Back to SoundBubble's Profile SoundBubble's Profile

Obsolete is an episodic, fully CG, western styled mecha anime about humanity trying to adjust to the arrival of alien technology that they don't understand but changes both the civilian workflow and military landscape drastically. It's by far the most realistic approach to a mecha anime I've seen yet, with not only clear references to real world weaponry in detail, but also consideration on the global political impact the Exosuits brought with them. Unfortunately, it ends very abruptly with no continuation in sight as far as I can tell, but still very enjoyable if you want a more realistic approach to the genre.

Initially I stumbled ... across this series on youtube and after looking it up, I was very much put off by the full CG animations and low review score. But after some consideration I still decided to give it a shot. The main gripe I have with CG animations is that they always feel like the cheap option that lacks detail and just kinda gets thrown in and ruins the immersion. This is absolutely not the case for Obsolete, arguably the exact opposite even.
The amount of detail that is put into this anime is pretty much unprecedented, at least when it comes to military weaponry. And even the Exosuits were designed with a very practical concept in mind which makes them seem much more in line with reality than most mecha.

Now, animations aside, the story is also quite interesting. While the focus is still on mecha fights and military warfare, a good chunk of the story is about the political side of things. This is both a positive and a negative in my opinion. I enjoyed that part, and especially the different ways that it was presented in, but it felt rather slow and will likely bore a majority of viewers and is next to the CG likely one of the main reasons why this show has such a low score. And even though it takes an episodic approach, there's still an overarching story line, so the abrupt ending without much explanation makes it feel like they wanted to produce another season but didn't get enough funding.

Overall I still enjoyed the anime for what it is and what it tried to achieve and can at the very least recommend it to any military nut out there that's tired of the typical moe military and wants something more life-like.

It felt like someone wrote the script for a 12 episode anime, but was then only given a 1.5h movie, so they had to cut half of the scenes. Nothing you haven't seen before and a poor attempt at creating some sort of anime version of a marvel origin story.



Story 3/10

The story was already quite bland to begin with, but due to the before mentioned rushing it got even worse. It really doesn't try anything new and it's just a weird revenge/find yourself story without any major plot-twists or developments that would help the viewer to engage with it.


Art 8/10
...
Probably the best part of this movie. The art and animations were very good. Most of the time it was quite smooth, the action scenes felt great and there wasn't too much bad CG in here.


Sound 7/10

It was alright. No soundtrack I could listen to 24/7, but good enough for what it is.


Character 3/10

And here we go again...The characters and their relationships were incredibly simplistic and one-dimensional. And while there is character development it's honestly just predictable and boring to watch.



Overall I give this movie a 4/10.