Name: Starts off really strong, keeps going, and then has a really messy final quarter where everything just falls apart
Item: Gekidol
Rating: 65
Author: CirnoHakurei

Waifra

Starts off really strong, keeps going, and then has a really messy final quarter where everything just falls apart · Waifora

Reviewing this show is difficult. It's almost like I watched two different shows. To start with, you have the theatre idol parts. Those were, in my opinion, when the show was at its best. This is pretty much 3/4s of the show. There are the scifi things mixed in throughout, but it's all integrated pretty well. Then....you hit the last quarter. Suddenly, everything that was built up, everything that had happened, is either forgotten, reverted, or pushed entirely to the side, all to make the sci fi completely and totally front and center. There was a lot of time spent learning about the cast, going through many different things, but now they're not important. They're just extras that never get to have a role fulfilled. If you're going to switch main characters, do it via death, or do it early on. That's my opinion on these things.

Also, if you're going to have lots of character growth and development, don't get rid of it just so you can tell your chuunibyou sci fi story. This might seem like harsh words, but if you saw it, you'd know what I mean. So many nonsensical terms start getting utilized, and the plot goes completely off the rails, as off the rails as the romance that the show was working with, in favor of a romance that I can guarantee you is poorly suited to the audience they were marketing this towards. Will use the spoiler tag here

Spoiler, click to view

I am not against age gap/whatever you want to call it romance. My profile will reveal this much. But they were making him out to be a total creeper the entire time. He displayed all the traits of a 'groomer', even had cameras looking in on middle school girls' dressing rooms. But then we're supposed to think that this relationship that a 20-30 year old man started with a middle school girl, is "beautiful" or something to root for? When we previously had a really healthy and supportive relationship between two middle school girls (they had thier fights, but what relationship doesn't involve that?)? But it's okay, to make it so you can focus more on Kaworu and Hiro's "tragic" relationship, they just get rid of that relationship progress and turn Airi into someone completely different. The same girl who always wanted Seria to be the lead, even when Izumi was a choice, now that's all just gotten rid of, and she doesn't believe in Seria anymore This is just a small taste of how badly things go in that direction. I can't see why they thought this was a good idea to have actual meaningful kisses and all those things said, and then decide to cover it all up and instead give an age gap lolicon predator relationship as the main focus...I just don't get it

Even ignoring how poorly this show ended up handling the actually pretty well done romance(to that point), you have the scifi plot. The plot that really is something you'd read out of some middle schooler or high schooler's notebook of ideas. It's as coherent as you'd expect too. Nothing really makes sense in the end. And the final scene before the reused footage scene (yes, they used over five minutes of reused footage at the end with a really odd dub over that felt entirely out of place) just....what?

Spoiler, click to view

Enri Viano said it wanted to "fix" the "proper" timeline, and destroy the current one. And make a happier future. That is 100% what happened. Even though there was talk about "we don't want to support the current timeline being destroyed!" and Seria and co for some reason caused Enri Viano to be shocked...everything went as vano wanted. The timeline was destroyed. They went back and "fixed" the normal timeline, and things happened as they were "supposed" to happen. Enri won big time, but for some reason acted like the goal wasn't met. Which is made all the more frustrating, because everything was reverted. All of that development, all of that everything, was reset. I didn't want Alice to come back. it was an important piece of who Seria was now, and it was important to how her and Airi met and got together. Course, the show at this point already acted like they were never a thing in the first place....so what else would occur in this poorly written mess?

I wanted to love this show. I was loving this show. It was such a brilliant mix of idols, theater and sci fi. But then everything went wrong. It really was as if some other writer entirely took over. There were so many contradictions that I didn't list, because it's too much to pin everything down. But the stuff in the spoiler tags, and what was alluded to outside them, should be more than enough of an idea that something went very wrong. This really could have been something special, something different. I mean, what other anime

Spoiler, click to view

that wasn't explicitly stated to be yuri...did you get an actual meaningful kiss between two girls? Let alone two!

That's why this gets the score it did. I would have given it a much lower score, but before everything went wrong, stuff was so very right. So, a 65 feels a fair representation of my experience. I don't know if it was a case of producers/etc going "you can't show this kind of stuff on TV", and that's why the romance parts of the show started making no sense all of a sudden. Or the writer themself are the cause. But either way, that's how things went. And a show that had shown so much potential, was dumped into HInamizawa's swamp...