Jul 29, 2021
I'm writing this review as someone who never played the game version, so I don't have the source material to compare the anime adaptation to. Regardless, I'm hoping people aren't exaggerating when they say the game version is better than the anime. While the characters, story and world are all well crafted and interesting to follow, the anime doesn't really succeed in doing anything satisfying with the laid foundation.
Watching episode 1, it felt strange watching Rayman, the shinigami and the rest of the colorful cast be placed in the city of Shibuya, as I went into the series blindly. The characters felt misplaced, and I
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wasn't sure what kind of tone the series was meant to have. Thankfully episodes 2 and 3 did a good job explaining the tone more, and also elaborating why some of the characters acted the way they did. Brushing off certain things in episode 1 initially came across to me as sloppy writing.
Shock value started to increase during and after episode 3, and the constant cliffhangers made me continue binging the show. As the show only consists of 12 episodes, but the story isn't too simple, the pacing felt quite fast. Some great new characters were introduced, such as Sho and Joshua, but by the end they ended up feeling like missed potential. The fight scenes were meh for the most part (I didn't mind the CGI though), but the game master fights were quite cool to watch. Admittedly it did feel like they got defeated pretty effortlessly, which I can only imagine isn't the case in the game version, as the player would be the one battling the game masters.
The ending didn't really explain what had happened, and I was still left with a lot of questions. The anime only presented the questions swiftly throughout the episodes to keep up a sense of mystery, but by the end it just seemed like there never was much of a mystery at all. Even the twist about the true identity of the game composer felt weirdly executed, because it didn't feel like I was suddenly putting together every piece of the puzzle. It wasn't a complete 180 either, it simply came across as a strange attempt at one.
The intro and outro were very charming, the art style was pretty nice, the characters were cool for the most part, while the pacing was off, some character interactions and conclusions weren't to my liking, and neither was the ending. Well, the fate of the main cast was something I'm happy about, but that's about it. Because the anime felt a bit uninspired, I can't give it more than a 6/10. Nonetheless, I did still have a positive experience watching it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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