Not Recommended
【ＳＰ♢ＩＬEＲ ＬEＶΣＬ： Ｎ♢ＮΣ】 this might be my longest review yet. i don't care if no one finds this helpful, i'm writing this for me. i had very odd tastes as a child, and this happened to be one of many crappy shows i watched religiously when my house still had cable. when i saw that it had a listing on mal of all things, i felt equal parts confused and liberated. confused because it only fits the loosest possible definition of anime (animation from japan), and liberated because i now had an opportunity to discuss it at least once. i'll go over the most obvious issue first: thecharacter designs are abysmal, but this isn't exactly surprising considering the designers were asked to translate tiny shapes with less than 2 facial features per shape into serviceable character designs. even so, everyone looks considerably worse than shapes with eyes.
they all have these stubby, PVC pipe lookin' limbs with a visible border around where they're attached to the body, molded on eyebrows- yes, some characters including pac-man have separate folds of skin akin to horns on which the eyebrows are attached- and little to no clothes (crotch fully out), just shoes, accessories and the sleeves of whatever piece of clothing they would've been wearing if they weren't just shapes. they get worse the longer you look at them.
that being said, the designs of most of the ghosts aren't nearly as bad, most of them are actually kinda cute. they also look fairly consistent across the species with a few cool variations. i'll elaborate on them later.
but it isn't just that they look bad, because the voice acting is what makes them completely insufferable. every single performance (besides betrayus) is ridiculously whiny, squealy and grating on your eardrums, no matter what character is talking or what emotion is being conveyed. the main theme also sounds terribly disjointed and poorly written.
even still, the low design and sound quality is actually the least of this show's issues, because all it really comes down to is the dialogue. pac-man's one trait is that he likes food, cylindria's one trait is being smart, spiral's one trait is being not as smart, skeebo's one trait is being the worst... this trend continues until you have a cast with as much personality as a stick of celery, all of which are only there to spout the most overused, formulaic sentences imaginable with an occasional burp joke thrown in.
there is no character development and no important lessons are learned because that could upset the status quo for all the tiny tots watching, and i assure you that's the only audience the writers ever had in mind. i wouldn't put a show like this in front of any toddlers, though. that's what fortnite is for.
oddly enough, the thing i mentioned earlier with the ghost characters having been spared of awful creative decisions also applies to them writing-wise. the ghost quartet of inky, blinky pinky and clyde are still fairly annoying thanks to the voice acting but are considerably more entertaining and sympathetic compared to the main cast. they're basically just mischievous, morally grey little turds that can't decide between helping pac-man or trying to murder him, so they always end up doing both. i'd describe them as having two character traits per ghost instead of one, which is technically a 2x improvement! and speaking of the ghosts...
betrayus is the only good character out of the entire cast and is the only reason i subjected myself to the mediocre sludge that is everything else in the show besides betrayus. i remember myself back then, an innocent, impressionable child of the age of 10 or so, lighting up whenever the camera cut away from all those losers to focus on whatever moustache-twirling shenanigans he was up to.
simply put, he is the absolute epitome of the villain archetype. if you've ever thought of a typical villain before, whoever comes to mind first is probably a watered down version of betrayus. he's like the joker if he wasn't a miserable beta-male reddit user, he's like megamind if he never found love, he's like dr. doofenshmirts if he was actually evil.
if killstar was canon in the pac-world universe he'd buy their entire stock, and in a better timeline he would've been written into a show half as good as himself and received the appreciation he deserves. if everything else about the show stayed the same but he was the protagonist instead of pac-man, i would've given this no lower than a 6/10 overall. he's just that iconic.
similarly to everyone else his design leaves a lot to be desired, but i think that'd be an easy fix if he was less bean-shaped and more dilf-shaped.
ok im tired of writing this, believe it or not i still have more to say about this so maybe i'll edit it later, maybe i won't. wouldn't reccomend unless you can find a compilation of betrayus scenes on youtube
【ＳＴＯＲＹ：3
ＡＲＴ：3
ＳＯＵＮＤ：1
ＣＨＡＲＡＣＴＥＲ：4
ＥＮＪＯＹＭＥＮＴ：5】
