Visually it’s just kind of falling flat, between the low-contrast, desaturated color palate, the kind of low-energy, stiff animation, and the “not the worst, but still unnecessary and bad” CGI. The musical score is just sort of subdued and bland and doesn’t really accompany or elevate the scenes well most of the time. The writing is… not great so far and the pacing feels bad, with relatively little happening and lots of over-long bad-CGI scene transitions to pad time. The characters feel sort of lifeless and just sort of there, which could have been tied into the idea of people being deadened by hapna except it’s very clearly not going for that at all in any way and that would have also needed contrast and hints of resolution to land.

From the buzz leading up to it I was really just expecting better.

Edit: I just want to add, I’m complaining a bit about the music and lack of style and I want to highlight that both the intro and outro are phenomenal in both of those respects. It’s like every ounce of style and energy they had for the whole project got poured entirely into those.

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      5·
      12 days ago

      Pretty much, yeah. They feel like they’re from a saturday morning cartoon from the early 2000s. I honestly don’t understand how the director of Cowboy Bebop and a director of John Wick churned out something like this. Just like I don’t understand how the music is as bad as it is.

      This should have been knocked out of the park. It should have at least been pretty good, if they fumbled hard. I don’t understand how it was fumbled this hard.

  • Rojo27 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    12 days ago

    First few reviews I read said something similar. Its too bad because the story presented in the later trailers seemed to be pretty interesting with some potential, but it seems like a miss. Might eventually watch it, but this spring season has plenty of other really great looking anime that I rather watch now.

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      Yeah. I just watched the two episodes that are out and I kept looking for redeeming qualities and trying to give it a chance to catch its stride, but every time it sort of feels like it’s going to it just doesn’t land right.

      Honestly I think the biggest problems are these: the cinematography isn’t great, like it’s trying to be dynamic but it uses bad CGI backgrounds to do it and it really would have been better served with rougher static backdrops and less dynamic motion of the viewport; it doesn’t use color well so shots look washed out and it doesn’t create any kind of vibrant contrast between the focus of a scene and the decaying world behind them; the music doesn’t match the scenes well or feel like it has any energy or soul behind it, it’s just kind of going through the motions and not even a way that conveys a sense of a character being mired in numb decay and just going through the motions themselves. I could forgive silly writing like the US and China both abandoning their veto powers in the UN because they got mad at a guy for saying “climate change bad” (this is an actual thing that happens: he says climate change is bad and they go “harumph, we’re taking our veto and going home maddened” and walk out on his speech) if it felt like the story itself had anything to actually say or had any themes that related the story to its characters, or even if it was just wrapped in a visually stunning package and given a good soundtrack (like with Solo Leveling, where the blandest, most derivative, and most vapid story with the most flavorless characters ever gets elevated into a wonderful spectacle by its lavish animation, stylishness, and soundtrack), but it just doesn’t feel like it’s managing that so far.

      In short, it’s just not stylish enough. It’s neither a gorgeous spectacle nor a deep and meaningful story, and certainly not that rare blend of both that the very best series manage.