infernoguyrules

This show started as maybe a firm 7, maybe a 7.5 if we are doing half stars.

The 2nd season felt like it kept that momentum, maybe even a bit better, but from there it starts to fall off a little bit, even the 2nd season is just a little too short. By the 4th season we get just 4 episodes, on a lower budget I suspect.

Basically my argument for this rating is that this show could've been really great, and its very original, but when these modern shows peter out and lose their gusto as they go, its really hard to recommend them after their sour ending.

If you are just looking for a sitcom with a weird sci-fi premise, this'll deliver for a minute, but the overarching storyline doesn't really conclude IMO. I didn't even realize the final episode was the finale lol, it was that bad. I thought it was a mid-season finale, and actually i kind of suspect that it was, and got cancelled mid season.

To me this felt a little bloated. The cast do their jobs well, the delivery is consistent and enjoyable, but the script just feels a bit sparse/thin, making even a short movie feel a bit too long.

I basically felt like if this had been an hour or 45 minutes i could have gotten into it, maybe as an episode of an anthology series or something. In fact, If i were to su mthis up into a sentence it would be "Like a comedic episode of outer limits, but twice as long with no twist and no ending"

As rude as that may sound, I think with time, the folks behind this could make something great, this just isn't quite there. It looks good, and you can tell they got a lot out of what i have to assume was very little money. The cast is great and theres lots of small funny moments, but the culmination didn't get me, and as the movie ended i felt a bit of dread "Thats it?". It felt like they thought they had said something, and I felt they were just a scene or 2 away from actually saying something. The plots feel dangly and incomplete, and not in a way that arouses my imagination.

I went in with high expectations knowing this was based on "Drifting classroom", Which I've yet to read, but that I know heavily influenced one of my favorite anime, Sonny Boy, with its premise of a school being transported to another world. Sonny Boy, i can Highly recommend, this however was a bit of a slog.

I strongly feel this should have been a 30 minute show, with maybe a few extra episodes, most of the plots feel stretched and theres lots of looking at the same scenery.

My other 2 criticisms is the heavy reliance on romance and unexplained supernatural phneomena. The romance just doesn't do it for me, its very slow and the romantic tropes of the era did not age well. The strange phenomena just felt like a plot contrivance, and I'm curious to check out the manga (Which is very different, more horror, and focuses on younger kids i think) and see if maybe it better explains some of these scenarios.

Now, as for why i gave this a 6 and no lower, I have 2 main reasons:

1. Some of the characters are really endearing and well acted, and the scenario itself is a goldmine, its just not mined very well IMO. The plot lost its luster for me around the 7th or 8th episode, there were still a few nice moments, but i really struggled to finish it.

2. The environmentalist message of the show is laudible, there should be more media about subjects like this tackled in really engaging ways so we can convince people to make changes.

Ultimately, if you like or can tolerate cheesy romance, and some slow pacing, and you don't need the sci-fi/fantasy elements to be realistic, you might get more out of this than me, but if you don't some real strong interest, I can't recommend it, especially with how hard it was to find.