Knowing nothing about this, I had no idea what would be in store for me. Starting with 3 hilariously faced paced episodes, I thought maybe this would move into so bad it's good territory. Penny was introduced, and they skipped her moment by only showing the end of her fight. The character conflicts were resolved so fast, like a greased hog running for it's life in a forest from starved people, that they didn't feel they made sense. Looking at the early animation, I was terrified by lifeless, copy pasted CGI robots. Some of the 2D fights also had CGI moments shamefully squeezed in between. Then I saw moments where the staff animated falling characters by what looked click and drag execution. I was laughing in amusement, until the overly repetitive dream arc began.
Not only do they use copy and paste CGI robots that look lifeless, they copy and pasted whole scenes, repeatedly. As the dorky Ruby, voiced by Saori Hayama, continued to try to save her friend, the dreams repeated. It felt like a poorly made time travelling story. The pacing went from lightning fast to a slugfest. I recall an episode of Ruby just wandering around aimlessly while disgusting looking monsters on the doors and statues made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn't take much of this seriously, like Weiss's mom being an alcoholic shadow in the wall constantly laughing fanatically.
The opening sequence is an embarrassment. The song sounds like something I'd hear in a commercial for clothes, and the footage used is recycled from the first 3 episodes. Though the ED had the same problem, they eventually fixed it by adding actual footage. Not the opening though. They kept it the same, to my constant disappointment with this series.
The animation is so noticeably good or bad, it's just shameful. Even when it's good, it tends to have weirdly looking faces and body proportions at times. As the girls fought, I wondered where the animation went. Then, I laughed again when I realized they saved it for a food fight, of all things. There are only a handful of moments I can recall where Shaft actually tried to animate this expired horse radish of an anime. I was let down immensely by this studio after being moved by Bakemonogatari and Madoka Magica. At least the last episode has a few Shaft-like cuts, before this series squealed it's last shriek and withered away into the obscure pit of forgotten anime.
As the series continued, with the characters asleep most of the time, I has horrified once again with the game the girls were playing. It was a fighting game animated so poorly I had to pause the episode to laugh. My list of complaints for this series feels like it will never end. There are more anti-climactic fights that end in a second, useless characters that do nothing the whole series, the soundtrack sounds like a defective AI generated it, and showing the characters faces reacting instead of the fights. I was annoyed to no end, time and time again, at how often these girls just stood around talking nonsense. Then there's the train scene I had to watch again, again, and again. The finale was hardly a finale. At least some of the end cards looked nice, like the one from Yoshitoshi Abe.
Though I'm being harsh, I was charmed by the only character I liked: Ruby. Her dorkiness won me over, as lifeless as this series is, and I enjoyed watching her, sometimes. This is a very silly series, to the point I developed somewhat of an attachment to that aspect of it. It was only "so bad it's good" for a while, but I was very entertained, laughing at all the incompetence. I was a bit sad to see it go, but realized in the end that maybe it was Stockholm syndrome.
28 out of 32 users liked this review
