Garo is filled with action packed fights and above average animation that surpassed my expectations with flying colors (before I realized this was MAPPA). We go through a variety of settings in this story like Russell City, the Desert, El Dorado, and the true El Dorado. Each of these settings are mildly different but refreshing to see compared to the typical Sci-Fi dystopian series where the setting is the only civilization that we know of. Arguably, the first half of this show is your typical Man V.S Monster action series. We find the people who are vulnerable to the horrors, kill the horrors, repeat without getting any substantial information on our end goal. However, I think the story truly shines in the second half where things start to pick up and we finally get a sense of direction. There are some amazing animation sequences that we get to see later in the story that I think are worth sticking around for and the plot only got better for me as we got towards those final episodes.
Once we get into the city of El Dorado we meet the servants of the "King" of El dorado, which makes us as the watchers question who the king is. Is it someone we know? Does the king even exist? Pretty early on I was able to predict that the King was our main girls brother because I can't say that it's an original twist. BUT, we later learn that her brother had no knowledge of what was going on in the outside world. We got to see that he was battling his own psychological turbulence after learning about what the cost of "El Dorado" had on the real world, humanities eradication. Yes the ending was rushed and yes it felt like some things still had to be covered, but that's nothing new in modern anime its just something that you have to expect with any show that isn't 50+ episodes. What I think the show did a great job on was it's characters, we get back stories on pretty much everyone and I can say these characters were made to be likeable, there's nobody in the main cast that I find to be filler, unnecessary, or just overall irrelevant. I even felt attached to the minor side characters early on due to the heartbreaking stories we get to experience and what leads them to fall victim to the horrors.
This is by no means a ground breaking revolutionary series, but I think it deserves more recognition within the genre that it is as I would consider it better than similar series in this scope. 1000% recommend this to people who enjoy action-y shows with great battle sequences and I had a very enjoyable time getting to watch this in such a short period of time!