(Some spoilers, not too heavy though, mostly references to some scenes)

Well, it's now time to say what I think about this one. Overall it's a really good series, but it has some issues that, I think, keeps it from being a top tier show.

First of all, the art, the animation, everything in the audiovisual side of things is absolutely gorgeous. It's art is simply beautiful. It only gets better when they insert those detailed shots, mostly close-ups of Vivy, that really convey the emotion of the moment (The eyes of the AI, they are amazing). The sound design is also incredible, with simple and few resources it does A LOT, and I mean A LOT. For example the scene in the Sunrise with Vivy and Elizabeth, just that detail of Beth's voice distorting while the virus is taking control turns a great scene into a trully masterful one. To be short, everything in the aesthetics, the sound design, the art, the animation, the direction, is top notch and beautiful like probably nothing else this season. Wit studio did a great job.

Now it's time to talk about the plot, and I think that's were sometimes it fails. The overall story and script it's fine. It's a good take on the classic "AI deletes humanity because its better off without it" theme with some nice time travel stuff and a 100 year mission that gives a sense of purpose and direction to pretty much everything that happens. It sometimes feels like an episodic series due to the nature of this 100 year mission, which consists in a robot from the future (Matsumoto) intervining on certain moments in time to precisely change the timeline in order to avoid the AI apocalypse. That's not bad in itself, a lot of good shows are of an episodic nature, but at times this tiny arcs take place over 3 or 4 episodes and the first few can seem a little bit unrelated to everything if you're watching this weekly, and it makes you lose some interest. Perhaps that is something a little bit too subjective and someone else may not have the same problem as me, and it shouldn't be a problem while binge watching.

The other big issue with this series, is how a lot of times some information or character is introduced and it just doesn't get any development or explanantion for me to care about, and sometimes it goes unnecesarily convoluted without too much purpose or meaning. A lot of times things just seem like it happen out of nowhere and I end up thinking "And what happened with THAT?" or simply "WHY?". For example, the whole Vivy loses her memory and then recovers it and the new inocent Diva disappears thing, that really doesn't do anything for the plot, except trying to make me feel something but I never really cared for the new personality of Diva like I did care for Vivy, since I've already seen everything she has been through. I can't understand why did this happen with a lot of stuff, since the series itself does a lot of other things the right way, developing ideas and characters in a really beautiful way (for example the human Matsumoto, or the robots in the AI island singing Diva's song), and that turns out to be extremely satisfying.

The ending was somewhat predictable, but it was ok, it wasn't bad. It made some sense for the story to end the way it did after everything we saw. The "singing the program to shut down the AI" thing seemed a little goofy and kind of forced but if it wasn't that it would have been another excuse to execute the program and shut down the archive to reach the same ending, so I guess that's not entirely bad. Certainly I was expecting more substance but it was okay. As every episode in the show, it had it's highs and lows. That scene where Vivy says goodbye to Matsumoto AI, for example, was simple and beautiful, but the whole song at the end and Matsumoto... climbing? the archive tower just didn't make me feel anything like the other scene.

To summarize everything I think about this show: The series is good, perhaps okay I'd say. It's stunningly beautiful and the cinematography is top tier on this one. When the show uses few and simple resources, it does everything right, but when it gets convoluted and complicated it messes everything up without too much purpose. The plot and the development of characters and ideas sometimes is poor and other times is brilliant, it's not really consistent. The pace of this show can be weird and bothersome at times, and things can be unnecesarily confusing. It wouldn't be a problem if it were to make the spectator think, but that's not the case when it's done without purpose. Nevertheless it's a really enjoyable series, and an example of how beautiful the art of an anime show can be, in both image and sound.