Recommend for: Animation, Production quality, CGDCT, Character
Not Recommend for: Writing, World building, Story
FULL REVIEW:
Background: I didn't play the Blue Archive game, so I have no knowledge of it, and purely review this as an anime critic.
THE PROS:
This show would succeed as a cgdct. The character design is very good, but the plot does interfere with it and does sometime do deus ex machina over the character in some place, will get into that in the cons section. Though overall the character design is ok, there's some stereotyping but also have some uniqueness to each character, and not all of them have a strict 1 personality to stick, so it's really refreshing and feels real. [8/10]
The animation is also beautiful on the eyes to watch, the style fits the show really on whatever mess they're trying to do. The comedy also got complimented by the animation really well too [10/10]. With some perfect mixing of the soundtrack, not overused, and overall not make the show boring [8/10]. Overall very good production quality alone.
THE CONS:
First of all, the world building is one of the biggest flaw. From someone totally not related to the game, this show fail to make sense of the world to the viewers. Even if the world is VERY VERY interesting in its own right, not showing it or even explaining it in a meaningful way make the interesting world feels more like a mess rather than a cool world to be intrigue about. I first expect it to slowly explaing / show to us the world through the story, but 3 ep in and nothing in sight. [4/10]
Next is the story, the story might be good enough on the gacha game standard, but when translated to an anime, the standard is held much higher, and this show fails at having an interesting good story. Even if it's on a comedy / cgdct standard (expect to have chill plot/non at all), it's still below average. This wouldn't be a problem if its laid the ground work for the world building better than this, to let the audience know what to expect of the world, and what characters in this world decision are made from / their environment. So with the unsaid world building, the story took a hit from it. [5/10]
Last and the worst, is the writing. The one thing that make me say this is episode 2. THE WHOLE OF EPISODE 2 IS LITERALLY FABRICATED FROM A DEUS EX MACHINA, just because they want to do something. Full reason with spoiler can be found under the note of this anime on my profile list. Though to conclude, bending a character thoughts and action just to make an event happen is not right. Not giving the reason to that decision is even not more right. Even with the "caustious" argument that that character could be doing it because they're cautious, then it should be the whole group, not just 1 character. So it's just the biggest most blatant plot hole that do effect the plot and story a lot. [1/10]
THE NEUTRAL:
The action is pretty good to action anime standards. With some uniqueness to it. Though flops on the choreography and sensible, since it's all just power blasting everywhere. [7/10]
OVERALL:
In conlusion, this show got some good production quality to back it up, with some good characters and cool unique style to the world. However, its flaw with the conveying of the world building, combined with the writing that's low quality and many plot-holes everywhere, really drag the show down, along even with its shenanigans story.
RECCOMENDATION:
If you enjoy cgdt, guns, and funni stuff, go for it.
If you are sensible to sensible plot, may be try it out, but might not please you.
Overall score as an action fantasy: 7/10
