Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation

SPOILERS FOR PHANTASY STAR ONLINE 2 THE ANIMATION. DON'T WATCH THIS ANIME. IT IS NOT WORTH YOUR TIME

Advertising a game isn't the easiest thing in the world. Making an anime that is based on a game (whether it be an adaptation, a tie-in, or just something to promote the product in question) is even harder. Hell, the movie industry has had an exceptionally hard time trying to make a movie on these same grounds that actually worked well. That being said, you need to try to keep the spirit of the game you're promoting, as well as make something that can be a good gateway into the game series for people who probably wouldn't have bothered otherwise. With the exception of Visual Novels (they are only visual novels, not multi-genre games with a visual novel storyline), games have been notably hard to adapt right, if the likes of Blazblue Alter Memory are any indication. That brings us to today's target: Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation. As you can see from both the MAL aggregate score and my score at the top right, this anime really didn't do a good job at anything. Now, why is that exactly? Not only that, but should it be declared as one of the worst anime of 2016? Well, let's find out, shall we?

The first few episodes don't really exhibit much of a major narrative. However, they have plenty of their own problems. The logic behind some of these characters' decisions is weak at best. Why is an average student like Itsuki immediately promoted to Vice-President of the student council right or the bat after joining? Apparently, it's because he has good attendance and his grades are decent (so, what's stopping the rest of these guys from taking up that role?). Why is the company behind PSO2 putting the student council in charge of testing out an already widely released and profitably sold video game that has already been released for seemingly a long time? Because...plot (but why not just enlist hardcore gamers and not a bunch of students that have to manage clubs). Why is Itsuki the handyman of clubs when he wasn't even in a club before the student council? I dunno; probably just so we can have a discount Shirou Emiya that doesn't even do Shirou Emiya things (but what's the point?). Why is the main relationship between our two MC's based around a game of fucking hide and seek? Because we need something to give our hero motivation (so why does this go nowhere?). The premise is kind of dumb as well: You can be conscious while playing the game IRL and you can actively communicate in the game in real time as if you're speaking normally. It gets genuinely confusing how this plays out. I'm not even gonna mention they condescending attempts at teaching us about things that their audience already knows (like conventions, trolls, etc) because we need to move on. One last though before the next paragraph; the first half of the series is riddled with horrendous forced drama moments that also tie in with condescending aesops and retarded character reasonings, so the story quality was horrible even before the main plot drags this all to hell.

The major plot (that really kicks off in the second half of the series) is that Darkers (weird aliens in PSO2) have somehow sprung from the game, through the screens of electronic gaming devices, to the real world. They don't even bother explaining how this works. We get a glimpse of this in episode 6, but t only becomes important in episode 7. We see this mysterious character named Aika who takes the game way too seriously, as if to foreshadow that there's more to the game than meets the eye. Still, what comes next is what truly makes this premise one of the stupidest in anime history:

Apparently, PSO2 isn't a game, but a world. This is all kinds of wrong. First off, how the hell did developers of PSO2 allow it to be a real world? If it existed beforehand, then that only complicates things so much further that it would be pointless to try (though, I would like to see one of you come up with every single way this theory makes no sense in a blog). Then again, part of the reason nothing about PSO2 makes any sense is that we know next to nothing about the game at all, with crucial information being relegated to eye-catcher commercial cards that play before and after a commercial for 3 seconds each! The handling of PSO2 causes a bigger pool of plotholes and questions than the Sword of Akasha from Code Geass R2, the combat systems in Mahouka, AND the combat systems in The Asterisk War! HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT?!?!

