(13 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Adaptation of a PSP action-RPG videogame. It also got a short “prologue” OVA back in 2009 by the same studio.
Characters
Renka, the player stand-in. He one of the talented trainees among Fenrir, an organisation devoted to exterminate the “Amagami”, monsters that have nearly destroyed civilization as we know it, aside from those small resistance forces. He’s aching to get in the field ASAP, but he’s rebuked by…
Ms Amamiya, the instructor for his rookie group, who insist on them training more. She takes this “tough love” approach because she doesn’t want them to die pointlessly, of course. But it’s a given that Renka is going to get into the field anyway, at which point she’ll be relegated to mission control over the radio.
Other characters include Renka’s bungling pal Kouta, and a bunch of other Elite God Eaters who just about manage to join the fray in time to save Renka’s bacon. Frankly, the characterization here is so minimalistic I have trouble remembering anything about most of them.
Production Values
Yikes. This is a show whose premiere got delayed by a week to try and fix the quality issues, and boy does it show. I think the action sequences mostly work, providing the flashy spectacle that has become studio ufotable’s trademark. The problem comes from the quieter scenes (i.e. most of the episode’s runtime), as the weird blend of traditional animation and enhanced CG colouring (or is the whole thing cell-shaded ?) looks very, very bad. It even manages the make the dialogue sound slightly out of sync, which suggests much last-minute tinkering. It’s frankly embarrassing for everyone involved.
Overall Impression
So, it’s a series that looks quite bad (and I’m really not sure the studio can fix things for further episodes ; I fear it can only get worse). But that only compounds the main issue : aside from spectacular battles, the show just doesn’t have much to offer. The plot is bland, the setting is beyond generic, the characters are walking clichés, and there’s no sense of the enemy being much more than cannon fodder. It’s aggressively boring and forgettable ; that may have worked fine in the original game, but it won’t cut it as an anime.
I have better things to do with my time than wasting it with this train wreck.
