Scarlet Nexus

I will try to keep this spoiler free and short! Since there are alot of reviews going in depth.. My overall feeling of this anime is very lackluster.. The story is somewhat decent, but the story telling is terrible.. Missing alot of character development, development of bonding between characters, fighting scenes are decent at best sometimes and worse than decent other times.. Wasn't sure if i wanted to give it 4 or 5 since the setting is interesting.. I haven't played the game, so my opinion isn't comparing the anime to the game at all.. But the anime from my point of view is pretty damn bad...I got bored midway and especially when reaching the end.. took me several weeks to finish the last 6 episodes.. (I am usually able to watch atleast 10+ episodes of an anime a day....) So yeah, bad anime.. wouldn't recommend it to anyone, one of the worst i've watched...

Oh good god, Sunrise, when will you ever learn to take a small pill of ego and just swallow it down your throat? Last Fall's King's Raid was a 26-episode boring snoozefest in the making to promote the South Korean game into Japanese shores, and now with the recent Bandai Namco and Tose released action-RPG game that has the anime adaptation released alongside to promote the game (much less the contained Easter Egg codes), Sunrise have basically shot themselves in the foot once again with yet another 26-epsiode near-abomination. If there's one person to blame, blame it on Toshizou Nemoto, the male gender equivalence to ToukoMachida for the awful script and series composition. Basically, these 2 are the couple that the word "creativity" isn't even worth considering in their minds, one that's especially given from game adaptations since I don't really expect this to actually blow up (unlike some of CyGames IPs which are the totol exact opposite). Just prepare for mediocrity if you've ever watched series that these 2 people touch in the future, there's just no understating that their efforts are very low-key and exude boring, generic concepts that just pick one show you know, and that show would've done it a lot better. But back to Scarlet Nexus. Comparing the overall quality and experience of the game and the anime is just too easy, it's night and day. Why read the synopsis when you can just play the game for yourself, it's basically the same thing, only that the execution is if like this game was scored the ever-so-rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that the anime equivalent is close to rock bottom. Character development is easily one of the most pathetic that I've ever seen in anime form, and game adaptations tend to have a bad rep for missing out chunks of character development, especially for one that's hitting the respectable longest limit of a 2-cour, 26-episode long series. In retrospect, the whole world revolves around one character: Yuito Sumeragi, because he is the Scarlet Guardian link that has the fabled Red Strings power (along with Kasane Randall) from start to finish, and he's just the most annoying MC to suffer this alone on multiple occasions, drawing death flags as and when the plot deems fit. Like, come on, a show just isn't centred on one MC alone, and the supporting cast are all oh-so-generic that I basically stopped caring with the 3-episode rule attached. For a 26-episode run, that's very telling. For a Sunrise show, all I can only account for the anime's performance intention is that it's just a subpar, below-average, sloppily-put lazy project just to make the game look better, not even the mysterious "Others" monsters which are heavily-CGI implemented. And oh god the music, because I don't remember THE ORAL CIGARETTES having this kind of mediocre quality composed songs, even the song composed for the game is yet another night and day case. At least the 1st Cour's "Red Criminal" was good, but the 2nd Cour's "MACHINEGUN" was subpar. The EDs were the highlight of the show overall with very good songs, but even that isn't enough to save the anime version as a whole from its stupendously "make-believe" of a plot so rushed and ham-fisted that it gets more hysterical as it progresses. Just forget about the anime and go for the console game, the latter's really good from what I hear, and is the better source material overall, even for game standards.

Scarlet Nexus is a flawed but decent sci-fi action series. How much you enjoy the series is largely going to come down to how meaningful those specific flaws are to you personally. My review is going to largely focus on those flaws, but I want to make clear that the series is good enough to merit a breakdown of the things about it that don't work rather than simply dismissing it, as I would have done for a lesser series. A key point in favor of the series is that this is one of the most legible video game adaptations you'll ever come across. I havenot played the Scarlet Nexus game, but I was able to easily understand the story and setting in short order. It's not the type of series that presumes familiarity with the video game, and it works just fine as a standalone story. It's also never boring. The plot moves forward at an unrelenting pace and keeps dropping new twists and revelations on you at regular intervals. For better or worse, there is no slack in this story at all, and that means there is always *something* happening to upset the status quo and drive things forward. There is also something to be said for the fact that this is a complete story with a definitive ending, not a "the journey continues... on all major video game platforms!" type of thing. Unfortunately, I think that can also be one of the significant weak points of the series. There is so, so much happening here that it feels extremely rushed even with 26 episodes that don't have an ounce of fat on them. It launches into its main plot so quickly that it doesn't even have time to establish a status quo to later upset, because it's already multiple steps beyond that point by the 2nd episode. While this series does a respectable job of managing its cast size compared to other video game adaptations, there are still a lot of people in this show and few get explored in any meaningful way. While it's fine to leave secondary characters like Hanabi or Kagero as thinly-sketched, it's less forgivable that we know almost nothing about the leads, Yuito and Kasane. There is just no time for character development of any kind when the plot has this many moving pieces. And that deserves some criticism in and of itself. The plot can also sometimes feel like a grab bag of sci fi plot elements. There's time travel and brain hacking and dystopian population control and alien invasions and psychic powers and on and on. While it does ultimately home in on a theme around grief and living with loss in the latter half, it often feels like a mishmash of concepts that don't have a particular storytelling goal in mind, they're just in there because it's science fiction and science fiction often has those things. This would have been a better series if it had dialed back some of these plot elements and put more time into establishing the personalities and motivations of the cast members. Visually, it's also a mixed bag. The hand-drawn parts look mostly fine, but the soulless and angular digital backgrounds are unfortunate. And while the CGI has come in for heavy criticism, it's really only the CGI models for the Others that look bad. Those are ugly, low res, and poorly composited, and they stick out like sore thumbs because they look like video game graphics. However, the CGI for the OSF members and the action animation actually looks quite good and is well-integrated into the overall visual identity of the show, which allows for more fluid and exciting action scenes than would otherwise be possible. Overall, there's a fair amount to like in this series, particularly the rollercoaster-like quality of trying to keep up with its plot. While there are undoubtedly parts of this series that don't work, I would still give it a qualified recommendation. If you can overlook some of the problems that are brought along as a side effect of the relentless pace of the story, it's a fun ride.

