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It hurts, as a big Inazuma Eleven fan who watched the franchise ever since the first season of Inazuma Eleven was still airing, to give such a low rating for an Inazuma Eleven franchise. But... here we are.

I waited until I watched every episode of this to know for sure whether or not I would be certain of my decision, and having watched all 49 episodes I can say this with no regret: I am really disappointed with what Orion has become.

I also make a handful of references to the other installments of Inazuma Eleven in this review to try and emphasize my point.

Story (3/10) ... - All right, so those watching Orion will directly notice several things. Orion takes inspiration from the other Inazuma Eleven seasons, every one of them if you want to analyze every little frame, and this was a nice idea. It would serve as a little bit of an easter egg for the faithful fans who have watched every episode of every season where we could go "Ah, that came from Galaxy, and that one came from the Aliea Academy arc!"... but the execution of everything is horrid, there is no other way to describe it. By trying too hard to reference everything, Orion ends up in this weird space where it cannot stand out from the others. Sure there are only so few plot ideas they could have gone for with what is effectively Inazuma Eleven's eighth arc, but it really feels very weak. Orion also suffers from the same pacing problem that Ares had, but then cranked up to an eleven (more on that in the Enjoyment part of this review). In short, the story tried to focus on one specific plot point but it ended up becoming a rushed mess that, honestly, was quite all over the place.

Art (4/10) - With a new franchise come new techniques and new animation techniques to, well... animate the techniques. The animation of all the new techniques introduced in Orion (and there are a lot of them!) has certainly improved, but none barring one (maybe two) of these were techniques that left me with a spark and in awe.
Orion also does this thing where they have goal celebrations from the characters of the main team, especially in the first half of Orion. I know that there are goal celebrations in the other installments of Inazuma Eleven, but these somehow feel... choppy and kind of awkward. I am not that big of a fan of these if that was not obvious.

Sound (6/10) - The soundtracks of Inazuma Eleven has always been pretty good, and even though I feel like it has gone down with Ares and Orion, they're still pretty decent. I will also admit that I am a pretty big fan of the third ED of Orion and more than its OP, which is something I can't say I am since Maji Bomber all the way back in the original Inazuma Eleven's third season.

Character (2/10) - Oh boy... I could write this whole review just about the characters in Orion, but... let's try and just get to the point. The Inazuma Japan from the original Inazuma Eleven had sixteen members at any given time. The Inazuma Japan from Galaxy had thirteen members at most. Orion's Inazuma Japan starts out with nineteen members right from the first episode, which is a bigger problem than most people might realize. The characters themselves are perfectly fine, that's not the issue. What is the issue is that there is no way for us to bond with any of them as there is no feasible way for Orion to properly showcase any character growth whatsoever (except if you are one of the main characters).
The worst part of all this is that they were doing okay for the first half of Orion, because once it got to the world tournament they ended up ADDING characters to the main team. Sure we also lost some characters along the way, but we ended with a surplus of characters. And that would have been okay if those new additions got the respect they deserved, but the moment that they had their place in the spotlight they were sidelined almost immediately after. And that, to me, is sadder than if they had not been brought on to the team to begin with...

Enjoyment (1/10) - Let's just get this out of the way early: at some point, I ended up watching Orion not because I enjoyed it or because I wanted to know what would happen next, but to find out how they would try and salvage what was left to salvage.
On a very basic level, I could enjoy it when new techniques were shown. But the Inazuma Eleven fan inside of me knows that I was disappointed throughout the entire run of it. And it all can be concluded by one word: pacing. The pacing of Orion is, as much as it hurts me to say this about an Inazuma Eleven installment, horrible. There is almost no scene shown where characters are training their new techniques in the later episodes, making it seem like they "learned the technique out of nowhere" when they use them in the match. There is very minimal interactions going on between the characters to help us understand how their dynamic is with other characters that we do not know of already (I mean, Endou interacted with Kidou, sure, but we have seen Endou interact with Kidou all the time. Show him interacting with someone like Haizaki who he hasn't interacted with before). In addition, there was also very minimal downtime in between each match (downtime which could have been used to show character development or have them train a new technique together or something).
And the matches, ESPECIALLY the latter half of Orion, ends up being the two teams throwing around hissatsus left, right and center. Which, to be fair, I know is what Inazuma Eleven's matches is supposed to be about, but thanks to the lack of training scenes shown it seems like they are pulling those hissatsus out of thin air. I would be okay if that would be for the big final technique or whatever, but it happened almost all the time.

