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I feel like this was supposed to be another ultraviolent and hyper sexualized late 80s/early 90s anime, but unfortunately it failed in both regards.

Whatever fighting it has is too boring, with very little blood or gore, plus mediocre animation. The sex scenes are few and far too tame.

On the other hand, the story was a positive surprise, even though they tried tackle too much.

Its always interesting to see christiany or other aspects os western culture/religion portrayed in anime. It wont provide you with anything particularly new if you're a history nerd, but I was pleasantly surprised how the childrens crusade ties in to the story. ... It had been many years since I read about it and this anime motivated me to learn more. That alone was worth it.

By the end of the anime, the conspiracy surrounding the school is revealed, which I found to be absolutely r3tarded. Not to mention the introduction of time traveling and a new villain literally at the end. At this point I no longer cared.

So 6/10 feels fair to me.

Dont come here expecting much in terms of story, its mediocre.

It doesnt help that whoever subbed this was too lazy and decided to ignore the giant wall of text in the beggining of the anime, which I can only assume is a shit ton of lore/context.

On the other hand, this delivers eveything I expected to:

-Cool demons and awesome fights
-Great animation and 80s character desgins
-Overflowing levels of 80s cheese, which I absolutely love.

... Then ending was also a bit unexpected and kind of sad, but good enough.

Bottom line is: If all you want is an 80s ultraviolent ova with good animation, this one has you covered.

I am far too lazy to write a proper review, so I will do it in bullet points about whats caught my attention.


Setting:

- The series is set in 1986. The sole purpose for this is because characters have busy schedules, and without cellphones, they keep missing eachother everytime they call and leave voice messages instead.

I cannot stress how this is a central point in the show. It feels very frustrating (in a good way), and makes me appreciate the fact we have smartphones today. A lot of the drama and heartbreak could be avoided by talking to your loved one at the right time. They ... cant do this here because there is simple no such technology there yet.

So characters finding themselves unable to speak with their loved ones at the right time create a lot of drama, misunderstantings etc.

- Characters

Touya is a typical harem protagonist. Literally every female character in the show want to bang him.

- He basically cucks his gf Yuki with 70% of the female cast.

- Other characters are very basic. Only one I liked was yayoi, because she was a mysterious and aloof onee san.

- Story

-Being a visual novel, it seems they tried to adapt every route, which made for a lot of stuff making no sense.

-I always preffered more focused experiencies, I enjoyed a lot of Touyas relationship with yayoi, because they have a sort of mysterious yet toxic vibe to it. But out of nowhere he starts going after all the other girls and it turns into a shitshow. None of them get any proper devolopment and focus.


- A amagami SS approach would have made this show better. Or sticking to one route.

-Several plot points or context regarding the cast's past are not properly explained. I assume they are explored in the vn.

- Music and overall production

10/10 for me. No comment.

- Closing thoughts

A great adult drama anime. While not relatable, it feels more "realistic" and down to earth than other available out there.

Unfortunately, due to it not commiting to a single route, the second season goes full retard and horny, and the more interesting relationships do not get enough time imo.

This is a high bodycount anime. This isnt a spoiler, you get that its that kind of anime in the first 2 episodes.

Dont get attached to any characters. The ones I liked the most died way too soon. Some of the more boring ones lived too long.

As for the death scenes, they are powerful and wonderfully executed. Bravo.

Here is what annoyed me though: It is usually a cheap tatic in anime to show a bland charcters sad backstory right before they die to make the viewer more sensitive to his/her death. Its cheap manipulation that is sometimes necessary when the directors want you to ... feel sad, but the character might not be good enough to evoke that feeling upon his/her death.

The above is exactly what happens in Basilisk. I lost count of how many times a death scene or a fight (that leads to death) is interrupted for MINUTES just to tell the dying characters little sob story to manipulate their death into being more emotionally powerful. Here is the thing though IT WASNT NEEDED. Some characters are better than others, but pretty much all of them were good enough to have an impactful death, especially when such death scenes are well directed.

