refuserefuse

The animation and visuals are stellar. And I will forgive A LOT when I finally find a show with sharp animation.

I don't know if I will go as far as saying the show's story is a mess. It does, however, seem only to exist to create cool visuals. There is some pretense at an overall plot and given AoT I though there might be a bigger mystery revealed but so far it seems that the pretense is as far as it goes.

I think it might have worked for previous generations. It's technically serial but the badguy of the week without much else feels highly like the episodic stuff most of society has shifted away from. Not great for an overall story.

The characters are also highly annoying over and above thy typical constant drama and dysfunctional emotional regulation that is such a ubiquitous part of anime that I have to overlook it or I would have very little anime to watch. However, along with this is the animation shifts that feel totally out of place in a show that looks this solid in animation and takes itself so seriously. It would be like Castlevania doing Chibi.

But what really kills this is the exposition. I tried to shift over to the sub but it isn't any better. It's so bad it feels more like they are breaking the fourth wall to talk to us instead of each other. Like it's forcing you to have it on in the background, half-ignored. If you sit down and give it your full attention it is intolerable.

It's really unfortunate that a show that looks this great doesn't have anything else going for it but I guess thats the way it is.

I loved the first episode. A well-produced Dracula story that was a breath of fresh air with some enjoyable originality which is saying something since Dracula has been done to death. Really just about perfect, from the story to the acting to the framing to the dialogue to the art direction.

The second takes a hard left turn. It was such a hard left turn that I put it down for a long time, preferring to think of the first as 90 minute stand alone story. But I liked the first so much that I came back to it. I though that since they had shown so much originality and character in the first I should give them a chance to see what they do with this concept.

As it eventually turns out the hard left turn is the only interesting part of the second episode. For the rest though.... The writing and framing are stupid. Art direction in non-existent. The story is the Demeter but unlike the freshness and originality of the first one this one feels like a middle school play being unenthusiastically carried out for a grade. The character/gravitas/etc of Dracula are downgraded dramatically and the other great character from the first one is absent most of the episode. But it was serviceable enough that when again it seemed like the third one was going to go a new direction with it's premise I decided to continued.

The third one has a premise that really should have worked but quickly, and by quickly I mean immediately, devolves into pure stupidity. Every character is like a character from a B horror movie competing to see who can most stupidly get themselves killed. The actress from the first is back as a new character but the new character is written so ineptly that it leaves a bad taste. It got worse and worse so that I bailed a third of the way through when Dracula gets a lawyer and checked the internet to get enough spoiler to see if it gets better. It doesn't.

Give credit for trying to do something different with a time loop plot and clearly having a hamstringed budget. These could have been, and almost were, a strength. One can think of a myriad of ways to make something interesting with this taking this films failings as inspiration. Instead I've rarely seen anyone make anything so tedious and frustrating.

In effect it becomes the opposite of a time loop movie. Instead of learning from the previous loop they seem determined not to learn. Instead of doing something different to do the same thing again even though they know better. All while leaving interesting avenues that don't make the characters into idiots unexplored.

This gets worse and worse. There is a clear solution but there is an obstacle. Then later when the obstacle is removed the solution is not tried. Then later when the solution is no longer certain to work it is suddenly remembered. And at least one of the people acting so stupidly is supposedly a genius. They could just win at several points, even by their own account of what they know and for no explained reason just don't.

This gets worse and worse until the most infuriating example of this is the final scene. This act of ineptitude is clearly to set it up for a sequel but given the trajectory I can only expect any future installment to fail harder.