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I can't believe that my first review would be something like this, but seeing the amount of positive ratings Episode 0 of Saekano Flat is getting, I might as well type up a short review. Here we go.

A series is usually going to suck if the first episode gives you a bad impression. Just look at Digibro's "How to Recognize a good (or terrible) Anime (In Just One Episode)" videos where first episodes of popular anime are either praised or ridiculed in great detail before discussing how elements from episode 1 are seen in the rest of the series.

With that said, I can safely say ... right now that Saekano Flat's first episode is not good, and is not motivating me to finish the rest of the series.

To begin, let's look at the "plot" of this episode. Basically, Aki and co. are at a luxurious hotel to work on the visual novel. We wouldn't know this for the first few minutes because all we see is a bunch of fanservice shots and discussions regarding how "That anime" got a second season" with bickering between Utaha and Eriri about how "That anime" is either bad or good respectively. And thus begins the problems. This episode has NO real plot. At all. The episode is just Aki and co. fooling around at either the pool or other parts of the hotel, with the pool scenes taking up the majority of the episode. These scenes are just nonstop fanservice with the only person trying to work on the game there being Eriri. The other scenes are slightly more tolerable, but still very annoying, especially the scene where Utaha tried to force Aki to head off to a love hotel. Point being, despite the title "Fan Service of Love and Pure Heart", emphasis on the first two words, using fanservice to cover up a severe lack of plot is a definite "No go" in my book.

And then we get to characters...Oh boy. Aki is still your typical cringy LN protagonist, but what saved him previously was how effective the other girls were at calling him out for basically everything. Not so in this episode. Aki gets away with everything this time around, from cringy statements such as this series getting "Six seasons and a movie" to sensible behaviors such as running away from Utaha during the bar scene. In other words, to throw one of S1's saving graces away with a snap of a finger is just distasteful. As for everyone else, Eriri is still the jealous and angry childhood friend, Michiru is still the "interested" cousin, Megumi is still cute and boring, and Izumi is still Eriri's rival. As for Utaha... what happened? Utaha was hands down the best character in S1 with her interesting behavior, sensible actions, and nice design. Here, she's just as annoying as the other girls, throwing out her old behavior in the process, with no amount of "Rinri-kun" being able to deal with her this time around, the bar scene being the best example of her change. Essentially, degradation of characters and already bad characters staying this way yield a crappy cast.

As for audio/visuals... they're still good thanks to A-1 Pictures, but S1 looked and sounded better. I found many more choppy pieces of animation this time around, and the annoying colored filter from Season 1 is back. The new OP is decent, I guess, but I'll forget it in a week. Same goes for Izumi's song at the end.

Saekano Flat Episode 0 is bad. Very bad. Between a nonexistent plot covered by fanservice, bad characters, some of whom were once good, and slightly worse audiovisuals compared to S1, this episode completely sucked. I will not be watching the rest of Saekano Flat; this episode showed me that the series in general will probably suck, so screw this. Good riddance, Saekano.