I felt a bit of deja vu whilst watching this show. I was reminded of Coppelion, that I watched a couple of weeks ago. Not in the way that both series are carbon copies of each other, they're certainly telling completely different stories. But both contain potentially interesting concepts and background art which are then sabotaged by large chunks of stupid. Only in this show, the stupid was turned down from 11 to "merely irritating". This show managed to evoke a sense of atmosphere that Coppelion sadly didn't have, although that could be code language for "boring", if you look at things that way.
This is an... interesting series. It's in the general vein of shows like Kino, Ergo Proxy, or Cashern Sins but only in the broad strokes of being a post-apocalyptic journey through different societies.
The first arc is both interesting and entertaining, the second is more simply interesting in an abstract way, the third is pretty dumb, and the last arc and the one-off that leads into it go back to being interesting. The minor comedic streak running throughout works remarkably well in all the arcs.
As for the bonus episode... the first two parts take place shortly before the tenth episode (the very first of which is just pointless ecchi) while the last is just a flashback into Hambart's past when he first met Hana (and in which many of the things mentioned in the first arc are reiterated). It's basically just a mini-anthology and not really worth bothering with.
post #101 by mappy on 24.01.2014 19:07 (vote: 5.50)