Over the course of anime's existence, every few years or so, depending on the current landscape, anime likes to explore trends or capitalize on what's popular. Back in the 2000s, this was visual novel adaptations and ecchi stuff. In the 2010s, isekai stuff began saturating the market, and still does to this day, and as of recently, the newest trend comes in the form of cellphone games. Naturally, anime is made to promote the source material they're adapted from, be it a manga, game, or a light novel, with Bungo and Alchemist: Gears of Judgment being no different. Mobile games have gotten immensely popular as of late, bringing in millions of dollars, so it's no surprise corporations would want to capitalize on this success and adapt some famous games into anime, even if said anime are just glorified commercials for the game in question. There are some mobage anime that I like, such as Kemono Friends and Granblue Fantasy (Still waiting for the second season to get dubbed!), and there are just as many that are good, bad, average, mediocre, or just...dull. Unfortunately, Bungo and Alchemist has mobage game adaptation written all over it, and I don't mean that as a compliment.

The story takes place in a labyrinthine library where the world's greatest writers are reincarnated and...basically made into pretty boys. Their mission is to delve into the stories of old in order to protect them from evil beings known as the Taints. Yes, that's the name they went with, and it's as stupid as it sounds. The Taints corrupt books and intend on either changing the stories completely or outright erasing literature forever, so it's up to the authors to put a stop to them. The premise of jumping into books and saving their content is nothing new, but is actually one I like. There are even some books I've read that have used this to great effect, such as Anna James' The Bookwanderers series, and some that don't do it as well, such as James Riley's Story Thieves series. I've always been of the mind that it doesn't matter how unoriginal or cliche your story is, as nowadays it's impossible to make something original, so long as you create good, deep, interesting characters that can drive the story and are passionate about what you create.

But passion project, Bungo and Alchemist is not. All the characters save for one are just static archetypes that you've seen in pretty much every other anime before this, all made to look like generic over-designed bishounen made solely to make girls squeal. None of them change or grow over the course of the series, and the show itself is fairly formulaic on principle: Characters go into a book, find the author of the book, fight and purify them, bring them to the library, rinse and repeat. There's just no reason for me, and by extension the audience, to really care about them as characters other than what's on the surface. None of them really stand out, nor do the writers really try to make them interesting and three-dimensional in any way. Not helping matters is that the cast itself is pretty large, and if there's one thing Lapis Re:Lights taught me, is that if you want to have a show with 20-something characters in it or more, 11-13 episodes is absolutely NOT the best length for a series with that big a cast.

That being said, Bungo and Alchemist does have its good points. For one, the animation is solid, but nothing to really write home about. Would you believe that this was actually done by the same production company that worked on Pokemon, OLM? Seriously, I had no idea until I looked it up. Also, it seems like the show's budget went into the opening at the expense of everything else, because not only is that opening theme really creative in its animation and imagery, it is amazingly well done. Why the hell is this better animated than the entire series?! Why couldn't the entire show been as creative and fluidly animated as the friggin' opening?! Don't have much to say about the soundtrack, other than that it really likes to abuse one particular instrument that I don't even know the name of. You'll know it when you hear it. As far as good things go, there is one thing that I really liked about Bungo and Alchemist: A certain revelation behind one of the protagonists and his connection with the villain. I really liked the twist about him, and it actually made the final two episodes somewhat better...though not by much.

In the end, Bungo and Alchemist just comes and goes, yet another mobage game adaptation that's just there to promote the game and not much else. It's not offensively bad, nor does it really reach any highs. It's fine if you want a nice little time killer, but you're not going to find anything groundbreaking with this one, and there are lots of other things that tackled the same ideas and concepts much better.