Robotics;Notes

For this review I will make references and comparisons to two other anime: Chaos;Head(2008) and Steins;Gate(2011). While all three of these anime adaptations were made by separate studios, they drawn upon the same series of visual novels for source material. Now to begin the review. I'll start with the story. Like Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate Robotics;Notes has a story line that could only be described as thrilling. While the story started off at a slow pace it gradually built until I was on the edge of my seat with anticipation. They really pulled out all thestops for this show. Even with the slow start, the constant switch between success and failure in the attempt to build a giant robot as well as the mystery of the Kimijima reports was more than enough to keep my interest. In spite of the mystery, though, the plot was much easier to follow than either Chaos;Head or Steins;Gate. Personally I liked those complex stories that required an acute attention to detail, but that might not be a plus for everyone. As the story progresses it does take on a darker tone, but I found it nowhere near as grim as Chaos;Head or Steins;Gate. The story is overall logical and well thought out. My only qualm was that robots seemed far to advanced and integrated into society for the year 2019, but in spite of this the show does feel very realistic at times. The phone-tablets that everyone uses seemed like a very accurate prediction of the future. I can also understand why robotics needed to have become as advanced as it was for plot purposes. With so few negatives I felt that the story was perhaps the best part of Robotics;Notes. The art was quite impressive as well. The animation was beautiful and fluid. Several of the Character designs were a bit generic (Akiho and Subaru), but I really liked the uniqueness of some characters like Kona. Action scenes, which were few and far between, were underwhelming in terms of animation, but the focus of this show was not action. When all was said and done, though, I thought the art was very aesthetically pleasing. I'm not exactly a connoisseur of music, so I don't have to much to say about the sound. The soundtrack was enjoyable and had some excellent tracks within it, but it was not a masterpiece. It was definitely not a detriment to the show however. Like I said, certain tracks were absolutely fantastic. Character development was good but not great. I thought characters like Akiho and Kaito received excellent development. They were round characters, not bound by the basic traits they were introduced with. Others characters, however, received far less development. Of the shows cast I would have to say that Kona was my personal favorite. She received excellent character development and had the most interesting personality of all the main characters. Kaito, the protagonist, was not the greatest character I've ever seen, but he was far from generic and boring. I found him to be quite a likeable character with a realistic personality. In comparison to Chaos;Head, Robotics;Notes is far superior in terms of character development. However, its characters were not as impressive and those of Steins;Gate. That about sums it up for characters. Since enjoyment is a very subjective factor, I don't include it in reviews. Overall is just the combination of the previous factors, so there's not a ton to say for it. Robotics;Notes was superior to Chaos;Head in just about every way, however, it does not reach the same heights as Steins;Gate which I consider as masterpiece. At the end of the day though, I think most anyone would really like this show.

Well. Time for my first review I guess. There will be spoilers, but contained to a small section which is labelled appropriately. Robotics;Notes (R;N) was originally created as a Visual Novel. It was brought to you by the same guys that had previously released Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate. While both of them were very unique, I absolutely loved S;G while hating C;H...so going into this I had absolutely no idea what to expect. In the end, I got served a big fat dose of "meh". Firstly I think it;s important to state that if you're looking for a mecha anime, you're going to have a bad time. Thisis even less of a mecha anime than Guilty Crown was. Right, now that's out the way, moving on with some of the issues. The primary issue with the series is pacing. Saying the series starts off slow would be a massive understatement. While the plot is developing to an extent, the meatiest chunk of the plot is reserved for the last 4 episodes, with the previous 18 focusing on anything else but the plot. Speaking of plot *SPOILERS START* It really is not explained well. Concepts such as monopoles are never explained. They're just there suddenly and you have to accept that. If this was a 12 episode series, I could accept things being cut out due to time constraints, but this wasn't a 12 episode series and they certainly were not overloaded with content. However, the most damning thing of all is that I cannot even remember Kimijima's reason for wanting to kill the majority of the population. Maybe this says more about my memory than the anime itself, but I've never experienced this in anything else that I've previously watched. Throw in examples of embarrassingly bad use of "Deus ex machina" for problem resolution (eg: A bird deflecting a gun) and you're left with a badly executed plot. *SPOILERS END* As far as characters go, they're decent for the most part. Yashio and Akiho are developed well and have a decently executed and interact in a seemingly natural way with each other. This seems to be quite rare in anime with everything being exaggerated, and it's something I really appreciate here. I personally found Frau entertaining and Mizuka is one of the strongest side characters I've come across in anime. However, two of the "main" characters could have been completely cut from the series without any real loss. They were just there because it was an adaptation from a VN and therefore the cast was already decided for them. The antagonist of the series was extremely weak with little development given. For art and sound, I honestly don't notice unless a series is exceptionally good or bad in these aspects. It isn't either of the two extremes, so I'm not going to comment further on it. Overall it's a watchable series. It's poorly paced and badly explained in parts, however the characters overall are strong. I cannot really compare it to either s;g or c;h. I'm giving it a rating of 6/10 overall, although I do tend to rate harshly according to my score deviance on ratings. I wouldn't advise against watching it. I hope this helped and that I didn't waffle on too much.

