Shortly after the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, an earthquake hits Japan! Shortly after, the whole country appears to sink. The anime follows the Mutou-family and other characters of the group in their story to survive this horrible event that is unlike anything else. What sounds like a very intriguing hook for a good story sadly develops to be a shitshow. Plotholes are actively dug, at least when it isn't time to kill off another (main) character in an unbelievably stupid way.

This anime tries to catch you with its shock value but fails to create the emotions and drama behind losing a character or even a main character. Even worse: It fails to put any meaning behind the deaths of these characters, the other characters who just saw someone die don't seem to care or have somewhat of a "well, okay let's continue" attitude and constantly jump from wanting to grief and joking about death.

This does not mean that this show fails everything it tries, though. There are some moments (especially within the first and eighth episode of the series) that genuinely felt well produced and had the right pacing and great emotions in it. It is just such a shame that these episodes are between so many weird and stupid scenes where characters do the most stupid things they could ever do.

Gore elements exist, such as heavy usage of blood effects, detached extremities, and graphic depictions of tattered corpses. These elements seem to try to add seriousness to the story but they ultimately make the anime seem like a splatter movie. They are too graphic for what they try to invoke in the viewer and have horrible pacing as well.

Even the production value is getting killed episode by episode. Compare the first and the last episode and you might think those are two different shows. There are also additional problems because the anime was released on Netflix. A lack of subtitles made scenes where people spoke Russian or even morse code make no sense and signs are not explained either.

I was really interested in a more serious take on the doomsday survival theme, but this is not the experience I was hoping to get. There are small glimpses of it, but it ultimately fails with the story, dialogue, style, and pacing. The only thing that was constantly good was the music. I've watched Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 before this and was hoping for a more serious, less "mystical" version of that. I would not recommend you investing around four hours in this show.