Animation / Art / General Visuals - 8/10
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Basic art isn't noteworthy, but the animations and special effects are pretty good. If nothing else, the show is flashy and fun to watch.
Sound / Music / Voice Acting - 8/10
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Solid voice acting and a nice selection of original tracks makes for a very enjoyable experience.
Story - 4/10
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While one of the more unique stories in recent history, the execution is all over the place.
The story follows a weak monster called D, who is part of a remnant of monsters left after a monster invasion of Earth. After being defeated, the monsters were forced to become actors in weekly showdowns against heroes, to continue fooling the rest of humanity. Our protagonist D is fed up and decides to infiltrate the heroes' organization instead and defeat them from within.
Certainly sounds interesting, but the setup is completely nonsensical.
What possible purpose can there be to have a bunch of weak monsters fight in weekly fake matches like it's some American wrestling league? And how in the world does the rest of the world just take it at face value? There's a huge hovering monster fortress above Japan that never does anything except send down a batch of random monsters to fight in a damn arena that sells tickets like it's some weekly football game? The whole planet just believes that every Sunday at the same time, the monsters "invade" the local Japanese arena and casually wait for the heroes to show up so that they can lose and then repeat the event next Sunday? The hell is that?
The premise is so utterly ridiculous that it completely derails the rest of the story.
How can one take anything even halfway seriously when the entire planet is apparently inhabited by complete morons?
Characters - 5/10
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Despite there being some fairly interesting characters, most of the cast are just a different flavour of stupid.
Most of the cast are "heroes" whose whole goal is to fight monsters, and it is something all aspiring recruits aim to become, despite it being utterly obvious that the weekly fake monster matches are indeed just fake nonsense.
How can any of the characters be taken seriously when they spout stuff like "I've looked up to the heroes all my life, that's why I've dedicated my life to becoming a hero", when the only monsters that exist on the whole planet are as weak as children, and only show up for a weekly Sunday roast. It's just so ludicrous. It makes every member of the cast seem like a complete idiot.
The only likeable and interesting characters are the villains. Though in most part that's because their motivations and psychological profile are simply mysterious. Trying to figure out why they are the way they are and do the things they do is the only really fascinating part about the show. And it's unfortunately rather unexplored.
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Total - 6/10
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Sentai Daishikkaku is certainly a very unique anime. But I find it hard to stomach the utter absurdity of its plot and characters. Their stupidity doesn't even pass as decent comedy.
Still, the fight scenes are numerous and the animations quite good. There's definitely fun to be had, but it's hard to get overly invested.