It says a lot about how disappointing this was when I enjoyed the start of Orion (say... the first 19 episodes) more than I did everything that followed. And, yes, I did rewatch the start of Orion again to confirm this.

Overall (3/10) - A really neat story idea all in all with a lot of potential, but with very poor execution and finishing which ended up ruining all of that. After having finished watching Orion, I really wish they just stopped with Inazuma Eleven after Galaxy ended. Maybe my hopes and expectations were too high and/or unrealistic for Orion, but the fact remains that I am disappointed with the final result.

I will preface this by saying that I love Inazuma Eleven. It is one of my all-time favorite anime, so I was really upset when they announced its end after Galaxy (or, well, after the Dream Match, technically). When I heard that this franchise would come back to us in 2018 really got my hopes up. And... maybe I got my hopes up a bit too much.

I will also have to reference the other Inazuma Eleven series leading up to Ares in this review to bring my point across.

Story (5/10) - What can I say here? It's typical Inazuma Eleven, so the story is what ... you would expect. I will give credit where credit is due: the writers were being very ambitious with Ares (or what Ares should have been), and I will respect them for trying. The execution, however, was quite the mess with the story's pacing being its most notable flaw in my opinion. One of the things that I found annoying in the original Inazuma (and this includes GO and its three installments) was how much time was shown in between the matches. I think somebody in the higher-ups heard me as they adjusted Ares no Tenbin quite readily; more prominently so in the later episodes of this season, we can see that they throw all the "between match" content out the window to try and focus on the matches themselves. And that is a really big missed opportunity as that left the aftertaste of it being severely rushed.

Art (6/10) - This is somewhat of a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, I do enjoy the (re)designs of most of the Hissatsu Techniques here. They're flashy, they're over-the-top, and while I understand that it might not be everybody's cup of tea I do find that these redesigns increased the technique's presence on the field. On the other hand, I am not that big of a fan of the designs of the characters, most notably the returning characters from the original Inazuma Eleven. But since I like the art of the techniques more than I dislike the design of the characters... it gets a 6 here.

Sound (7/10) - So, fun fact: the two groups that did the OP/ED of the original Inazuma Eleven (T-Pistonz+KMC and Berryz Koubou) actually disbanded (or went on an indefinite hiatus) in that blank period between Galaxy and Ares. I was quite worried at first how they would do, but indirectly bringing T-Pistonz+KMC back in the form of pugcat's did result in a nice OP at least.

Character (5/10) - Okay, so here's the big issue with Ares that you will also hear me talk about when I write my review on Orion right after this: there are too many characters. The whole premise of Ares was to introduce a new team and get them to fight up the ladder against other teams led by the original, returning characters... but that ends up having the new Raimon, the old Raimon, and all the central players of the other teams. In short, there are too many characters for the anime to focus on all of them which results in very minimal (if any at all) character growth for any character that are not the main characters. And while I am normally okay with the non-main characters to not receive a lot of character growth, we even see the returning main characters not receive a lot of it themselves. And that's the big issue... the only thing that is keeping this up is for the nostalgia factor brought by the returning characters from Inazuma Eleven and that those characters who did get character focus received a substantial amount of it.

Enjoyment (5/10) - I am going to be blunt here: in the first couple of episodes I was watching this with the hopes that I could enjoy a later episode. Having watched it and even having re-watched it to remember some details, I can say that I enjoyed Ares... but I have to make a conscious effort to ignore the things I dislike about it when doing so.

Overall (6/10) - The biggest thing that Ares has going for it is the nostalgia. If you watch Ares no Tenbin for the sake of reliving your childhood and meeting the returning characters again, you will probably find joy out of this. But if you are going into Ares hoping and/or expecting that it will provide the depth needed to live up to any expectations, then... I am afraid Ares no Tenbin may not deliver.