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This is just another iyashi show for wagie fujos. A lot of people dislike this show because the setting gives the impression of a trendy Dungeon Food or Frieren-esque adventure and world-building story. While that initial misunderstanding is to be expected, I don't think it's fair to then discredit the show entirely. It's very clear what this show is actually intended to be and what demographic they're targeting from the very first episode. It would be like watching 6 seasons of Natsume and going "wow, that was terrible, nothing like the Monogatari Series."

For "seasonal slop," this one was pretty good. They got a lot of ... great talent in all of the right places. The art style is nice. The voice acting/writing doesn't make you lose brain cells. All of the characters are pleasant and enjoyable to see interact. Certainly deserving of more than a 7, which is what it's sitting at when I type this.

I enjoyed this show, as many other people have, but most MAL users would not. The visual style is somewhat abnormal and the episodes are self-contained. Also, other reviews and synopses overstate the presence of psychiatry in the show beyond a fun setting. The show isn't really about psychiatry; it's just psychiatry-flavored. This is not a bad thing, but if you watch this show expecting something substantial in that regard, disappointment is inevitable.

This idea deserved more than just 11 episodes. My only complaint is that Irabu could've used more screen time.

Semi-spoilers:

I thought the last episode sucked. I fear that if they had made more ... episodes, they would've tried to deviate even more from the working formula.

I think the poor reception by MAL users is easily explained: the show, like the source material, was not localized. The original adaptation pandered to whales to make as much money as possible at the peak of the game's popularity. This season, made a decade later, was a more genuine attempt to make a show that wasn't a 12-episode ad, and this was (again) done with a domestic audience in mind. Usually, this is not a problem, as the content may be easily translatable or the foreign audience may be filtered by its obscurity, but neither was the case with this show. Foreign audiences (including ... the biggest weebs with no life outside of early 2010's gatcha games) were primed to watch another 8 episodes of video game moe slop shounen drama (like Azur Lane) but instead were faced with something more traditionally artistic, and it wasn't something that a simple "just translate the buttons" localization would work on.

Of course, this show was far from perfect. It's clear they were really stretching their budget to make 8 episodes and there are times you feel like you're watching a video at 0.75x speed to pad the runtime. I suspect the original intent was for a movie or 4-6 episode OVA, but some higher-ups stepped in with some forced decisions. There are also some dumb out-of-place parts too, which I also assume were added on in a similar manner. I won't point out specifics just for the sake of spoilers (for those that care).

In my opinion, this season far exceeds the first+movie in quality, yet has the lowest rating of the three on MAL. I don't know how else to explain this discrepancy. Looking at the other reviews, it seems like this TV show was probably the first time they had heard of a "she-goo-ray". This is not a thinly-veiled "to be fair, you have to have a very high Jomon admixture, a descendant of Amaterasu, to understand this show" statement (at least mostly). In part, the show does benefit from an audience with prior knowledge and "memberberries", but even excluding that, I don't even think you could adequately localize it. I'm simply not sure how I would explain why I liked this show to a foreign audience in a single MAL review. I genuinely think there is a significant cultural barrier to enjoying this season.

In MAL's shitty condensed scoring system, I think I'd give it an 8. Maybe I'm remembering the show too fondly or my brain is conflating it with other similar media (namely, *that* music video). Perhaps my score and opinion would change on a rewatch, but It certainly deserves more than a below average score.