Soutai Sekai

Since nobody's reviewed this I'll just say a few things I liked about episode 1. IT'S STUPENDOUS!

the STORY isn't well formed yet but we know there's 2 worlds: a Normal Japan, and a strange high-tech futuristic one. in the High Tech Japan a guy is executed and (I'm guessing here) members of a cell discover something. cut to a funeral procession in Normal Japan and a boy is left all alone because his father just died. a man offers to let the boy live with him. some mourners leaving the funeral home tell the audience that his entire family is now dead. cut to ... his school and there's a cute girl, his cousin, who's trying to be friendly with him. his classmates don't understand him at all. later on a guy saves the boy from an attack. the episode ends there.

ART, yes there is a GREAT DEAL of CGI in this episode! but there also is some normal cel animation. everything looks great and blends perfectly!

SOUND, pretty good! I'm not all up on J-pop/Electronica but the music's pretty cool. the other effects and actors are good too.

CHARACTER, not much just yet. but what's there is INTERESTING!

I could only rate 1 part of the episode lower than perfect and that's the characters. the story grabbed my attention, but a single 16 minute episode is not enough to tell a greatly detailed story. I really REALLY like this and I hope it comes out with more episodes soon!

although the base idea is awesome but it's not really suitable for a 2h movie, a series has to be produced which could have the time for
1) Characterizations
2) digging into the fantasy world
3) making the imaginary world's rules clear (I didn't quite understand the 'fixer')
4) setting more and better plot twists (there was no interesting plot twist)

the movie didn't have time so just everyone had to trust each other immediately and to dive into the action and fight without preparing... it didn't have time to dig down into the mysteries of the two world (including the transfer technology) and there was no time to explain ... the present technology in the other Japan.

the war at the end could be a real fascinating strategic story which the viewer feels like a martial commander (like the one at the end of attack on titan season 3) but there was no time (it'll probably gonna take at least 3 episodes if a series is made)

>> I'm sure there can be a GREAT series out of the idea, I wish they make one someday

P.S : 'shin' was cute :)

There's just not that much to say about Soutai Sekai. It's a vanishingly brief title that conceptually harbors some interesting potential, but it fails to really capitalize on much of it, and it's unclear if it even would live up to that potential if it were given the chance. Beginning with the story, which is this anime's strongest aspect, it does a good job of setting the scene quickly and getting right into the narrative and its various concepts. However, many of these themes are simply too big for such a short little production, with things like inter-dimensional travel and cyborg telekinesis playing a central ... role. As such, while it does a good job getting right to the meat of things, it ultimately fails to give its concepts time to breathe, and ends up feeling somewhat confused and uninteresting by the end.

However, this sense of dullness is due in most part to the art, as this anime is pretty much entirely CG, and it is glaringly bad throughout. While things like combat choreography is crisp and fast-paced, everything else feels downright robotic. The whole production, outside of combat, just feels very packaged and artificial. Perhaps it is because the fights are largely between two robots that the combat is the only area in which this doesn't feel out of place. In any case, everything here feels flat and dull, even with decent fight scenes and a competent sense of color. The CG really is just that terrible, and makes for a very dry and uninteresting watch.

The sound is unremarkable, as it meets the basic standards of quality for the time, however the J-Pop group they brought on to do the music can kind of feel out of place, especially in the fantastical other-dimension version of Japan, as it steals any sense of grounded reality or stakes, exchanging it instead for an almost goofy concert vibe.

The characters are absolutely boilerplate, and do not rise above their archetypes or even fulfill them particularly well. All in all, they're hardly worth talking about, though it is worth noting that the people behind this anime felt the need to make the two main characters cousins, which definitely changes the vibe of their romance throughout this show's brief runtime.

Overall, Soutai Sekai, despite having some glimmers of quality in regards to its basic concepts and fight choreography, ends up being held back by a crowded story and stiff, unsightly CG throughout. As such, it's not really a title that's worth anyone's time.