This series is a dumpster fire that burns brighter with every episode. At the very least it's entertaining trash. I grew fascinated with just how bad this series folded out to be as the story continued to be what felt like endless amounts of nonsensical sci-fi plots thrown together into a blender. Instead of reaching any kind of resolve to it's plot, it just keeps on unnecessarily adding and adding more until the very end, on top of a sea of plot twists also. I sat horrified as a witness to the Others; the most terribly designed CGI monsters I have ever seen. I can't helpbut laugh and be unable to take giant vases with flowers and legs seriously as they wobble towards trying to kill people. Add to this some of the most lazy animation ever; that being the constant use of still frames during fights with flashy lights and cheap effects added to make it look like "animation." Not only that, this series has a hilarious obsession with having the characters sit down on the couch and talk boring exposition for so long, so many times, it becomes very noticeable. The music is terrible and I couldn't get into any of the openings and endings. In that giant group of terribly written characters, nearly half of them get no development or barely any, and the viewers are constantly forgetting that some of them exist. Some of them spend 95% percent of their screen time across 26 episodes literally just standing there. But there is one diamond in the rough; that being Arashi. She is the only good thing about Scarlet Nexus. It's tragic that such a great character got stuck in such a terrible series. The plot is so messy and convoluted I am not even sure how to talk about it without getting a headache. It's about saving the present because everyone died in the future besides the one who caused it. Time Travelling has allowed one of the cast to see who this is and then go back without explaining herself as to why that person must die. Thus, she gets looked upon as if she is out of her mind. A military group featuring kids with super natural abilities has been created to fight the Others I mentioned earlier to protect humanity. There are secret organizations turning humans into monsters, more secret organizations in the snowy parts of the world, and even more secret organizations on the moon. The main cast are constantly splitting into factions and everyone starts betraying each other. This is just the beginning of the story, really. Then there's the man with the obsession over a woman who isn't even his. Karen is hellbent on bringing back Alice even though her own man told him to stop and get over it. That doesn't stop Karen from resetting time a ridiculous amount of times and throwing tantrums at the main cast. Still, I do respect him for his insanely driven motivation to help her. I find it odd that Fubuki didn't want in on this plan, but he didn't seem to see the need for it and preferred to move on I suppose. The characters are nearly all annoying, boring, and overall badly written and forgettable: Yuito is yet another bland protagonist blinded with his naïve feelings of love and friendship. He almost dies several times because his logic is that flawed. Kasane is the even more annoying version of Yuito. She has the personality of a 60 year old librarian. Kagerou is the smug, ancient like human that exists for not much rather than to make jokes. Kyouga has the most inconsistent character model out of all of them and is constantly shape shifting as a result. She was reduced to a piece of fan service meat eventually. Hanabi's only purpose is to scream out Yuito's name and cry whenever he is in trouble. I think her power was fire manipulation, but they completely abandoned trying to animate her in battle very early on. Gemma and Shiden have only received seconds amount of screen time and are so insignificant I can't even remember anything about them. It doesn't even matter. Luka is Karen's little brother that does nothing much than to have to look at his brother's stubbornly psychotic ways. He can teleport the main cast which gives the writers a cheap and easy way to get the team out of trouble. Tsugumi does nothing other than to use her ability to slightly see the future to give the writers a cheap and easy way to get the team out of trouble. Arashi is the only character that matters. She doesn't care about all the drama and nonsense in the plot. She knows what needs to get done, and puts in a lot of work herself since she is a hacker that can move extremely fast. She doesn't let things get to her unlike the coward crybaby Yuito, and often takes it easy and eats good food while relaxing. She often lays around and feels to have to put up with the nonsense of the team. She has the most relevant lines in the series and is like a voice of reason. The Scarlet Nexus ride was amusing, but this is something I want to forget moving forward.

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