
a review by C00kieMaster

a review by C00kieMaster
I will start right off the bat, I did not like this anime. I feel it tries to speak about something profound about morality, society and suicide and so much more but really don't know what it really wants to say. I usually like interpretive and vague narratives and at first, this seems to be one of those said series but ultimately is just a massive word salad of philosophical opinions jumbled into a bland story about good versus evil.
I will praise what I appreciate about this anime first. For starters, the animation really tried its best to not bore the audience when the characters just keep talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking. OMG I will get to that later but I just want to praise some pretty aesthetic and engaging scenes especially when the main antagonist Ai Magase. There is some really creative use of cuts and positioning to really sell that this character is a manipulative genius that can get under the skin of her victims in really mysterious ways. This quality is enhanced by the stellar background music for her character which has this really seductive yet malicious tone to it that really made me feel that the villain is an evil being beyond understanding. The animation has the same effort when it comes to its 10-minute monologues or discussions about good and evil and the morality of suicide... But honestly 80% of the time it is literally just people talking and talking and talking and I feel so bad for the animation director and team because WHAT IS THERE TO ANIMATE? It is literally just 2 people staring at each other talk talk talk talk talk most of the time.
Another thing I kinda like is actually the main antagonist as mentioned before really does get portrayed really well as a villain. Everything about her radiates demonic unholy energy, no need for tragic back story, no need for explanations about her motives her rationales etc etc. She is crazy, she is powerful and she is evil and this set of characteristics really works perfectly for her. Sadly the antagonists is the only one that I like in this Anime as all the other characters just... I really don't want to say suck but just sooooooo boring.
From here on I have no more good things to say...
First of all the main character Zen Seizaki a typical good cop that wants to bring justice and stop evil and that is literally about it. I really have no qualms with this approach because if his character is not interesting at least make what he does interesting. And no, he really does not do anything interesting at all. He tries sometimes... but either simply fails outright or is just pushed aside for the anime to continue its obsession with talking talking talking... And really all the side characters too and as boring or worse than Zen himself...
Finally the writing... it is the most immature and uninsightful attempt at philosophical presentations I have ever seen. When I say 'immature' I don't mean it is childish and the themes discussed are not meant for adults I mean it in a way in its presentation because it is just not even that deep. All the bickering about morality comes from a really straightforward argumentative manner based on black-and-white rationales. I really get the impression that the writer is really trying to say a lot of deep stuff in a laughably boring and straightforward manner literally having a bunch of characters just TALK for what FEELS like hours. It's tiresome, exhausting and it is boring. I literally find ACTUAL class lectures about philosophy more interesting than what is presented in this anime. Seriously go youtube and search 'Death with Shelly Kagan' and that almost 20-hour philosophy course on death is more worth your time than this Anime.
The show actually started off really promising and it is quite an intriguing mystery and concept. It started as a mystery detective plot which was handled really poorly and really boring until it morphed into an equally boring monologue dump of terribly organized thoughts about philosophy. This is one of those Anime that despite its solid production quality from its art and sound falls entirely flat on its terrible terrible writing. All I remember from this anime apart from the pretty cool female villain is the repeated word: suicide, suicide, suicide that probably makes me consider it just because of how much of a NAG the experience was.
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