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When it comes to creating a story, everyone knows the popular saying "show, don't tell." CLEARLY the creators of this show don't understand this. (Disclaimer: I have not read the source material. I don't know if the source material has the same flaws)

I don't want to be a bore by explaining what storytelling is and what went wrong. If I did that, I would end up sounding just like this show: redundant, excessive, drawn-out, overdone. Instead, I'll blatantly say what went wrong. There was too much character and not enough plot. The characters were beautifully developed, but there was so much focus on them ... that the plot kind of forgot to happen. Yes, there was plot and it did drive the show, but that's where I bring "show, don't tell."

While the plot drove the show, the characters were the ones who had a tight grip on the controls. This was one aspect that made the show boring. The most important one was that the characters told the story. They didn't act through it. Most of each episode was one character talking to the other, explaining what happened or what will/should happen. I'm pretty sure that if the characters turned toward the screen, breaking the fourth wall, and told everything to the audience, there wouldn't be much difference.

One may wonder, "There's a lot of dialogue. So what?" Well guess what? The dialogue, though it makes an interesting story, is redundant and excessive. The characters make sure to point things out three times in three different ways before moving on to their next point. The dialogue is so detailed that it not only tells the story instead of showing it, it also partially ruins the story for the audience. Part of storytelling is to not reveal everything, and let the audience figure out the easy bits. Kyokou Suiri ignored this and tells so much information through dialogue that the show is almost idiot proof.

Speaking of lengthy dialogue, there's so much of it to the point that by the time I finish one episode, my head hurts trying to process everything and make sure things line up. There are multiple intricate lies told, and sometimes it becomes hard to separate from the truth.

Up until this point, all I've done was complain, but I think it's about time I highlighted some of the positives of the show. Like I mentioned, the character development was amazing. Each character was unique and had a lot to them even if they were only in the show for an episode or two. The story itself, though incredibly slow, was actually quite interesting. If it was compressed down to I'd say 6-8 episodes with less dialogue, it would make quite a compelling show. The art was really beautiful, but like most animations, it got bad when a scene wasn't important so the animators would have an easier time animating. The opening is really good and so is the ending. However, the ending would have been better if it had a little more animation to it, especially for such a jazzy song like "Last Dance."

Overall, I was just waiting for the show to end. If it ends up getting a sequel, then I won't watch it.

Whenever I tell people about this show (which is rare), I tell them "I like it but I hate it." Why? Because this is one of those really bad shows that has its "moments" that saves it from disaster.

Story: 7/10
The story itself is actually not that bad. Though there are cliches every once in a while (side note - cliches don't necessarily make a story bad), and there are moments that seem to go in ear and out the other, the story is still decent. The only think I have to complain about is the fights. The magical fight scenes specifically. How do I ... even begin to describe this? It's horribly cliched. Let's say you want to perform some simple magic. All you need to do is outstretch you arm (or both if you want), shout "O (insert element name here)" as loud as you possibly can, and just hope that whatever you're doing will completely destroy your target. I get that shouting spells is a thing in anime, and that the visual magic is different colors, but this is just plain unimaginative. Also, within these first four episodes, the magic itself is not very powerful.
I could go on about the bad magic system, but I don't want to bore you with every single complaint I have. Simply put, the magic system is poorly thought of. However, I'm not quite done with the story. Another problem the story has is its world building and narration. I put these two together because the show uses narration to introduce the world to the audience. As a storyteller myself, I know that narration is perhaps the worst way to introduce the concepts and history of a world. Its a little peeve we like to call "info-dumping." The info dumps could be worse, but in this show, they are kind of spread out which gives it a little leeway, but a nicely paced show like this does not have a need for info dumps. Also, there is a lot of narration, most of which are the info dumps.
One of the best parts of the story though is the dialogue. Although there is the unnecessary narration, the way the dialogue was written is one of the only reasons I want to continue watching. The "moments" I talked about earlier happen in the dialogue. However, there are also times when there is perhaps too much dialogue. It's almost like the creator got a little dialogue happy and wanted to continue writing dialogue for scenes that could have played out much better if the visuals did the storytelling for once.

Art 6/10
The art in this anime is pretty average. There are some questionable low quality moments, but I will talk about that in animation. There are some really cool designs to this fantasy world, especially the character design of the present timeline. I am no art critic, but I felt the need to say that the art isn't bad, but it's nothing special.

Animation: 4/10
There is a dragon in the show. It shows up in the first episode, and it's probably the worst animated thing this show has to offer. Its design is ok, but animation is what is supposed to make this dragon look real. The animation on the dragon is pathetic. It's one of the reasons why my score for the animation is so low. As an amateur animator, I understand that dragons have a lot of movements, not to mention that the animator has to keep the art consistent, which would make a dragon hard to animate. The dragon in this anime has very limited movements, not to mention that the way it is designed almost makes it unrealistic. Another thing I would like to mention is that sometimes, the animation would cheat with either low quality shots (mostly with the dragon) or limited animation techniques that shouldn't be used for too long. If you are expecting an action packed show with a lot of movement, then look elsewhere because this isn't it.

Sound/Voice Acting: 4/10
You can thank the opening for this low score. Some people might like the sound of multiple styles of music horribly mixed into one song as an opener, but out of the many anime openings I've seen (trust me, I've been all over the place. I've seen the bad ones, the poor quality ones, and even the weirdest thing you'll ever see), this opening has the worst song. I'll admit, I like the piano at the beginning, especially how it matches up with the visuals, but the moment the vocals come in, the song just goes downhill. It starts mixing different styles of music, so I just turn off the sound and watch the visuals (which are decent). The voice acting is actually pretty decent. I've seen a lot of subbed anime, and I know what bad Japanese voice acting sounds like. At least the voices are pretty good even when they have to shout ridiculous attack names or just plain cliche lines.

