Exception

At first glance I almost didn't give this a chance. Then I started it. I was immediately turned off by the stiff ultra cheap imported animation that is generally and genuinely cold and boring. The difference in the art style and art deco themes made the animation easier to deal with but albeit slightly.

As I progressed I became surprised by the story. In general it has several plots and subplots running throughout and some of the ideas are very fresh and welcoming. The writing is good and the voice acting is generally pretty good and somewhat convincing for a production like this on Netflix.

It could have been awfulf but instead was very decent and kept my attention.

A crew of synthetic humans is tasked with terraforming an alien planet ahead of a slower colony ship. Sounds like an interesting science fiction premise, right? But then this plot is basically abandoned and replaced with some silly philosophical questions. The themes are a bit tedious if you've ever read any short stories by Philip K. Dick, but it's certainly watchable.

The art is reasonably good. Sometimes it seems pretty detailed, and other times not so much. It looks like they were given a decent budget and made good use of it. It's definitely better than average for the stuff on Netflix. The animation itself was usually fine, but the frame rate occasionally made character movements seem unnatural. I remember once being abruptly snapped out of watching an episode because someone's movements seemed to fall into the uncanny valley.

Character design is a bit odd. Each character has a color theme, like a blue uniform, blue hair, blue socks, blue blue blue. You know, I like blue quite a lot, but I sometimes wear other colors, too. It's an attention-getting stylistic choice but a bit perplexing, even for anime. For example, the blue characters sometimes seem to have blue-tinted skin, too. I'm not sure exactly why certain characters were blue-themed, but others were green. Maybe it was based on temperament or job?

The plot is generally fine, and I liked it. However, it's likely that, at any given point in time, you'll already know the next two upcoming plot twists, which can make the show seem more slow-paced than it is. Unfortunately, the characters routinely overexplain their motivations or recite overt exposition to each other. The way everything is spoon-fed makes it seem like the dialogue wasn't written for an adult audience.

There are a small handful of scenes with nudity that look like they were included solely for the reason of a check mark. However, on the positive side, all of the characters are adult scientists. Amazingly, there are no high school children in the entire show. It makes me feel a bit better about recommending this to other adults.

So, if you're over 30, and you're not an obsessive anime fan, should you watch this? Sure, why not. If you're a science fiction fan, you'll probably be pretty forgiving of its flaws.

"Exception" is a highly cerebral story that's not for people with short attention spans or those wanting lots of action, although there is some in the last two episodes. I did not mind the character designs and think the reason for them is that the reprints are stylized versions of the original people, materializing attributes of their personalities and worldviews. The reason the ship carrying a small crew is so large is that it's carrying a large atmospheric converter.

However, without spoiling any details, the supposedly happy ending for a subset of characters is tempered by what is done to achieve it, an act which Mr. Spock would describe as "a crime against science." That may have been the point.

6.5/10 First things first, the animation is beautiful albeit a bit shaky at times. The original score is beautiful but the rest of the music was quite disappointing.

This show definitely feels like a missed opportunity. The world building (both figurative and literal) is interesting and makes you want to know more about the back story. However, the main issue of this show is in its writing. The plot twists were either easily predictable or straight out of left field. The characters all seem very one dimensional apart for the one or two outliers whose character arcs evolve either too suddenly.

Unfortunately, the exposition in the first few episodes made it seem like the writers felt the need to hold your hand for you to understand their concept. On top of that, most of the dialogue between the characters is simply not convincing enough to believe they are real (which is pretty ironic considering how the characters come to be).

By the last episode, i didn't feel particularly attached to any of the characters.

There were a few plot holes yes, but nothing that had a major impact on the show in my opinion. Watch it if you have some time to kill but don't expect to get your mind blown.

One last thing i forgot to mention: the action sequences were laughably rigid and poorly choreographed but hey, that wasn't the point of this series.

At first I saw the art style and thought it was a bit strange. I usually don't like non traditional anime but after the first episode I was completely sucked in. The characters and designs are charming and the story is so thoughtfully written. The animation is very well done and the expression that's brought out in their models is very eye catching. I binged the entire thing in one night which I don't usually do unless something takes all my attention. I won't spoiler much but I highly recommend it if you love sci-fi horror themes as much as me. If you're looking for something to pass the time you better go give this masterpiece a watch. :)