When a season begins, i usually watch the first episode of every anime, and mark down those i want to watch. So it was, at first, a pleasant surprise to me when i begun watching "The Down of the Witch", and thought to myself "hey, i think i recognize this..." and then i discovered it was a sequel-spinoff to Grimoir of Zero.
Back then i really liked it, even with its problems. Although its adaptation made things kinda confusing to grasp, Grimoir of Zero's worldbuilding was one of its strenghts. Which made it feel fresh and cool, compared to other fantasy anime. Even now, i still think Grimoir of Zero worldbuild was one of the best ones i've seen. Not only that, Although it had some pacing issues, i really liked how its story was a closed cycle, and left little things unfinished.

So, even though The Down of the Witch aims to be a fresh experience, it inherits a lot from it's predecessor. Now, since i didn't read any source material from this, i ask myself who is it to blame? The writer? The studio? The answer is probably both, and i will try to address them separatedly.

The first main problem i got with this is how this sequel-spinoff continues the mistakes of its predecessor in therms of pace. No, actually it improved those pace issues. Even if you are paying full attention, it is sometimes hard to understand what is going on. I can only imagine how hard it was to watch from people who didn't watch Grimoir of Zero, because at least i had the explanation of how magic works in this world from it's previous setting. Here everything is thrown at your face, and you don't have time to process information before another thing happens.
Another issue is with how the story was built, to begin with. It feels like a rollercoaster. I will not spoil anything, but let's just say NEVER BELIEVE IN ANY CONFLICT. Everytime something serious happens, it is suddenly undone. This anime should be called The Blue Balls of the Witch, because it ALWAYS solves its conflicts in the most disappointing way possible.
To make things worse, you kinda get jebaited in said conflicts, because the anime uses a LOT of unconventional chock value scenes. I wouldn't say it is gore, because the animation is too bad to make you unconfortable, but when you see people losing their limbs, even if they don't bleed at all (yes), you get jebaited to think that the situation is serious. No, it most likely isn't.

I can't stress this enough. I almost dropped this because of how many times this show raised my expectations and then proceeded to, yet again, blue ball me to the ground. If i could fix only one problem of this anime, it would be how it irresponsably plays with the viewer's expectations to deliver NOTHING. This is a problem that i see in many titles, but here it is evident: you NEVER promise the viewer something if you don't plan on keeping that promise.

Now, lastly, i wanna go back to grimoir of zero for a bit. Remember it's worldbuilding? Here it is nonexistant. Remember the relationship between Youhei and Zero? Here it is almost non-existant. Remember Albus personality? Forget it, because here it was remade entirely. Everything good from Grimoir of Zero was left behind. I know they are supposed to be side characters now, but honestly, it felt like i didn't know these characters anymore.

Now i feel compelled to talk about some of it's good sides. For a typical amnesia main character, Cervil isn't that bad. His backstory is interesting, and there is some development ~~that was unfortunately overshadowed by the bad pacing issues~~. Holt and Coudeau make a good fill for the team, and aren't as annoying as i thought they would be. Roux steals all the attention to herself, and actually carried the show for a good part ~~and i don't like how she is still the sexualized lolibait character~~.

Overall, there is a lot of wrong things with this anime. I can't recommend it for anyone unless you really liked Grimoir of Zero. And even then, some bits of it actually kinda ruined my view of Grimoir of Zero as a whole for me. It is a failed attempt to make a spinoff, and should be viewed as an example of how to make a bad anime out of a good setting.