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If you've seen Yona of the Dawn and Tales of the Abyss you'd have a pretty good handle on how this story plays out. One thing that's different about either of those shows is that the main character isn't intensely unlikable in the first episode. The King and Queen are rather cold toward our Prince and indeed seem to ignore most of the time. He tries to live up to their expectations and do the right thing (which isn't always the same thing), which is a nice bend on the genre of deposed royalty trying to regain power. Another strong point of this anime is ... that he actually LISTENS to his advisors to not do stupid, crazy things like charge at the head of an army because he will be killed (he really would).

The anime is nondescript. There is a lot of CGI when there are massive battles, but raging about that is a losing battle (heh). At least it gives you an idea of scope instead of just really close up still motion fights with lots of yelling.

What loses points for me is the worldbuilding was imperfect. Throughout the first...12 episodes of the anime it looked as if there was no overt magic aside from the generic "legends and prophecies" stuff they generally have in fantasy stories. Suddenly there's a guy who can teleport anywhere and attack. Then we find out that one of the main group is protected by a god and can calmly walk into a hail of arrows and none will touch her...and so can the person she designates.

Tension broken. At this point I'm just trying to reshape how the world looks and operates. It's a bit like if you're watching a noire detective story and suddenly aliens show up in the middle of it. Yes, you could have both a mystery and aliens, but it's kinda startling to have ZORG from BLXKSLJF be part of the mystery in the final few chapters. No, I don't accept it.

Also, the bad guy also has some Bond villain level of stupidity. He's on the cusp of winning or killing someone twice and goes "Eeeeh, no. It's not 'the right time' or 'you aren't scared of me enough' and just...DOESN'T KILL THEM. WHY?

This is lazy writing.

The other thing I hated about this anime was the sound engineering. I watching the anime and someone started to pound on the drums. The sound mixing was jarring, the sound of each drum began and ended fairly sharply, as if it wasn't an actual drum but a midi file being played in a loop and not properly overlapping the next one. That may seem minor compared to the rest but it really was jarring and distracting when the sound doesn't come together.

In the end, I'd say it's not worth watching yet as the second season isn't complete yet and there's no telling how silly this will go, but once the second season is out it might be interesting to see. The main character is a white hat who is supposedly not very good at fighting but is able to survive all battles as an untried warrior with no major injuries at all and has a near-invincible guardian who shows up at all times to save him.

The Perfect Insider is hard to review objectively because it is one of those shows that people will defend as being "deep" and "nuanced". I'm not going to argue against that, maybe there is some deeper truth that I missed, but I didn't enjoy it and my review will reflect that.

First of all, the good: This show is visually appealing, especially the opening theme animation. I also found the animation pretty solid throughout and the sound never really distracted me from the story.

The problems I've had with the show was the story. The show does a good job of setting up the sense that ... there's going to be a grand denouement where the truth is found out and the guilty part is pointed out, or that everything will come to be clear.

To a certain extend this is accomplished. You know who did what at the end, but it felt unsatisfactory, probably because there was so much going on that I just started getting lost halfway through the story. There's a romance, child sexual abuse by a relative (though maybe not in the strictest legal sense in Japan, certainly for America/most countries since age of concent is different), a murder, a ghost in a computer, a doll that killed someone else years ago then ran away, multiple personalities, two sets of dead parents unrequited love, sisters showing up out of the blue and then going away only to reappear at a later time after which you find something you didn't know.

The show suffered from the fact that too much was going on and you didn't get to see the character's motivations. You're also severely limited in the facts you are given and it's hardly fair to the viewer who wants to try and solve the murder along with the main character. Something that most mysteries do is to give you clues or hints along the way that you can reflect on later on and go "Oooh, I should have SEEN that!" and kick yourself. Sure they don't share the conclusions drawn by the detective, but you had at least some of the major building blocks and were there when the scene was set and you could figure it out.

I didn't feel that in this show, though I might have missed it because I was too busy feeling too squeamish throughout most of the show to notice, but I felt like they kept more than the fair share of facts, important facts away from us, just to keep the suspense going. Characters who I feel should know more about things mysteriously don't because that would be inconvenient to the plot.

Another thing that annoyed me was how they kept giving some philosophy lectures. "What is the meaning to be human? What is murder? What is a person? What is love?" To an extent this did help flavour the show, but it was just one more thing that was distracting from the main focus. I also didn't like a lot of the answers they came up with, which might explain my distaste for this show.

The relationships and connections were rather vague until nearing the end because that would have possibly tipped us off to what was going on.

In conclusion, I would say skip this anime unless you really like the mystery genre and philosophy. I felt awkward watching the scenes concerning underage sexual activity with a grown relative, the more "traditional" romances were weak and I didn't feel they did fair play with the mystery. The reasons why the main character decides to solve the mystery also are somewhat opaque as well.