Training

Animation is good at times. Talking animations from profile view are just weird, noses too sometimes. I know it's not much but it takes away my attention and makes me think, "why is this so weird?". Sometimes characters bodies are drawn strangely. I'm nitpicking here, definitely not the reason for the low score and of course you shouldn't expect much for a show like this.

Writing is... not great.

Dialogue just doesn't feel right. I still don't understand what this world is about! What are they really training for? There are like 2-4 character out of the insane amount of people there.

Voice acting is subpar.

Sometimes it's fine but at times it feels not real, barely feels like there was effort put into this. Maybe it's the directing, maybe it's the actors.

Look I like browntable, but this show really isn't good. I find it difficult to sit through it.

Have been super excited about this project for forever, and yet again props to the entire cast and crew this still stands as a complete marvel of indie animation that everyone involved should be proud of.

I wasn't totally on board after the first episode though. I lost the account that I left the review for, but I left a review on the last episode both praising and stating my criticisms of the first outing. Mostly just structure and pacing and hitting emotional beats without giving any reason so the audience first. And while that last one still feels kind of there because there are just so many emotional beats for 2 episodes of a TV show, everything about this episode feels like an improvement on those critisms. You really start to feel like you know the characters here, you start to feel a real passage of time and connection between the characters. It feels great to kind of see it get its footing in a lot of regards and it makes for a genuinely really fun episode of television that makes me super excited for the rest of the season.

As for critisms of this episode they mainly revolve around many of the same problems. Again the over amount of unearned emotional beats, though that was extremely less of a problem in this. And second something that I think this show needs to get on early on or it will effect it a lot later, is that we don't really feel the space still. I don't know the layout of the school, I don't know anything about the physical space of the school. None of the locations feel fully real even the ones we've spent the most time with because especially for a school story we get very little atmosphere around the school. We need maybe them walking to classes or hanging out in hallways. Trying to find their way to class or figuring out stuff in a food court (if they have one, but see I don't know) we've gotten more of a believable set of characters in this episode that I'm really excited to see more of, but the school still hadn't felt real during any of this. Especially for as hang out-y as these first two episode have been we need more hanging out between these characters and for the locations to be worked into the story in a way that matters otherwise we'll never feel like we know them or that they matter. Ie. Stuff like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, Persona 5, Assassination Classroom, even Mean Girls all work their settings in so they themselves feel like character and catalysts of the story and why anyone is here or wants to be here. I still am not sure what the rangers do 2 episodes in. So really to sum up my biggest problem with episode 2 would be the overall world building.

But again these are mostly "will effect the overall story" critisms. And the episode we actually get is lovely and fun and heartwarming. It honestly feels like an almost fully big production show. That's how impressive all this work is. And I have nothing but praise for the show overall and what it's doing. Loved this episode and am infinity more excited to see more!