Love or Hate, this is the best Mystery Science Theater anime in a long time

SteelingMax said:
Explain the plotholes, please.

Need_for_Steed said:
For me this show is so bad and full of holes that you can easily fill them in with your own jokes, and is only helped by the incredibly tryhard production value.

Need_for_Steed said:

Not necessarily plotholes but just holes in general, such as the aforementioned irrational and inconsistent behaviors of the characters that are reminiscent of Hiroya Oku's background characters, or the innumerable handwavy sci-fi mechanics attempting to support a premise that is wholly reliant upon them.

TheEnhancedExe said:
Average anime are often completely boring, but here you can actually enjoy the bad writing because you're constantly asking yourself "How does that make any sense?" or "Why would the characters act that way? That's not how any normal person would act in that kind of situation".

ZakuCustom said:

This is far too lacking in specifics to properly address, but I can honestly say that doesn't resemble my own viewing experience at all. In fact, I find the "worst" parts of this anime to be average at most and didn't believe the characters were acting in any particularly senseless ways. Extreme or radical, sure, but that still follows a greater or lesser degree of logic. Even if it involves a series of developments that lead to scenarios we'd rather avoid or not see.

There's a difference. Disliking certain attitudes and characterizations, which I did feel at various points (especially with this type of protagonist), is one thing. Thinking it's senseless or inconsistent is another. By and large, I didn't notice that.

All human beings are capable of irrational actions. We have seen this before, especially after taking into account numerous other precedents from the anime industry or, for that matter, instances of similar behavior among modern societies.

I can understand some people may hold an idealized view of what "normal" individuals are supposed to be like. Everyone should be calm, collected, responsible, patient and cooperative. In theory, that's true, but one close look at the current state of real world politics in multiple countries around the globe does a lot to confirm the opposite. No, people can be quite silly, stupid, impulsive, impatient and selfish. To say nothing of looking back at the history of various disasters or moments of crisis. Not only teenagers but fully grown adults can be flawed to the point of annoyance in reality as well as in many works of fiction.

TheEnhancedExe said:

It looks like they researched how characters would act in a state of emergency in a real situation. But applied to this kind of situation their actions don't make a lot of sense and feel forced. Especially the civilians who just randomly demonstrate at the beginning in front of the mayor although it's obvious he can't answer any questions about what happened.

If my internet and phone calls didn't work, the last thing I would do would be going to the mayor. I would assume my provider is at fault. And if there were large ruins around the city how do people expect the mayor to answer that if communication doesn't work at all.

Then when the Revisions told the people they could go back in time when they gave them the mechs back, they were way too easy to believe them. They literally just accepted a small apology from them that they killed some people. Also this is way too fishy and was an obvious trap from the start, though this is more an issue of bad writing here since characters can't be aware of obvious anime tropes.

Also, on top of that, once they get the mechs back and fight against the Revisions, the civilians suddenly turn their opinion 180° again. Iirc they said that like 100 people died or sth. That's probably why they did it, but why would you do all this offscreen? This made it seem like nothing special happened and they just changed opinion for no reason.

On top of that the writing is where it's even worse at. There is no sense of mystery if the biggest questions are just casually revealed out of nowhere right at the start. Why would they explain the reason why Shibuya is in the future in the first 3 episodes. This would usually be the main mystery in any other anime and takes away all the interesting aspects if you answer that straight away. Or when Milo completely out of nowhere tells us she suddenly got the mission to help them in the past. Why would you do that straight in the middle of the show? Or the time when they get the additional two mechs, they had no problems getting them when any clever show would put some kind of obstacle in their way.

It seems that they aren't aware how to turn this into an interesting story. The writing is all over the place and seems completely random at some points. Idk if you've ever analyzed story writing in an anime or manga to find out what the most essential parts of story writing are. But Revisions is missing nearly all of them. It is pretty apparent that the premise is way too much to handle for whoever came up with the story.

To give an example of how a sci-fi, mystery, mecha show is done right, watch SSSS.Gridman if you haven't already seen it.

ZakuCustom said:


That's exactly where we happen to disagree. By and large, the initial situation in Shibuya is equivalent to a state of emergency. During a crisis, communities want their local governments to help them (especially if they cannot reach the national administration either, like in this case) and properly explain the situation. Fear and lack of knowledge creates the potential for tensions and misunderstandings.

Citizens usually expect their elected representatives and local government officials to maintain a degree of organization and restore order during a crisis. This applies to any number of fields.

To use your example, if I don't receive any real or satisfactory answers from my Internet provider, the logical next step would be to progressively move up the ladder and ultimately contact the national authorities who are in charge of supervising the sector.

This is yet another point of disagreement between us. Desperate times can make for desperate measures, especially if someone (the Revisions) is directly offering a quick and easy way out. Why do you think so many people join up with strange cults, sects and fake religions? Some people will go ahead and take whatever they can get, even if it sounds like craziness at a glance. If your whole city is now surrounded by an apocalyptic landscape, your sense of reality should start to crumble.

Furthermore, the killing also meant that the Revisions weren't going to honor their original promise either, so logically enough such an outcome would likely change opinions back and forth. Did we see the entire process? Not necessarily, but the show did present the key information to us. I will give you some credit, however, because the pacing did move through events rather quickly. Still, that's not the same as "nothing happening" or "changing opinions for no reason" though.

Why shouldn't they tell us what was going on?

Only the specific timing could have been a bit surprising, in my view, not the fact that it was going to happen

I'd argue this is perhaps the most inherently subjective and thus potentially divisive part of the discussion. What makes a story "interesting" or "boring" is, to say the least, always up for debate. Everyone in the world doesn't automatically want or expect the same result from a story. This goes for both the creators and the audience, since there is no such thing as universal agreement on either side.

It all depends on what are the specific tastes, preferences, interests, values and expectations of each individual person. Clearly, we didn't happen to share all of these. And that's fine.

Curiously enough, I have been watching SSSS.Gridman lately. It's good, no doubt, but I think that's certainly not the only way to create a sci-fi anime. Far from it. Revisions doesn't need to be exactly like that. They're two shows with very different priorities, goals and methods. It would be a good model to follow in terms of popularity, of course, but then again part of that had to do with superficial aspects like the use of 2D animation vs 3D animation (if Revisions were fully 2D, folks would be less turned off by default). .

For that matter, I'd suggest watching Infinite Ryvius instead, since it might address your specific complaint about events happening too fast here, but I obviously can't guarantee you'll enjoy that series (maybe you'll hate the cast of characters even more in that one).