The show starts with a scene where a bunch of people are dragging away one of the main heroines, the black haired elf in the poster, to idk struggle snuggle or sell her as a slave or whatever, doesn't matter, and our MC comes to the rescue. Dere dere moeblob GET! said elf is now suddenly pretty friendly with our MC. But there's one problem now: to move the plot along you need to get back to the plot. Seeing how in the original there was no kidnap squad to save moeblob from, she didn't warm up to the MC immediately and was quite skeptical of him and his intentions as well as seemingly more mature and cheeky. So the next thing they do after they make the moeblob look like a dere dere moeblob is to insert some of the dialogue from the original and manga adaptation back into the scene, which felt weird to see as the dere dere moeblob now seemed a tiny bit rude as after being a dere dere moeblob (adaptation original) she starts saying things that her original cheeky self said to her benefactor, the MC (rescuer in anime only). "hey buddy, i just met you, who are you to ask about where the owner of this establishment is," roughly something like this in spirit which kind of works with her original personality , looks, and considering she never got saved in the original.
The above scene, taken from near the start of episode 1 itself, is to illustrate what the quality of the adaptation is like. Speaking of characters first, the characters in the anime adaptation look much more childish with the faces being much rounder than either the LN or manga art, as a result of which, the personality of one of the heroines, the black haired elf, feels incredibly different as shown above. Her personality while still bubbly also had cheekiness and more maturity to it which is no longer true in the adaptation, this is a result of both her being a moeblob in the adaptation and the adaptation cutting dialogues and events to rush the plot. The same is true for the other silver haired main (the elf schnee) with her character in the adaptation not being able to express her wistfulness in general and her feelings of melancholy as the MC will one day return to his world again, feelings which are an important aspect of the title and her character. The silver haired elf/schnee's reunion with the MC was much more of a tearjerker moment in the manga, but that's again true for most of the moments.
Now the core issue that actually butchers the adaptation, it's that you have these blob charas act out the rushed plot whose selling point was supposed to be its big sentimental scenes with some okay slice of life scenes in between, with the sentimental parts being bittersweet moments and moments of mildly melancholic happiness (like the feeling of nostalgia). Like the schnee (silver haired elf) reunion scene. It's already obvious a rushed plot doesn't even begin to work for a title like this, like it's not going to make you sentimental when it's not slower paced and making you sentimental is the core pull of the title before anything else, but then you also have moeblobs acting out those sentimental moments along with the rushing. Just look at the manga's chapter 2 page 20 onwards till the end of said chapter and compare it with ep 1 9:40 onwards for a few minutes.
Similar to the scene just above, a lot of other scenes were spoiled in the adaptation. The generic, poorly written kirito-lite parts of the work ie the "plot" only matters if the stakes matter to you. The stakes matter to you if the character and the world matter to you, with the world ultimately dependent on the characters. It's all about the people. The generic kirito-lite activities matter as far as how the characters react to it when you do them, whether you care about those activities affecting the charactes, whether you care about how they'll perceive you etc. Essentially, do you care about the characters and if they're worthwhile. Guess what makes them so.
finally, there's nothing creative in the technical side as well to maybe try and salvage it, and then there's the extremely Substandard script that miserably executes buildup scenes to sentimental ones, thereby effectively reducing the emotional impact of the final sentimental scenes.
Maybe it isn't that bad of a show and it's the expectations of manga readers and the lack of comprehension of the work's appeal by certain others that play a part in its bad rating, so a 6/10 is a safe bet, but it's certainly not a recommendation worthy show. No "mixed feelings" here since there isn't any substantial element worth picking it up for, If the title is to be recommended, it should be the manga. A 6/10 but with " not recommended" for it.
