I owe "Tokyo 24-kyu" an apology. With similar themes of technology affecting our relationship with reality, free will, and value on the ethereal, I had felt at the time it had many interesting ideas that it turned out to not be mature enough to really explore well. But after "Yu0 Deco", that show had depth reaching all the way down to Terminal Dogma.
I fought to temper my expectations, since science SARU produced one of my favorite shows ever, anime or otherwise, a few years ago with "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!". But hoo-boy, they got the C-team working on this one. The story is super derivative from things we've all seen before - the Matrix, Black Mirror, even Ready Player One (itself a derivative mess, but it makes the point about Deco being a copy-of-a-copy), but that doesn't excuse the episodic, scattershot narrative that ends with a rushed episode bad enough to rival "Promised Neverland"s disgusting finale, and takes a so-so show with a cast of likeable but forgettable characters and makes it a complete waste of time.
The light-hearted, Danny Phantom-level take on such extreme themes as mass surveillance, shadow populations, state-controlled murder, baseless virtual economies, etc, are brushed aside for scooby-doo type mysteries and hints of an overarching threat that never materialize into real danger. To paraphrase a "Last Jedi" critique, its like a story written by a high schooler, but, like, a really SMART high schooler.