Character: 6/10
Although as I mentioned before that there is too much dialogue, that doesn't mean I don't like the characters who said the lines. Yeah, some characters are a little cliched, but they are actually pretty interesting. The only reason the score is kind of low is that even though the characters aren't interesting, they aren't presented well. Here's how I say a character is presented well: the character is memorable. Only a few of the main characters were presented well, but the side characters are presented in a way where if they were never a part of the story, then no one would notice. Also, this is only describing the characters of the present timeline. The characterization in the flashbacks is just plain trash. It doesn't interest me to watch these characters go about their past and maybe something significant happens that impacts them.

Enjoyment: 5/10
I think this is almost self-explanatory. There were things that were ok, and there were things that were bad. I don't think I need to repeat them here. I can tell I'm not enjoying this anime very much because when Tuesday comes around, I think, "oh yeah, a new episode of that Orphen show came out today. Eh, maybe I'll watch it later." I don't get very excited about the new episode, which really says something. This show doesn't get me excited at all. As I was watching episode 4, I was thinking of probably dropping it, but then one of those "moments" happened and I was like "maybe if I should wait for the rest to come out and then binge until the end. It will be less painful that way, waiting for this bad show to end." Yes, the show is interesting, but there are too many small bad things about it that gets me a bit riled up.

Overall: 6/10
I wouldn't recommend watching this show if you're new to anime. This is more of one of those shows for people who are bored and have already watched plenty of anime, and they are looking for something new. Still, it's bad, so watch at your own risk. I kind of get bored watching some parts, so normally I'll have an episode playing while I do something else like drawing or knitting. Perhaps this show might make a turn down Pleasant Avenue halfway through, but if you don't want to suffer through half decent first episodes, then don't watch this anime.

This is my first review so bare with me.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS although not many.

I don't normally write reviews, but this show is so bad that I feel the need to talk about it. I was drawn into it when it first came out. The synopsis looked promising, and the first episode, though not fantastic, was pretty good.

First, my non-spoiler summary of my review:
There is too much fanservice. The show is very fast paced. The show is unrealistic. The characters were poorly developed. The goals switched all over the place. The opening song and visuals are better than the show itself. ... The first few episodes did well.

Before I start talking about anything, I want to warn those who don't want to read my full review:
WARNING - This show has WAY too much fanservice
This is the first thing I want to talk about. It wasn't so bad in the beginning, for a show about high school prodigies who are pretty much all genius's, there is too much fanservice. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, this is basically when the characters are sexualized for viewer pleasure. I don't mind if it happens once in a while, but there was an episode (7 I think) where literally the whole thing is fanservice. The feminine characters get a massage and I don't want to go into too much detail, but during this episode, all I could think was "Isn't this supposed to be a show about high school prodigies?"

The second thing I would like to talk about is the show's pacing and its realisticness. Everything went so fast that it was completely unrealistic. One of these fast paced things was Ringo's inventions. I have a very hard time believing that in such a short amount of time, she built an ENTIRE factory to manufacture her creations with barely any help. Yes, I understand that she used parts from the crashed plane. However, there was a short period of time that went by and suddenly there was a giant, fully functional factory. Towards the end of the show, the plot is so rushed that I could barely keep up with what was going on. I'm thoroughly disappointed with this. If the show actually took its time developing plot and characters, this would have been made out to be a decent show. The bad pacing ruined it all.

Going off of that, due to the fast pace, the show barely developed its characters. Yes, we got backstories, but that doesn't mean that develops the character. I think the only episode that qualifies as character development is the episode when Ringo and Tsukasa go on a date. Even this doesn't satisfy proper character development. Instead of character development, this show is all "plot this plot that." What's more is that with the exception of Lyrule, who is literally a plot puppet, every character is the same person since they were introduced. Also, there were a few characters who kind of just disappeared for a little too long, and I would have liked to see more of them. Another thing about characters is that there were too many characters introduced at one time. I'm going to bring up pacing again, because if this show's pacing was much slower, then all the characters can be introduced without confusion.

This next bit is going to be shorter because I can't remember much about it and I don't want to go and watch this show again. The seven main characters who get transported to another world barely think about trying to get back. Once they hear that there is an entire world in trouble, they're like "Oh well now we have to help these people." First they start small, but then they go all over the place with what they want to achieve. Meanwhile, they never think that maybe their world might be freaking out since seven genius's just disappeared. Since the very beginning, they never mentioned any more plans on how they could get back to their world, or what they would do once they did.

I'm going to try to finish this off on a positive note. First of all, my rating of 5/10 is generous, but it would be lower if there weren't good things about this show. First of all, the opening song and visuals are much better than the show itself. The song is fun to listen to, and I can't get enough of the visuals because it's so cool. If you want to watch anything in this show, I'd recommend only watching the opening since that's the only great part of the show.

Also, the show didn't have a bad start. The first few episodes, though (I mention again) fast paced, are actually pretty decent. However, once they make plans to defeat an entire empire as a religion, I started to doubt the potential of the show. I started this show the moment it came out, so waiting for the episodes each week for the first few weeks was exciting since it had a decent start. Now, I just can't wait for it to be over.