[Spoilers Warning]
With a rating of 8.48, and it being a Sci-Fi, this set my expectations quite high. In the first few episodes with the plot laid out for us, I felt there was a world of possibilities in which they could go with the plot. And it did, they took us to outer space, to an autonomous AI island, and through 100 years of evolution with the AI. One problem with this being that all these things happened within' 1-2 episodes of each other. Now I'm not saying I want the One Piece 1k+ episodes, but extending to 25 could have helped the pace of the story a lot. It gets so frenetic at times, even the dialogue when Matsumoto speaks is extremely fast. With this pace, it's kind of hard to build any sympathy for any characters that aren't the main cast, and the main cast consists of only two people, Vivy and Matsumoto. They do these dramatic endings for characters like Estella, but why would we care, this character has been in it for 2 episodes, and we've seen her for a total of 10 minutes most likely. The pace can be really jarring, and I feel like giving it 25 episodes instead of 13, would have done this anime the world of good.
The one thing I loved about this anime that had me genuinely hyped was the fights. Oh my, some of those fights were animated and choreographed so beautifully. The standouts for me were the fights between Vivy and Beth, and Vivy and Kakitani's clone. Some of the animation around these fights is genuinely some of the best that I've seen. Also, I realise a lot of people don't like Matsumoto, but he was one of the better parts of this anime for me.
As far as the story goes outside of its pacing, I felt like the story wasn't the most coherent, and oftenly I found myself asking the question, "why". Either I'm dumb, or they just didn't make things very clear, or have any logic behind them. So, for example, why did Kakitani make a clone of himself to question Vivy, the man himself is already dead so he would never get the answers? Why did he wait 40 years to come and find her? Why did the Archive do a 12 hour countdown until they make the satellites fall, since when do robots love to be dramatic? Why is Vivy so strong, and legit able to beat actual combat robots? Why aren't they able to just change missions when they've finished? So many questions, and almost no logically sound answers for them.
I feel like the biggest problem with this anime, is that it lacks any sort of main cast of characters, and they don't make up for it with a solid story. If you're going to have only 2 characters in the main cast, you have got to have an amazing story to tell, and let the world building, mystery, and action, carry your show. But they failed on all parts except the action.
Oh, and if you don't like the style of music she sings, well unlucky, because you're going to hear it legitimately 40+ times in the 13 episodes.
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