The other plot is the preparation and execution of the school festival. It's also full of forced drama, bad comedy, and the fact that it has to tie in with the main plot, which leads to even more moments of character idiocy and a generic "hero must save the damsel in distress" final climax (that has its own problems not worth delving into here). The ending is also pathetic as well. Apparently, Dark Falz (which wasn't mentioned previously) corrupts Itsuki's love interest, Rina Izumi, and some fights later, Itsuki, his friends, and his now saved love interest unleash a friendship speech so cheesy that Fairy Tail haters would almost want to apologize for any jokes made about that series' friendship speeches, and they literally rip off Fate/Zero Second Season's Excalibur scene to finish the bad guy "for good". In reality, it'll come back someday, but for now, we finish on a relationship going nowhere and the school festival finishing smoothly. The story is ridiculously bad, and it somehow manages to be one of the few that get literally everything wrong at every turn.

The characters do not fare much better in terms of writing. Itsuki is almost as bland as they come, with the two notable traits being how exceptionally awkward he is and how much easier he can be compared to his contemporaries (like Ritsuka from Fate/Grand Order: First Order). Still, he's hardly worth investing in. Izumi is worse. She is either a pathetically bland tsundere (luckily without the "Baka" or hurting the MC shtick) with a really lame connection to Itsuki, or an awkward mentor, depending on if she is IRL or playing as SORO. As SORO, she is extremely awkward in episode 1 with really confusing quirks that get abandoned immediately. Plus, when she switches into her original game persona, it's the same as IRL. Worse, she becomes a damsel in distress and really contributes nothing to the main plot. The school plot is where she has the most involvement, but she gets hijacked from that in episode 10 for...you know.

IRL, Kouta is the bland and awkward "classmate guy" character. In the game, he is rather eccentric and flamboyant, making me wish he was like that IRL, since this cast needs more life. Aika...is weird. While her initial social oddities become explained in the fact that she is an NPC from PSO2 (which is part of the cesspool or plotholes and stuff surrounding their interpretation of PSO2), it can be embarrassing to sit through. Still, she had the most emotional stakes out of everyone. Too bad her personality is also weak, since she's the best-written character in the show. I'm not even gonna discuss the other logical problems involving her, because these side-characters (aka, the other Student Council members) have waited far too long for their beating.

Yukata flat out sucks. IRL, he is a wimp that nobody really understands until Itsuki does. In the game, he is an arrogant troll who dicks people over, somehow knows who Itsuki's avatar is IRL, and threatens to expose him for no reason. He is a pathetic troll who only exists for a condescending Aesop in episode 3, never to be relevant again until episode 11 for a lame ass "your friends join you for the penultimate fight" cliche battle, with a pathetically weak personality. Two of the student council members (whose names aren't even stated in the anime) have literally the exact same personality. They're beyond superfluous to any of the plots, and there is no reason for their existence other than badly done comedy. Then, there's Kudou, who starts off, like most of the other student council side-characters: generic asshole for the sake of being an asshole. He eventually shows off his eccentric and flamboyant side, but it was too late for him. Mika is aggravatingly douchey towards Itsuki because Izumi hangs out with him more than her. Her forced melodrama doesn't help her character at all.

Barring Last Samurai and his wife, the PSO2 friends have little going for them as well, but they are, luckily, harmless. The only problem is that two of them are also never seen again after their debut until the penultimate battle (and they're not the last characters I'll say that about). In fact, barring the leader (Kasura, who is also generic), this applies to the NPC ARKs guardians as well, minus the pop idol whose singing I dislike. Thus, there isn't any time to make them remotely memorable, which is a shame as they have some potential to bounce off each other to work well in both combat and humor. Some of the students (namely the trio that constantly surrounds Aika) are aggravating to deal with at all times and add nothing but annoyance. Hell, three of the other students that were advertised in the OP are there for a quick moment, and are never seen again.

Not only are most of these characters pathetically lame and poorly written, but the potentially interesting ones never get their chance to do anything, and some of the advertised ones have literally a few seconds of meaningless screen-time. The student council here is so bad that it makes the one in Mahouka look like it was comprised of actually great characters (albeit one of them is actually decent). Not a lot of these guys are actively heinous, but the ones that are, ruin the already mediocre and underutilized cast.