Other than that, this is nicely animated, story is cool, dark and aimed at adults. There are fewer of these nowadays

My review is over, but I still want to comment the ending. So top here for no spoilers.

The ending itself was predictable, obviously. I want to hate it but frankly there is no better way to end it. They both knew that if they escaped the ninja war would have been pointless, their clans would be targeted by the government, and the non decision with respect to the heir would cause a civil war. So one of them had to die, no matter what. And I think the way it played out was consistent with their charcters. None of them wanted to kill the other but they couldnt escape the situation, so oboro ended her life. Genosuke loved her too much and decided to die too, because basically everyone he cared was dead.

So yea, predictable, cliched romeo juliesque ending, but still, any ending other than this one would have been BS.

Overall 8.7. Might watch it again if ever have too much time in my hands.

That likely wont happen.

Ima keep this short. In fact, so short that this paragraph is just filler to reach the minimum amount of words required. Can I start yet? Ok.

Cyber City is amazing, but I suggest you dont go in with absurdly high expectations thinking the entire thing is the best Cyberpunk anime ever made. Let me explain.

Each episode is dedicated to one character and out of the three episodes 1 is good, the other is peak cyberpunk masterpiece and the other is kind of stupid and out of place.

The first episode is good standard cyberpunk action. I don't have much to say about it.

The second episode, o ... boy, this shit is quite literally peak 80s cyberpunk in its final form. Everything is perfect, the mood, the characters, the fights, the main villain. I wont give any details so I wont spoil it. Its only 40 minutes after all.

The third episode is cool, but I dont know who was the fucking genius who thought it would be cool to put vampires in a Cyberpunk setting. I felt like I was watching vampire hunter D.

Finally, the original japanese soundtrack was kinda meh, specially compared to other stuff that came out at the time.

Bye

Even as an 80s nostalfag I really couldnt get into this. Its trainwreck, really. Its like they took every bad cliche of the time and threw it in a pot and this came out. Plot is all over the place and the soundtrack is really bad. They also repeat the same tracks too much for a 90 minute movie.

Also, way too many flashback scenes. Again, this is a fucking 90 minute movie. We dont need this.

It does have some pretty colorful psychedellic scenes though, and the first car chase sequence was pretty cool.

But franky, only watch this if you have OCD about seeing every 80s ... cyberpunk movie/ovas out there. If not, stay away

Unless you have serious OCD about completing the bubblegum crisis universe, dont bother with this. Seriously, I would rather have put the 4 hours I spent watching this into trap hentai.

I dont recommend this even to the biggest BGC fan out there. Ad Police (TV) doesnt have any resemblence to BCG and it doesnt do shit to expand the universe or lore. It could be something else entirely if it didnt have the name boomer and genom in it. This basically a shitty cop show. It fails to have a cyberpunk feel to it, and it also falis to have a decent noir vibe, which ... it clearly attempts to, with so much jazz, empty bars and deep philosophy about motherfuckin melting ice cubes.

The overrall plot is irrelevant and ads nothing to BCG universe and the characters shown here are restricted to this show and dont appear anywhere else.

The writing is also poor. Characters are shells with little backstory or purpose. I seriously thought kenji's girlfriend was his sister for a good number of episodes because she basically has almost no lines or interactions with him. Thats just an example of how bad this is.

Im a terrible writer but I hope I can save at least one person from wasting their time with this. The only thing I liked was the shitty and unappropriately timed jazz and the ed song. That one is great, I even downloaded it.

Before I reached the final arc this would have been a 9.5 or 9 for me. Unfourtunately the show decides to make a turn and show off its shounen roots and they stick out like a sore thumb.

Extremely long battles for a 26 anime, people pulling out power from their asses in the last minute (which curiously hardly happened throughout the entire series, not to mention the battles themselves. While they are mostly great, they get old after a while because they keep flailing their arms around like an inflatable tube man. You will get if you watch it.

If you are a veteran anime watcher ... who is tired of overused shounen tropes, the last couple of episodes might piss you off. But this is otherwise an incredible series and I cant reccomend it enough.