Strictly speaking I should give this a 6 (episode ratings average out to 5.5 exactly)…but nah. It's too "Meh" to get anything higher.
General progression of episode quality is:
Episodes 1-4: meh, another combat show.
Episodes 4-7: ugh, this is so bad!
Episodes 8-10: wait, there's actually some substance here, maybe…
Episodes 11-12: actually I was right two months ago, it's bad.
The pacing is shit. The writing is shit. Characters are mostly underdeveloped, and nobody gets enough time for us, the audience, to actually start caring about them (except maybe Maihime). I kind of care about Asuha, but only because she's somehow the most likable character out of the entire squad.
Aside from episode-specific problems I called out in comments on those episodes, there were many more that were too obvious or too frequent to bother writing about every time. Some of these issues made their way onto my grand list of series flaws. The first entry was actually the writing, but I couldn't hold it in long enough and so it's above here. As for the rest… here goes.
There's fanservice everywhere…why? Seriously, everyone with tits gets at least one or two absurdly long close-ups during unrelated dialogue. It's obnoxious, and ruins the (admittedly already blown) credibility of the writing.
The animation reuses footage all over the place. Poor quality art abounds, with many of the scenes obviously rushed through production. And that somehow includes most of the action…in an action/fighting anime! That leaves most of the action underwhelming, and the camera work is quite often confusing to the point where one has trouble following events. There are also continuity errors galore, both caused by camera decisions and just straight inconsistencies between shots.
I should also point out…there are places where the anatomy just doesn't make sense in a given shot. This happens somewhat often.
The soundtrack is repetitive. The same songs crop up again and again in questionably similar circumstances. And the songs they reuse again and again (and again) are almost all really bad Engrish electronic tracks with no real personality.
And…the SFX are pretty bad, to be honest. Often they don't sound like what they should be at all. And sometimes they just aren't there.
I could go on, but I've already spent more time turning my notes into semi-complete sentences than this series deserves. Just skip it; you'll miss absolutely nothing. I honestly wonder how I pushed myself to keep going through all the crap to get to that one good episode…which was then followed by several more crappy episodes. It would have been better if I'd just grabbed the ClariS ED singles from some random J-Pop music ripping group and called it a day.
Review by dgwVIP 9BlockedParent2016-09-27T08:52:47Z
Strictly speaking I should give this a 6 (episode ratings average out to 5.5 exactly)…but nah. It's too "Meh" to get anything higher.
General progression of episode quality is:
The pacing is shit. The writing is shit. Characters are mostly underdeveloped, and nobody gets enough time for us, the audience, to actually start caring about them (except maybe Maihime). I kind of care about Asuha, but only because she's somehow the most likable character out of the entire squad.
Aside from episode-specific problems I called out in comments on those episodes, there were many more that were too obvious or too frequent to bother writing about every time. Some of these issues made their way onto my grand list of series flaws. The first entry was actually the writing, but I couldn't hold it in long enough and so it's above here. As for the rest… here goes.
I could go on, but I've already spent more time turning my notes into semi-complete sentences than this series deserves. Just skip it; you'll miss absolutely nothing. I honestly wonder how I pushed myself to keep going through all the crap to get to that one good episode…which was then followed by several more crappy episodes. It would have been better if I'd just grabbed the ClariS ED singles from some random J-Pop music ripping group and called it a day.