In the real life scenes, the art is passable and the character designs are mediocre. I still hate the occasionally badly blurred backgrounds, and their usage of lighting at times is horrendous (don't get me started on the one scene where there is bright and dark lighting for some reason, and the bright lighting is unbearably bright while the dark lighting is nigh-impossible to see anything in), but nothing deal-breaking here.

However, the PSO2 game stuff is horrendous. The omnipresent CGI here ranges from eye-watering to eye-bleeding! The random monsters are revoltingly bad and the Darkers aren't that much better. The CGI avatars are hideous as well, with special mentions going to Silver (one of the PSO2 friends) and SORO. Hell, during an action scene, the CGI is so bad that it legitimately obliterates the frame rate, which is something that an anime should never be able to pull off on its own (especially on a properly supported platform like Crunchyroll). It makes the already horrible action scenes incomprehensible and impossible to follow properly. The actual action scenes are filled with putrid choreography and ass-pulls left and right (usually due to how we are told nothing about how anything in the game works). Yes, the character actions when CG break the frame rate as well, probably more than the Darkers and other random monsters at times. Plus, the actual avatars look awful by design. The excessive use of excessively bad CGI ruin he already mediocre art and turn it into a disaster-piece that would make art-critics vomit.

The art in episode 9 is definitely a step-up, with better CGI and character models, and no frame rate issues. The action is weak but better than before. Too bad that degrades after episode 10, because I was starting to believe that the animators actually were improving everything at that point. It's as if they said that the final battle needs to look as fugly as possible, and I won't mention how wrong the CGI dragon looks there or how badly they screwed up laser beams, because you need to actually see it for yourself.

The music is, you guessed it: lousy as well. The OP, Zessi Star Gate, by Shouta Aoi, is...odd. The first half is as awkward and lame as it gets. The second half, feels like it's desperately trying to be good, but misses the mark heavily at points. It makes it really weird to sit through. The ED, Rare Drop Koi Koi! One more!, by the two female members of the sad excuse for a love triangle (that Itsuki is a part of) is really bad, and when coupled with the horrid CGI footage and whatever SORO is doing, it becomes both infuriating and embarrassing to sit through. The OST in episode 1, is decent. However, it is horribly misplaced with everything, as if it was made for a more expressive and interesting show instead. That's why for episodes 2-10, the OST is pathetically generic and lame. Then they try some newer songs that also feel relatively out of place, even if there is one OK one that actually fits in episode 9 (as if to say that most of the effort and talent went to episode 9 while all the mediocre and bad sh*t went to the rest of the series). Honestly, nothing works, whether it be decent music that doesn't work with the anime or lame music that just fails to do anything.

The comedy is embarrassing and awkward. Almost none of the jokes work at any capacity. In fact, some of the earlier episodes feel extremely condescending, which really pisses me off. Your audience should never be talked down to, and the show doesn't get that. There's shoving morals in our face, and then there's doing it in a way that really insults our intelligence. The latter half of the show, while aggravating for how hideously had the plot becomes and how pathetic the finale is (the less we mention the Excalibur ripoff scene, the better), is borderline tolerable, if still tedious. At that point, the damage had already been done, and this barely even tried to redeem anything rib my experience with this abomination.

If you noticed --and you probably did--, I used the word "awkward" quite a lot. That's because the show is exactly that. Everything about this show, barring some condescending absurd moments, is awkward and uncomfortable to sit through. It was an endurance test through and through. There is hardly a single redeeming quality about this anime. The music is either decent but misplaced or mediocre, the art is mediocre, the CGI is on a whole other plane of bad, the fights are horrendous, the characters suck, the story is incomprehensible, and any good character with potential is incredibly underutilized. It's as if they wanted there to be as few redeeming qualities as possible. Either that or this was incompetently made. This doesn't cater to potential fans because we are told next to nothing about the game. This doesn't cater to existing players due to how bad the game looks in the ahem and how bad the story and characters are. Who does this even appeal to?! Well, that's enough rambling from me. I don't think this abomination can take it any longer and I've pretty much run out of things to say about it. Well, with that said, I bid you adieu.