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I loved the first few volumes of this light novel. The world building, the characters, the slow buildup of the mysteries of how the world works, the strategies of the fights, they're all great. However, at some point the later volumes just start to feel tedious and filled with filler, and this gets worse as you get closer to the end.

And then perhaps because the author wasted so much time on meaningless filler, the end feels incredibly rushed, anti-climactic, and pulled out of the author's ass. Nothing in volume 16 makes any kind of sense in terms of logical actions that real people would take, ... and the characters constantly contradict themselves just to make the plot work. Like, "I'm going to destroy half of humanity." Half a volume later, "No, I wasn't actually going to destroy half of humanity. I just said that to troll." It's ridiculous.

My score for the early volumes was a 9, but the end brings it down to a 6.

I was drawn to the series because of its unique premise. Although it utilizes tropes common to the Isekai genre, and on its surface seems somewhat similar to That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime, it has a good amount of concepts that I haven't seen before.

In particular, I really enjoyed the concept of Dungeon Cores and how they earn Dungeon Points and build dungeons while hiding their true nature from adventures. But therein lies the main problem I had with this series. The whole time, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. For some adventurers to find out the hidden secret ... that Keima and all his companions are hiding, and for them to realize they've been living under the thumb of Dungeon Cores and monsters all along. I thought seeing that would be really interesting, especially with all the different directions the story could go with that.

But even after Volume 12, that never happens. There are so many strange coincidences and improbabilities surrounding Keima that anyone with a brain would get suspicious of him, but everyone consistently just laughs it off as Keima being Keima. This series seems to uphold the tenant that status quo is god, and thus doesn't dare to explore any of the interesting plots I was looking forward to.

The desire to keep things more or less the same goes so far as to even be tedious. Reokuko and Keima have had feelings for each other since the early volumes, and yet they don't progress their relationship at all for pretty much the whole series. Keima does all he can to avoid telling Rokuko that he loves her and wants to be a couple with her, while Rokuko keeps chickening out on making it clear to him how she feels. It gets quite tiring to read that back and forth after a while.

I'll definitely finish reading the last volume when it comes out in English, because I do love this world and the characters. It's just a shame that so much potential was squandered.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING



The ending was dumb as hell. If Maquia loved Ariel so much, and vice versa, and they made up at the end of the battle, why did she leave him for ~60 years? It doesn't make sense that she wouldn't want to spend time with her family. Plus, why did Leilia just leave her daughter and say she'll forget about her, if she so desperately wanted a connection with her? The ending was obviously contrived in order to make it a tearjerker. Which is a puzzling choice, because they still could have had the exact same ending with Ariel's ... death after a long life spent with Maquia, and I believe that would have had the same effect as a tearjerker.

I'm conflicted on the score. The movie was a beautiful showcase of life, love, family, and the inevitability of time marching on from the unique perspective of an unaging being. I want to give it a 9 for that, but the ending annoys me enough to make me want to give it an 8. I guess I'll give in and give it a 9, for what it was trying to be and how beautiful it was before the ending.

As a side note, the art and sound are masterpiece level.

SPOILERS for both seasons:


Another contrived sad ending just to get a cheap emotional response out of the watcher. In the first season it was established that Jun had some special magical ability to "bring back what was lost" as demonstrated with the clown doll and with fixing Shinku's arm during her battle with Suigintou. The ending would have worked a lot better if this power was built upon / explained and then he used that power to restore all of the dolls after he found out they had been tricked - including Hina-Ichigo and Souseiseki, instead of having a Deus Ex Machina moment with the ... appearance of Rozen.

And for some absolutely pointless reason, Rozen decides to leave Hina-Ichigo and Souseiseki dead, again just to create cheap sadness with no logic. There is no reason Rozen or Jun should not be able to restore all of them.

This ending is a huge disappointment because I really loved the unique concept of this show and the characters were very special, as I felt a real connection with all of them. I would have rated this a 9/10 if the ending wasn't so illogical, but I have to go with 8.

One of the best romance and mecha anime out there IMO, with world building and character development done right. However, I had a few problems with the ending.


SPOILERS


After the final battle, Klaxosaurs just disappear into the Earth and die when there were tens of thousands of them left. It is strongly implied that these battle forms are sentient, so why would they just decide to commit mass suicide? It would make more sense if the Klaxosaurs and humans began to coexist on Earth.

Zero Two and Hiro didn't have an escape plan and just sacrificed themselves to destroy the enemy homeworld. They always had a way ... out before in similarly tough and suicidal situations, even if they only escaped by dumb luck. The sacrifice felt kind of out of character just so the writers can have them die.

The reincarnation hint in the last scene feels really lame. Those aren't the characters we knew if they start again as children with no memories and new bodies, they're just blank slates. What they went through together made them who they were, and they aren't those people anymore if they can't remember any of that. It seems like Zero Two's reincarnation had a human body, although being a Klaxosaur is a key part of her identity, which I feel further detracted from what they were attempting.

Wish I could've given a 10/10 score because I loved everything about the show, but the end is pretty meh. 9/10.

A unique concept within the anime sphere, with great world building and interesting three dimensional characters with believable development. I really enjoyed watching the series, especially due to the characters, but the ending left something to be desired.

SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING



I think making Chaika lose all her memories was simply done to make the audience feel sad and make the anime more memorable because of those sad feelings. The first season also had feels at the ending, but mostly of victory and happiness, with a mix of pity for Blue Chaika. I think a similar bittersweet ending would've been a better route to go with ... to conclude the series, instead of basically destroying a MC just to get an emotional rise out of the audience at the very end. I think this is quite cheap.