TL;DR: it was ok I guess?
Synopsis: boy run away from people who try to kill them, and align themselves with a group of teenagers with magical powers.
The most edgy anime I have ever seen. Just look at the characters.
The anime pulls no punches in its content and presents its viewers with incest, violence, prostitution, and amorality. Unfortunately, the edginess is taken way too far (particularly the character designs) and the show suffers from being cringy, which is hard to ignore.
Like RWBY, it has a generic premise but still manages to stand out from the rest of the cardboard cutouts in many ways. While it does have a “grand story”, most of the focus is on the day to day interactions between the main characters. Fortunately, most of the characters are pretty good (particularly the girls, which is rather surprising given the manga was written by a man), so the slice-of-life style works well.
Given that there was so much time dedicated to the SOL elements, most of the actual finale is rushed into the final episode, which did not work. Beyond that, the series has some interesting thematic elements, with the most notable conflict being whether it is worth it to sacrifice the world that exists now to create a better one. Very reminicent of online discourse surrounding AI and eugenics, which is appealing to me (and probably most of my audience).
The production value was fairly poor. The animation has lots of still frames and bad motion, the fighting scenes are not exciting at all, and the sound volume is inconsistent. For what it is worth, I did remember that the art/backgrounds were fairly cool.
Did I hate it? Honestly, I didn’t. It was simply disappointing. A lot of the problems with it could have been easily fixed by increasing the budget or changing the cutting. And adding anime-original character designs. Also, it was extremely forgettable — I watched this anime just under a year ago, but I cannot remember almost anything about it.
Scoring:
Design (6/15):
Distinguishment: (4/5)
Animation: (0/2)
Sound: (0/2)
OST: (1/2)
Character designs: (0/2)
Backgrounds: (1/2)
Script (37/50):
Character Investment: (8/10)
Character Realism: (2/2)
Character Complexity: (3/3)
Plot solidness: (4/5)
Plot complexity: (7/10)
Ending: (3/5)
Pacing: (2/5)
Stakes: (8/10)
Value (12/15):
Thematic elements: (4/5)
Skill: (4/5)
Originality: (4/5)
Enjoyment (12/20):
Did I like it: (12/20)
moar reviews of mediocre shows.