I'll skip a few things that were made clear in the first season, like the animation and so on, because a lot of it was due to budget cuts. The only reason the characters even had faces at the end was because of that lol.
I think this theme of gods is pretty overused, at least the way it’s told here, because it’s always shallow compared to other stories, whether in anime or books (since movies are usually simpler, and even good series don't surpass an average anime). Even though the theme only really comes into play in the second season, the first was more focused on a battle royale—and a bad one at that. One of the worst I’ve ever seen, if not the worst. There was plenty of time to explore it, considering it was already being developed in the first season, even if it wasn’t the main focus. For instance, Mirai Nikki, the precursor of this style of anime, is infinitely better, though it needed OVAs to wrap up properly.
The characters in this show were all hollow. Even though the anime tried to show that each one had a motivation, it wasn’t visible on-screen. It didn’t feel real or make sense—it all seemed so silly. The protagonist, especially, was shallow until the end. I think the most fleshed-out character was Honoka, who was utterly useless this season and, like all the characters, didn’t have a remotely decent conclusion.
The story of the anime doesn’t make sense. WAIT, THERE ARE A FEW ANGLES TO THIS. When thinking about the story itself, like the plot and so on, it doesn’t make sense because everything presented doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make sense for a fictional world created by AI to want or even be able to generate a god. At the same time, the world being the way it was in the first season doesn’t make sense either, including the battle royale. There were many better ways to execute that. The whole god concept also didn’t make sense. While I’ve already said it was shallow, nothing about the story adds up—including the ending.
Now, focusing on the ending alone, you could say everything that happened in these two seasons was just the protagonist’s coma (lol, the classic anime coma theory becoming canon here). He tried to save the cat in the first episode and imagined this entire story in his head with the people who were in the accident with him.
Another interpretation, giving some meaning to the story but not the plot itself (since, as I said above, it lacks coherence), is that Ono as the god is an avatar for the authors of the work. It’s a parallel between them writing the story and god creating the story, blah blah—so basically, total nonsense lol.
Basically, the anime lacked everything. The romance and even the love triangle between Ono, Iyo, and Sawa went nowhere. At some points, it seemed like something was happening, but nothing was ever solidified. No wish was truly explored except Sawa’s and maybe Ono’s. But if his wish wasn’t for his sister to be born and instead was what his younger self said in this episode, then the little bit of depth there was goes out the window. Ono’s friendship with Akitsu, combined with Akitsu’s whole time-traveling bit, also went nowhere. Eko, like god (I know they’re the same), was a character thrown into this season. It didn’t make sense for Ono to die and come back, considering he was supposed to be god or close to godhood. From the moment he was recreated, he shouldn’t have been the same.
Man, everything in this anime was done poorly. For me, the only halfway decent character was Sawa because she was the most developed. But I still dislike her a bit because she was supposed to be the heroine, yet her personality was kind of trash. Lall was somewhat likable, though a bit annoying too.
Overall, this season was worse than the first. At least in the first season, there was the battle royale aspect happening, and in a way, there was some mystery. In this second season, the battle royale was gone, and all the mysteries had terrible resolutions, which hurt the show a lot. To wrap it up, it’s a 4/10 anime. |