Aug 18, 2017
Arpeggio of Blue Steel is a pretty awful show that scammed me into watching it through all the way with a promise on a supernatural-political plot that was barely advanced over the course of the whole season.
Story
The promise of an interesting plot is the best reason to watch this show. Good hooks are established, such as "What is the Fog?", "What happened to the world", "What is the government hiding?". At the risk of spoilers, you never get to find out because these concepts are all hucked out the window promptly to facilitate a cringe-worthy harem fantasy. All events are more or less created to
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prop up this circus act and have no actual pertinence to the larger questions of the world. It's tempting to give the story a 2 or 3, since it did establish some intrigue for me, but honestly, I'd rather it didn't since it delivered on NONE of it, so it gets a 1. There's no reason for anything that happens other than wetting anthro-battleship panties for Gunzou, and god knows he needs the help since he has the personality of uncooked rice. Which brings us to...
Character
Pathetic. 1. Lets start with the main characters. Gunzou is an obvious insert-self nobody who is chosen by destiny for no reason with no personality whatsoever. He grows tiresome in the first episode and unfortunately spends the entire rest of the show on screen, boring the viewer to death. Go to hell, Gunzou. Iona is an AI loli. Even current day "AI"'s like Siri have more personality than her. She says everything in a monotone and, like Gunzou, every time she comes on screen, you can't wait until she goes away, and, like Gunzou, she never does. The rest of the cast... is actually characters who could have redeemed a 1 score if we didn't have to spend the whole show watching Gunzou and Iona do impressions of used dish towels. Kongou and Maya are a passable villain duo. Haruna and Hyuuga are actually a little bit funny. Takao is an obnoxious stereotype whose motivations make no sense whatsoever but HEY at least she's got SOMETHING compared to literal personality-free robots like Iona and her sub sisters and figurative personality-free robots like Gunzou.
Art
People rag on the CGI of this show, and all I have to say is that if that's the best you can come up with to roast this awful show with, you clearly weren't paying attention. In fairness, though, the awkward smoothness of the CGI motions really emphasizes how gut-wrenchingly bland and robotic Gunzou and Iona are to create the perfect storm of get these two inanimate pieces of detritus off my screen. I actually found myself enjoying the detail on a lot of the battleship mechanisms and the art made some of the battle scenes actually enjoyable.
Sound
JP VA work was actually pretty decent. Gunzou and the 3 submarine girls all deliver like monotone robots with no emotions, but frankly that's exactly what they all are, so spot on job by the VA crew. OP is a little bit catchy. ED is forgettable. Explosions and other sound effects are actually decent. I'll let it off with a 6.
Enjoyment
After you realize the main plot is going nowhere and you're going to have to stare at Gunzou and Iona being as boring as possible for the rest of the show, the show rapidly becomes tedium punctuated by a couple panties and some actual decent battles. I don't hate panties or explosions, but also demand more out of my entertainment, so I'll give it a 3. Maybe if every appearance of Gunzou and Iona was replaced by panties and explosions it could get a 4 but the show would still be pretty bad. My recommendation would be to just look for cuts of the battles from this show and images of the characters in their underwear and you've pretty much absorbed everything of value from it.
Overall, this show was a waste of time. The plot is a con and the show should have simply not even set it up if there was no intent to follow through with it. Even as an awful lowest common denominator harem fantasy it fails by forcing you to endure hours of boring pieces of paper Gunzou and Iona decomposing on screen instead of focusing on characters that, I don't know, are actually characters.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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