As I said, though, I watched the first episode on Netflix (which has only dubbed anime) and enjoyed it well enough; I liked the character designs, the voice acting was alright for a dub (except Lisa whom I wanted to throttle after 3 lines) and it seemed like it could develop into a decent story, so I decided to continue. However, fate intervened, and I was unable to get to netflix the next time I wanted to watch, so I looked it up online and found the original--and OH GEEZ was it good comparatively. Especially the voice acting:
Sound: 10 AMAZING
When the obnoxious girl from the English dub was replaced by Toyosaki Aki going to the original after one episode, I nearly exploded with joy (she is my personal favorite Japanese voice actress). Besides that, Luke was now voiced by Okamoto, Nobuhiko (whom I recognized, having just finished watching To aru Majutsu no Index). So I will not deny that my love for the voicing and music are indeed partially due to the sub-par dub counterparts I was originally exposed to. Even so, the voice acting is incredibly strong in this series, from the entire cast. The theme song took a few episodes to grow on me, but it certainly did, and it is now one of my favorite anime themes. Toyosaki Aki singing the ending theme won me over after the first 3 lines.
Story: 7 Good
The story does fall into a few stereotypes and uses a few stock characters, but they're not too distracting and the rest of the story has some interesting ideas to it. The idea of the object/not-quite human character struggling with questions of their existence is nothing new (Data from star trek, even Hatsune Miku in the song "The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku" explore similar issues) but the story offers enough of a twist on this admittedly cliche but interesting plot point to make it acceptable.
Art: 7 Good
Not too much to say here, the art wasn't super amazing but it was by no means bad, and each of the characters were distinct and memorable.
Character: 9 Great
This mixes with what I said about the story--which is partly because most of the story is exploring the characters and their pasts. All of the protagonists, and even some of the minor characters, are developed surprisingly well and enjoyably, especially Lisa. (I won't go into detail there to avoid spoilers)
Enjoyment: 8 Very Good
This would have been a 9. It was almost a 10 actually, until the end. I won't give away WHY but the ending was....infuriating. I found out why later--the series, like many anime, is based off a light novel series, and of course the anime finished before the books did, and so the anime writers had to slap together an ending. There are some times where this is successful, at least to a point, but this NOT one of them. Little is resolved, the final battle is frankly STUPID and the ending left me sitting there saying "what, THAT''S HOW IT ENDS?!?!?!" I still enjoyed the rest of the series, but such an awful ending could not let me leave it with a perfect score.
Overall: 7
Despite the atrocious ending, this anime is still more than worthwhile I think. I thoroughly enjoyed following the growth of the characters, and as I said, the amazing voice acting. Though there is little hope, as this wasn't the most popular anime, I do wish they would make another season to give it a respectable ending, but nonetheless I do not regret seeing this anime, and still would recommend it to anyone.