Robotic;Notes the 3rd visual novel made by 5pb collaborated with Nitroplus as most people mention. Overall the anime was pretty good giving consideration to the number of episode length and amount of story line needed to be incorperated. Sci-fi genre stories are almost always interesting with having a grandiose scale conflict that is built up or connected to smaller events that occur among the characters. Didn't like how each individual character conflict was so simply considered resolved especially with Subaru, practically no resolution for him. Deux ex machina was used a bit too extensively for the story, most likely due to cutting out parts of thevisual novel storyline (like in the opening you see them having fireworks at the bench but there wasn't any episode). Also the story skipped quite often from one point in the story to the next with connection to each episode, as well as some plot holes made from them. However the story was overall good, it was unique and represented 5pb & Nitroplus' theme of 1% fantasy 99% science story style. Art was decent, expressions, reactions etc were well made most of the time. The design of the robots were realistic in terms of the amateur physic knowledge needed to see if such robots could be made. Gunvarrel is pretty awesome looking in my opinion, its nice to have a robotic represent a hero of justice for those childhood dreams. Sound was decent, the background music was suitable though could have been better. The opening song first and second were enjoyable, especially first one in my opinion. Characters were nicely made, each personality was unique in some sense. Though, character development could have been done further (if more episodes were given), especially for Subaru and Daitoku. Since it feels as though you only know their problems and how they are typically, no sense of how they wanna purse the future and grow as an individual character. Furugori was well done, background story and character develop was well shown and portrayed. Akiho and Kaito were decently done, not too well done but decently enough I got no complaints except on how Kaito about Airi. Antagonists could have been better, Kou's character was little iffy because of what Airi said yet the flashback scene didn't show it well enough. Enjoyed the story a lot though, Furugori was interesting. The game within the story was interesting wish app store had something like that. Sci-fi was great with those phone droids the character had, concept of elephant-mouse syndrome. Though that syndrome could have been incorporated into the story better. Akiho's version only seemed problematic, Kaito's version was like a special move. Overall enjoyable to watch! Though the story didn't end in the way I hoped. Wish the story had a better twist, almost thought (spoiler here) that when Misaki got out of the black/purple Sumeragi or the images people saw of the city destroyed through their phone screen that it was an alterate world, or the world acted like a mirror having 2 different possible perspective depending on which side of the world you were in? Anyway, give it a try, its worth watching!

Robotics;Notes is the kind of anime that I have to force myself to review. The truth is, I like it. I really like it. That's why it has a 6 and not a lower score: because for all its flaws, it is remarkably enjoyable. But this is a review, isn't it? I can't just harp on about how fun it is without pointing out how horrifically flawed it is. The primary issues that Robotics;Notes experiences is this: a) It isn't as intelligent as it thinks it is. b) It tries to do too much. I'll begin by clarifying that second point. Picture an anime akin to The Melancholy ofHaruhi Suzumiya: a sci-fi re-imagining of a typical romantic comedy, some decent characters, good comedy and the potential for some seriousness mixed in there. Then take a show like Steins;Gate (which I have yet to watch): a hyper-intelligent sci-fi thriller with a serious tone. Robotics;Notes wants to be both of these. But the result is rather like mixing vodka and lager together: they can be pretty enjoyable on their own, but the mixing of the two just doesn't seem to work. I can't escape the thought that had the creators decided to make either a sci-fi rom-com OR a sci-fi thriller, then the result would've been fantastic. But Rob;Not tends to flicker schizophrenically between light-hearted comedy/drama and serious psychological mystery while keeping the two largely disconnected. Characters like Subaru and Junna are completely irrelevant to the thriller elements of the series, and they shouldn't have been. There's a tendency to develop a likeable character (Kona is the most notable victim of this) and then render them completely unimportant to the plot after their arc is finished. And it's a shame, 'cos Kona in particular was a very good character. If the show had chosen to be a rom-com, then Rob;Not would've been able to provide a tighter character focus without making seemingly important characters seem arbitrary. Now to clarify point (a). The issue that Rob;Not has (which can also be seen in its sister-anime Chaos;Head) is that it just isn't as intelligent as it thinks it is. Convenience writing is not a sign of an intelligent series. But Rob;Not has a tendency of coming up with convenient plot devices (the monopoles, Kai's slow-motion ability, the links between the bad guys and an anime production company) and then establishing a weak explanation in order to make these points seem important. I'm going to have to venture into spoiler territory here, so I apologise. Why, if the villain is planning to destroy the world, does he bring attention to his plan by creating hidden files? And why can the main character conveniently locate these files? Why are the monopoles falling from the sky? What did they hope to achieve on the SS Anemone? What role does Airi play in any of it? Rob;Not seems to be under the impression that in order to be an intelligent thriller, it has to include as much non-existent sci-fi stuff as possible, but that isn't the case. A decent twist without such obvious and poorly-justified convenience writing would've been much more intelligent, even if they'd had to ditch many of the sci-fi plot devices. There's an assortment of blatant plot holes on show with almost no justification beyond lazy writing. Everything the villain does seems to give the main character more and more power that he can use to bring an end to the evil plan. There's no realistic psychology on display. Thinking about it, Rob:Not may have been better off as a rom-com, 'cos that seems to be what it does best. The characters are actually quite likeable at times (Kona and Airi being my personal favourites) and the show is at its best when it focuses on the relationships between them all. Despite being the primary element of the series, the thriller aspect just seems to get in the way of an enjoyable twist on school-life drama. That said, there are effective thriller moments, with the highlight being an almost disturbingly graphic death scene in episode 16 that still seemed completely unnecessary. It can be dramatic and fun, but not effectively serious, and so a lot of potential is lost.

Merchandise

Links may contain affiliate references

Studio

Producers

Themes