being afraid to die (which should be a no brainer), no sexualization (it’s there but very subtle), the main character loses every once and a while and the screen is dark. Which is all very surface level shit. There’s no room for interpretation, no figuring anything out yourself, no speculation, everything from the world building to the characters thoughts to the themes is all just spelled out for you. It’s a temporary dopamine rush. (That’s not just a problem with this show (only) but anime in general. Even the animes I like have this problem, Attack on Titan especially.) The animation is amazing and the fight scenes are cool but the concepts are lazy and stupid. The whole video game aspect is so fucking lame and lazy and I can’t take it seriously. The characters are so one note I can’t remember any of them. There’s no clear statement on what the characters can and can’t do so the Jinwoo is free to do whatever the fuck he wants to deus ex machina himself out of any situation (there’s literally a point in the finally where they just say ‘fuck it, the game wants him alive). The pacing is shit because the story wasn’t thought out. They seem to just write it chapter by chapter with no direction in mind. Great stories should have the beginning, middle and end thought out to the goddamn story beats of every scene before the first scene is finalized (yes, I took screenwriting classes, I know that doesn’t make me an expert but at least I have an appreciation for hard work in storytelling). I know it’s different with shows but that should at least be the case for the season. So much of anime is just make it up as you go and it’s so obvious. The ending to this shit was so anticlimactic because you know that’s just where they had to stop in the manga. There is nothing for this show but the edgy teenage coolness factor and the stellar animation. I’m getting sick of this shit.