Kyoukai Senki is so painfully bland I had to drag myself to finish it. The constant "Amou saves the day" and slice of life like episodes dragged it down too much. The plot progresses so slowly, and though I tried to be patient and give it a chance, it just wasn't done well at all. It was exciting to see a mecha series that would focus on 2D animation and completely ditch CGI, but it did an awful job in doing that. Lots of times the animation is Scarlet Nexus tier bad in that it uses still frame fights with flashy lights and cheap effects to make it look like animation. You can tell some episodes threw the animation completely out the window while only a few were consistent.

Amou is in that pile of boring protagonists. He hardly felt memorable and his character barely progressed anywhere. Yes, he wants to be a hero and save people, but the writing is so shallow and hollow about it. To fix him, the first thing I would do is change the hideous yellow shirt he wears. For being a political series, that was done awful and underwhelming. Some of the main characters barely even got any development, and they can't cheap out on me and say to wait for the 2nd cour where it could get better because the 1st cour should be strong as well.

Shion had potential to be a great character but the series would rather focus on her making clay pots than fighting for the resistance.

Brad Watt is a cocky and smug high IQ individual that can scientifically breakdown a mecha fight for you just by staring at the dirt they fought on which I found hilariously absurd.

I understand Gashin's struggle under the context his father, but his character mostly felt annoyingly bitter.

The Pokemon were annoying, especially Gai. How could they reduce Violet Evergarden's voice actor down with a minor role voicing a hideous white blob with a boomerang mouth.

This all ties into many of the characters, the heroes and villains, in that they did not have anywhere near enough screen time to be relevant, and many just disappeared since the staff figured they'd just come back in the second cour.

Ghost is the only part of Kouykai Senki that I enjoyed. It's a learning AI that is so advanced it should have learned to jump out of the series and go after the writers before they can think of a cheap way to write him off since it is so obscenely strong. The main cast decide that in order to beat it, they have to do the same thing that doesn't work over and over again. Still, I enjoyed the type of destructive force Ghost can be.

With a second cour over the horizon, the suffering will continue. Still, the staff got carried away and left far too much unanswered and unresolved. At least the ending song and last episode were nice, though the episode was all action and nothing more.