Make My Day

Outstanding example of how to write characters and character arcs. Professional, committed English voice acting.

A well-written original story is the big asset here. Less violence and action than most animes. The very unusual writing highlights the redemption of several unsavory characters, using forgiveness without violins or abandoning its gritty sci-fi genre track.

The eight episodes don't culminate in a tight third act. The story was designed to continue if there was a second season. Still the ending works well enuf to satisfy.

I think this is computer assisted Blender animation, nicely done. Not flashy yet not trashy in any respect.

Congratulations to all who created this.

The visuals here are bold and interesting, a mix of traditional hand-drawn backgrounds and prop art, and stylised cell shaded CGI characters, not entirely unlike Arcane.

But not very much like it either, and this suffers badly by comparison. Bold and interesting doesn't imply success: the characterisation, clumsily keyframed facial expressions and frame rate are all sub par here - this is practically a slideshow.

The other thing that you could compare the character animation to is the Sims, and again, not particularly kindly.

The plot feels gamerish too, like watching an endless cut-scene for a 2010-era survival horror, where the unexperienced but spunky young protagonist in his exo-suit battles alien tentacle-bugs.

And that really is all we're getting here, an inexplicably hyper-militarised convict mining operation versus bad-touch space tardigrades. Nothing that we haven't done seen before - many, times - and better.

At eight 20 minutes episodes, you can rip through it quickly enough, although even at that length I found myself skipping some tedious flashbacks, and cringe inducing attempts at forcing pathos and drama into later episodes.

The plot, such as it is, reveals itself fully by episode 3, but with a whopping great contradiction in it. What we're told differs from what we've just seen, and there are constant reminders of this that make our protagonists' peril more than it needs to be.

Our main protagonist Jim doesn't have an arc so much as a flipped-switch, again in episode 3. Paired with the uninvolving animation and strictly workmanlike voice acting that quickly dissolves into the tedious anime "Oh!" and "Aaargh!", it makes it hard to take any of this seriously.

Perhaps that's not a bad thing. Sometimes you just want to watch space bugs eat faces and blow up, and you get a fair amount of that here. Not really enough to justify the tedious talky bits in between though.

Watch it, or skip it and forget it, your life won't be different either way.

It's hard to write a review that doesn't cover what's been written before.

This anime, like most, suffers from typical anime issues. A young person is thrust into the spotlight to lead a group (or themselves) out of danger. They're initially shy and awkward, and then an episode later they're running around like they own the world, being impossibly awesome. It also has the same basic issue of static images with monologue look like stills, and it's hard to know whether the dubbing has been extended from the original or not, with a single frame paused to provide the additional time to bore us all with exposition. Add to that the 'surprise face' that the main character has and the 'oh, uh, ooh, waah' that we're constantly fed, makes me wonder whether this person is a newborn experiencing everything for the first time.

As many other reviewers have pointed out, the art work is great, and initially drew me into the show, however the show is let down by almost everything else. Including the basic plotline that just doesn't make sense.

Like, why is there a whole civilisation living on a barren frozen planet just to mine some special rock? If it's a penal colony, does there really need to be a whole city? How did the city get built if the air is toxic? Where do they get oxygen/nitrogen from to breathe? If it's a barren rock, why does the main building have a massive defence system? How come the tardigrades start to explode outside but not when shot hundreds of times in the mine? Why make this special mineral into little cubes that need to be fed in to machines like coins into a slot machine?

The plot conveniences are numerous and just go to show that, sadly, people can not write TV shows anymore.

If you're bored and really need something to watch, it's ok, but it's not going to win any awards for excitement nor originalism. Ah Netflix, you've done it again.

The basic premise of the show is 'big bugs discovered on an icy mining colony start eating everyone'.

The first two episodes were interesting. I thought it was some kind of animated spin off from the Lost Planet series of videogames and I was waiting to see bigger and more crazy looking bugs show up (which they never did). By episode 3 the plot had descended into badly written, non-stop, cringe inducing dialogue about emotions and how people should help each other with very little action to keep me entertained.

The bugs quickly became boring and each new character that the story introduces is more irritating than the last.

The animation is pretty good. Similar to Arcane but not as colorful and smooth.

After episodes one and two the series isn't worth watching. I watched the dubbed version because I was tired and too lazy to reach for my glasses. This was a mistake as the dubbing is possibly the worst I've ever heard. It might be slightly better with subtitles but not by much.

In summary, avoid.

Initially it looks good but after 2 episodes it is ruined! The creatures are never explained, but they float and are hungry.

If you get it in original dub, japanese, you feel like watching a drama, to much emotional, about stupid people doing a service to save a young woman giving birth to a baby. Forget the scifi context.

But... If you are watching in Brazilian dubbing, you have to hear that bad accent of Alexandre Moreno crying as dr. Boyd. Be careful, it is hateful.

This episode 7 could be cut off and nothing would be missing at the whole story.

Sometime animation get slow and tedious... Everybody is just chatting useless speech while trapped againg at some base, alone, as all others already have flied.

Then they get runing again to other place, just as before, very easy to find a truck or new ship.

Maybe the original japaneses mangá drawing is a bit more interesting...