I was surfing through Myanimelist, when I found this anime. The poster art of this anime looked , very dynamic and adventurous, thus I was interested to watch it. If I were to summarize my opinion in regards to this anime, It'll be that, It's fairly thought-provoking and enjoyable, but don't expect a lot from this show.

There will be SPOILERS from this point, so if you haven't, watch the show first, then come here.
With that being said, let's get on with the review.

CHARACTERS- The characters in this show range from well written nuanced characters to shallow one-dimensional tropey ones. Shu our primary protagonist, is an overly optimistic naïve shounen protagonist, who during the entire length of the narrative had a sizeable amount of plot armour and a highly unrealistic ability to take mental and physical trauma, spit it out of the damn window and be fearless, which simply doesn't suit the show. Throughout the entire series, shu is shot in multiple places, goes through torture and all kinds of adversities, yet due to his plot armour, he is able to walk and run properly, with no harm and is mentally stable and literally shows zero signs of a breakdown. Now I know his entire purpose is to serve a foil to all the other characters and be righteous and all that, and well he does that role quite well, but for the most part, his character simply isn't believable and disengaging. Kinda feels out of place. The same can be said about Hamdo. Hamdo the despotic dictator, who simply lacks any personality and all he is, is crazy. That's it. He is literally a lost cause and can be easily defeated, yet no one retaliates against him? The question here is why are people following him in the first place? When he has done nothing to have such following? He is just the 'I'm evil because I am' type of antagonist. It literally makes zero sense to me when such a weak, vulnerable and highly abusive dictator is not overthrown, when so many people resent him.. especially Abellia who showed some subtle moments of characterization, but her tolerating the abusive behaviour of Hamdo, when she could literally tear him apart was ridiculous.
Lala-Ru too doesn't really seem to make any sense, cuz she is just a mere plot device. The moment the show ended I was wondering why didn't Lala-Ru destroy the ship earlier on? It could've all ended before it even started. Also, I can't seem to comprehend why Shu likes her so much when all they did was like talk for 20 fricking seconds.

However, in this huge pile of a mess of characters, we have characters like Sara, Boo, Nabuca, who were really well written for a 13 episode show and were constantly conflicted with themselves and had great development with some sense of realism.

PLOT- The plot in itself is pretty gripping. That's a reason why I don't dislike the anime despite it's flaws. The anime does everything for you to be invested in it, and just keep watching the show, to see its conclusion. However, as I said earlier, the show feels contrived at so many points and uses far too many plot devices in the second half of the show. The first half to me, was great, however, after episode 8, everything felt rushed and contrived and a lot of unrealistic things kept happening. It was as though everything was happening to send a morally educate the viewer. Like why is everyone dying except for shu, when shot? Why are characters betraying each other out of nowhere? Why isn't Lala-Ru using her powers to destroy everything? There are just so many questions and seemingly crazy things happening in the second half of the show.

THEMES- Here's why the critics seem to love this show. The show in its first half is really good at creating an atmosphere, and simply building upon its themes. The show has a lot to say on morality, desperation, power, war, duty and a lot more. In its first half, the show is painted as a hopeless dystopian world . However, this show contradicted its own themes in the Zari Bars Arc. In that Arc, pacifism is preached by a character named sis, who doesn't want to attack hellywood. However, that is only one side of the coin. All we ever get is "killing and war is bad".... the show doesn't really portray the dual nature of war, and sticks to its one core principle and then contradicts it in the very end . Because according to the anime pacifism is the way to go, but in the end, this sense of pacifism and kindness preached by sis and Shu, brings nothing but death and hardship to the people in this world and Sis fails to provide an alternative to this. Which is a huge thematic dissonance and doesn't really support the case of pacifism this anime is trying to make. While these episodes do make you think, if you break them down, they aren't really that deep and all they are doing is slapping an overly simplified; black and white - message on the faces of viewers rather portraying a nuanced and realistic picture on the nature of war.

Final VERDICT- The show isn't a complete waste of time, because even if it is very contrived at times, it's nonetheless entertaining (if you are willing to suspend your disbelief), and does provide some for thought as well. So I will say watch it.

Thus my final score is 76/100