This review contains spoilers for this anime (no spoilers about the game beyond what the anime adapted)

Prelude of Dawn is certainly an adaptation of passion. Yuuki Watanabe is one of the most passionate people on earth when it comes to Arknights, and Yostar made sure to assemble a very solid cast of in-house staff dedicated to adapting their mobile game in very high quality.

And if Watanabe and Nishikawa (assistant director) are devoting their full attention to the series in its peaks it not only looks good, but it also hits the emotional tone better than the game did for me - I think that's an accomplishment. I also applaud the effort to tackle the source material with a serious and grim approach and to focus much more on somber character moments than flashy action or cute waifus. It shows that Watanabe is serious about adapting Arknights as a story. In fact, for me the show worked the most when it's just still moments and a lot of emotion is conveyed through the behavior and expressions of the characters alone.

However, it also needs to be said that there are issues with this adaptation, namely the script and, when Watanabe and Nishikawa are not there, the poor direction. I think while the script does take some freedom (and often for the better) with the source material, it's still too faithful to the source material. The game has a rather rigid storytelling by separating the story into small chunks with levels to clear in-between, and sometimes it felt like the anime hesitated to break this structure, as some scenes just feel stiff and staged, and sometimes battles would take place without a clear purpose. It's just filler content and is detrimental to the pacing, which also was too slow, especially in the middle of the show. This show would've been better served with 6 episodes or less.

I hope for the next season they will try to put the script together more with the idea of how to tell the story best than trying to remain faithful to the game. With the anime, they have much more options for audio-visual storytelling and sometimes it was very frustrating to see the anime take so little advantage of it. The action direction also leaves much to be desired, and except few instances is just very awkward.

To be fair, the arc this anime adapted was not all that exciting in the game either, and for the most important stuff the anime is still the superior experience to me, even if it's a mixed bag overall. Which is why it will be interesting how the next season will turn out and I do hope that the staff behind it will be courageous enough to take more advantage of the medium because there is some actual potential here.