Mar 18, 2024
天国大魔境 is a really interesting take on a genre that was hugely popular at the start of the century - Humanity's collapse and the new civilization arising from it. Currently it would appear that we are in a medieval/tapletop RPG themed vogue with anime so I don't believe that the anime will resonate with everyone, especially for people keeping up with latest releases.
I had initially rated it a 7 but have come to enjoy it much more after a rewatch. It's just a whole different beast when you get to rewatch the first 5 or so episodes again knowing that the school arc happened in
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media res, or knowing that the Hiruko are so few and far between because there really weren't that many children to begin with. There's just a lot of rewatch value on this anime, so I really had to give it a second go.
The animation is extremely polarizing, so if you are very picky about animation I would suggest you to steer off from this anime entirely. There are moments where the animation is incredibly well crafted, and as is usual, a big part of the animation budget goes to the opening credits, as that's present in every episode, but more often than not it will resort to simplistic representation and low frame solutions. Later in the series there is an episode that is mostly solved as a slide show - the episode also happens to have the best animation sequence of the whole anime as our main cast is reduced to simple no-line colour shapes for an entire scene. More often than not however, especially at the very first episode, you'll find some rotoscoping nightmares and 3D rendering solutions that just don't fit well and are thankfully discarded for the rest of the show.
Where this anime truly shines however is in its characters and world building. The characters are often concerned about power usage, having a bathroom to use, finding a place to sleep, avoiding getting contaminated with anything. It really feels like an ode to survivalism, and reading the manga shows that the author really thought these things through, as they often leave survival tips at the end of a chapter. There are a few slow moments that honestly just fit very well as they are usually presented by the time our main cast is looking to wind down, and that makes up for some really good pacing. The characters themselves are fairly thought out (save for Maru who I believe is a little one key) and often offer a lot of mundane problems you would find on people raised in a lawless world. I think the plot offers, more than a handful of times, a lot of situations that do have you thinking about the morality of certain action vs. the suvivability of an individual, and that is done in such a lowkey manner that is uncommon to the genre that I truly believe that it could be completely on accident. Nonetheless, it makes for very compelling characters that feel believably human (which in itself is a fun thought exercise if you consider the Hiruko and their genesis).
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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