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Underdeveloped, uninteresting animation and characters. Stock sound design and passable voice work. The scenarios lack either the satisfaction of solving a difficult problem with the information you've been given (like a mystery novel) or the enjoyment of watching a master at work in their craft; our doctor just says what he's going to do and then does it, sometimes with unique animations. This is generally after 10–15 minutes of set-up or exposition that's just painfully slow and inefficient. It's nice that these characters exist in a broader world or context, but none of them left much of an impact on me. I didn't find it ... worth continuing.

Being somewhat familiar with the God Eater game franchise, I was interested in watching the anime when I saw it was streaming. I didn't get my hopes up too high after the first episode, which turned out to be a good thing, because just about everything ended up being rather middling or striking me the wrong way, except for the art.

For the first few episodes, I actually thought the art was ugly. The animation itself was OK, that is, fluid. But the characters seemed very low polygon, and the backgrounds felt like they were from a video game that could only display a few objects ... at a time. The environments didn't feel lived in, essentially. Around the fourth or fifth episode, I started noticing how beautiful the lighting was—very soft and diffuse. The character models seemed more rounded as well. I'm not sure whether these things actually improved or whether I simply didn't notice them before. I will say, an early episode that takes place mostly in the air, on top of a plane, has practically no interesting background and little grounding (i.e., where are these people in relation to anything else?).

The music wasn't really my style. I hesitate to call the autotuned rock "soulless", but none of the songs grabbed me. There was one piece that is mostly vocals and was used during dramatic moments that I liked. It helped break up the pace, was thematically appropriate, and just sounded different. The sound effects were serviceable.

The characters felt rather cookie cutter. I'm fine with seeing archetypes, but I think because of how much the characters stuck to these (e.g., the strong yet traumatized girl), the changes in the latter half, latter quarter even, of the show felt rushed. The plot of the show itself felt forced to a conclusion. I'd say it's most enjoyable around the middle, after the setting and characters are firmly established. My goodwill was lost toward the end, however, when I stopped being interested in or caring about essentially anyone as it felt like a theme park ride—everything was on rails.

Would it have been more satisfying had the story simply stopped, awaiting perhaps another season? I don't think so. But I think I would have respected it more. All in all, I think it's worth a look, though maybe not a long one, for what ufotable has done with the visuals. Everything else feels too generic to earnestly recommend to anyone.