Apr 6, 2024
Watching this series reminded me of the scene from Breaking Bad with the argument between Mike and Walter. "We had a good thing, you son of a bitch", "It was perfect, but no, you just had to blow it up".
This series got me feeling very conflicted about its quality. The first 7 episodes are great. The story, characters, music, everything lands well. You get some girls meeting up because they have access to some strange dream-world, where they fight traumas of the dead. Save enough souls and they'll resurrect a friend who commited suicide. You also have Acca and Ura-acca, being some kind of ephemeral
...
housekeepers about whom we know almost nothing about, and the whole sense of mystery and fantasy is what clicked with me so much. Those 7 episodes are definitely worth watching.
But then you get a recap at episode 8, explaining almost nothing, because you had a lot of fighting scenes and drama. Watching the series after it wholly aired, it feels redundant, but even during its release I don't think it was useful in any way. It's just 12 episodes, this felt just like a filler.
But it gets worse, as the show gets a little bit into Neiru's backstory in one episode, and Neiru acts very out of character, like she hasn't gotten closer to her friends in the past episodes at all. Then they try to explain what the fantasy things, the show loses its magic as the parallel world thingy is poorly explained and feels like it hasn't been developed enough to be believable. Only the Acca and Ura-accas backstory episode was good, but it left so many plotholes that the story started looking like swiss cheese. There is also no real ending to the story, the resurrected girls are not shown, overall feels like a blunder, but it feels self-contained enough, don't think there is enough to warrant a second season.
Some viewers might spot the summer special it got a few months after its ending. You might think that it will close the story up better, but then out of its 48 minute runtime, half of it is another recap, then the second half finally shows us what happened to the revived girls, but it's more parallel-world bull. Then we get some Neiru time, but it's just more questions with little answers. Maybe a second season announcement? Don't know, but its 5/10 rating on MAL feels justified. If you felt disappointed after the main 12 eps, you'll feel betrayed again after this.
Me rating the show as 7/10 is based mostly on the first 7 eps, the latter part is very underdeveloped and I wonder how did they get an OK for it. It kinda feels rushed, but then you have the recap episode, so they did have some spare time to do more. Maybe they ran out of budget or time, I don't know. Overall, I feel very conflicted about this. I'd rate this as 6/10, but it still might be worth your time, at least the first part.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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