Zero: It's hard to say... What's good and what's evil.
Inyo: It's a concept willfully created by humans anyway.
Zero: People cling and get manipulated by something willfully created. I just don't get it.
TL;DR: My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
Now then, let's review Ultramarine Magmell for real!
Magmell's set-up is suprisingly quite unique. An absolutely massive new continent called Magmell just up and appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Following this, adventurers around the world once again rose up to conquer this whole new world with treasure in their sights. But they soon found out that they bit off more than they can chew, since Magmell has a plethora of new plants and animals/monsters that are insanely deadly in their own unique ways. To save fools who carelessly adventured too far, a new job was created with a quite fitting name: Angler. Our main cast consists of Inyo, who is an angler by profession and also a Lachter (more on that later), and Zero, a cute girl who is also a lachter, although a different kind by nature.
The show's focus was a bit all over the place at times but it seems to focus a lot on these two's relationship and the greed found in human nature.
Minor spoilers will be littered throughout the next parts to back up my claims so if you want to experience this show for yourself then I advise stopping right here!
#Story/Characters:
The story, to say the least, was all over the place. The first episode kind of set the theme for the rest of the show. Trouble in Magmell, Inyo and Zero to the rescue, more information on the characters and Magmell. Pretty straight forward, right? Except for the fact that nothing was ever developed for real. We never got anything other than tid bits of information on how Magmell works, it was there because it was a convenient excuse to drive the plot forward.
Now, I'm no fan of politics and all that but a new continent is such an amazing thing to explore that even I would've had fun learning regulations and other countries relationship with this new continent. We were told that you had to have an adventurer's licence to actually set foot in Magmell, the only exception being anglers. The reason for this restriction is that the first, disastrous attempts to explore it had ended quite badly. What happened? No one knows because they only made shy attempts to imply what transpired back then.
Obviously, not every anime has to delve into politics but it at the very least showcased Magmell's particular flora and fauna, right?! The answer is, even more so disappointingly than politics being completely absent, no. Huge, strong, unique, scary monsters do appear throughout the show but they are merely an excuse to showcase how modern weaponry has no effect on them. And of course to have the borderline Deus ex machina power of lachting solve everything with ease. The plants: same thing really. Some power-up fruits and standard trees.
Lachting... probably the biggest disappointment in this show. Lachters basically conjure up things out of thin air. It's honestly pretty OP and broken with little knowledge on how it works. We don't even know whether lachters actually use a power source to create things or they are like godlike beings with no restrictions on their powers. Inyo did once mention that for things he created to stay materialized he needs to know how that thing works or built up but nothing more unfortunately. On a side note, there seem to be different types of lachters. Inyo is more of an all-rounder and lachts more basic things like platforms, swords and machanical hands; while Zero is more of a one-trick pony and lachts more complex electronical stuff. But this is just Detective Tenacher deducing things and might not even come close to reality because, again, lachting as a concept was never explored.
#
Now on to characters! Oh, boy. I'm trying really hard to be objective here but I just can't... We got:
In a nutshell, other than the main two, all of the characters are utterly and completely bland with no real character. The only ones that come close to actually being interesting is Uncle Denden and that boy from the first episode who died. That boy from the first episode got sacrificed to convey the main message of this show: that the greed inside all of us can make us do insane stuff. Which is fine, IMO. He was more lovable and interesting than any of those sorry excuse of characters up there.
Now, Uncle Denden is a comic relief character whose only purpose is to lighten the mood with not-so-funny jokes. (The show gravely missed every joke, at least for me. It was either terribly misplaced like in the middle of a dramatic scene, or not even that funny.) But exactly because he was designed to completely ignore the atmosphere, he showed more character than than the "normal" characters.
Next we'll move on to the main two because I can't talk about #5 without talking about them first. The rest... I really don't care about, they aren't worth the effort.
Inyo is one peculiar character in this bunch. He seems to be around the age or a bit older than Zero but he is quite a precocious one. Like, this boy seamlessly spouts some really philosophical stuff. In the first few episode his rants made me so invested in this character, but alas, I was let down once again. It is implied throughout the series that he kind of looks down on people and shows a disinterest in most of the things around him except for Zero and his master. Because of that dreaded lachting ability, he is quite the OP character and solves most of the problems that may arise, so it's no surprise that he's regarded as the strongest angler in the world. At the beginning he was used to call out humans' ignorance. This was especially apparent in the Bloody Maria arc, arguably one of the best episodes. But was soon reduced to a problem solving Deus ex machina. They tried to do something with him in the episode titled Shuuin’s Pupil, but it ultimately flopped because a flashback with no real significance labelled as characterisation is really just lazy.
I have to be honest, Zero's smile is the only thing that kept me going with all this bullsh*t going on in this show. Zero is an intelligent little girl who helps Inyo complete his missions in the safest way possible, she's sweet, cute, lovable, has quite the past, and wants to grow up as quickly as possible like most of us at that age. She has a bit of characterization in the middle of the show, not anything significant but at least something. Which is why I'm so furious about how they handled her past... I especially loved the scene where she helped that orphan girl feel better or the one where Zero and Inyo had way too much marshmallow.
And this brings us to the last and definitely least one, #5, the evil guy. He was Zero's captor and master and made her go through terrible tests for his own gain. Pretty standard recipe for a main antagonist but he literally came out of nowhere. The writer must've thought: "Well, we got nothing built up for the finale, let's just throw someone in here to make it interesting", like what the hell? Not only was all our anticipation ruined for Zero's past, but he wasn't even interesting.
The last thing: the finale. My God did it ruin everything. As if getting this template antagonist was not enough... We learned that there are a bit more lachters than we thought and also that lachting can be transferred between people. Not only that, Evil Guy also mentioned that lachting has power levels. Like what levels? From our viewpoint it was pretty straightforward, people created things, full stop. Nothing more. I don't see any room to introduce levels to that. After that, Inyo fell out of character for some reason. He could've swatted that guy easily but no. That wouldn't be dramatic enough.
#Conclusion:
Magmell was one hell of a journey. I didn't despise it, mind you. Far from that, I'm just infinitely disappointed. The first few episodes were not so bad but the others were borderline catastrophe. The interesting ideas at the beginning were the only things that kept this show together and made me hopeful that it'll take me on and adventure that I'll never forget.
#But it didn't happen.
With everything in mind I can only give this show 10/100 unfortunately.
Thank you for taking the time to read my review!
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