kotomo-91130

Pros:

• Excellent soundtrack with good opening and closing themes, including the excellent "Kimi to iu shinwa" and "Takaramono Ni Natta Hi" performed by Yanagi Nagi,
• The 12-episode format maintains a certain dynamism,
• Careful production,
• Enjoyable character design,
• Honest animation,
• Humor is omnipresent during the first part,
• Many topics can be explored: friendship, abandonment, disability, transhumanism, technology, science, existential issues and self-perception, community life, etc.

Cons:

• No serious or interesting topics are addressed, apart from an excessively tearful flow,
• Many inconsistencies and improbabilities, such as Hina, who, despite all this technology and possibilities, is not even capable of protecting herself, guarding herself, or possibly giving her pursuers a hard time.

• A series in two unequal parts that suddenly seems to remember four episodes before the end that there's a "normal" storyline, so everything is rushed,
• No work to understand the plot logic,
• Forgettable main or secondary characters aside from Hina and a little bit of Ashura. Yota becoming increasingly stupid over time proves that no character follows a logic of personal development. His personality is on a postage stamp, by the way, and the fact that he's a teenager doesn't justify this level of treatment,
• A questionable and unhealthy moral: This is a love story between a 10-12 year old girl and a 17-18 year old teenager,
• A distressing negativity, even cruelty just to shock. I'm not saying that reality is cruel, but that's not an end in itself.

• Is there a real philosophical thrust behind the story? What is its goal other than to make us laugh or cry?

Targeting a younger audience doesn't justify this lack of work. Let's be honest, it's an empty shell. It's not a horror, it's still watchable just to laugh or cry, but it's a complete rip-off compared to what it's selling.

It's corny, like this fictional illness, when more than twenty neurodegenerative diseases exist, but that would have required more research and investment from the author.

Jun Maeda's most unsuccessful work.

An interesting series from which I expect a lot in terms of animation and entertainment.

Firstly, because the technical team is of high quality and it's a MAPPA production.

Although the first 2 episodes are easy to watch, the series doesn't escape the flaws of current productions:

• A basic scenario if you're a fan of Japanese animation that's afraid of going too far.

• a main character who's impossible to stop (prison, technology, policeman...) but a girl comes along! We know where this illogic comes from...
• a bunch of kids more intelligent than the population as a whole...

Given the media hype, I hope the anime will have the guts to take off beyond the usual mediocrity of series with an American touch.

To be continued...

A well-crafted Season 2 in the same vein as Season 1.

Fluid animation (even if there are some easy solutions to avoid showing combat movements more precisely. For example: blue, red or white lines to suggest speed during combat), a well-crafted soundtrack, excellent opening credits... I'll qualify my remarks with 2 annoying points:

• Too many liberties in relation to the manhwa, which spoil or take away some of the essential substance of the work (points of humor, exchanged glances...)
• A Japanese chauvinism that ends up being noticeable. The anime is Japanese and the source material is Korean, and these 2 peoples don't like each other very much.

All in all, an interesting anime that ranks up there with the anime released over the same period.

I'd still encourage the public to read the manhwa to understand the essence of the work.