Overview:
Chuta is a normal student except that he has a voice that he hears and talks to making people look at him a bit strangely. Turns out, the voice belongs to an alien Monatelian and now Chuta’s been recruited in elDLIVE to assist the space police as they crack down on aliens committing crimes on Earth.
I reviewed this week to week so if you want to know my thoughts on individual episodes click here.
Review:
If you followed my weekly reviews you already know my main opinion on this anime; it’s full of wasted potential. We have an incredibly interesting premise with a human who is technically possessed by an alien being recruited by the alien space police. So many adventures and things that could happen. It all seems so incredibly fascinating.
The reality is what we’re in for is a fairly mediocre high school comedy with occasional aliens thrown in for added weirdness. The characters get some minor development and grow a bit but ultimately Chuta is still a bit of a wimp who makes fairly bold statements at key moments but then goes back to being ridiculously insecure and his partner, Misuzu, is still pretty much stuck up. The minor inroads they made toward being a team were pretty inconsequential and none of the other characters get significant enough screen time to actual do anything that might be called development.
Which is kind of a shame because many of the support cast seem far more interesting than either Chuta of Misuzu. My favourite character was probably Dr Love and he didn’t come in until fairly late in the series. I also liked the Captain, though he mostly got to sit and occasionally got to say the last word in the episode, and I enjoyed Vega, though that was a short acquaintance. So while these characters all had potential, very little of it came about in the show and I just wonder how much more interesting the story would have been if we’d dumped Chuta in an airlock and had this cast as the primary focus.
It isn’t that there is anything broken inside this show. There are some weird visual effects with scene transitions that are a bit jarring in the first few episodes but eventually you just get over those. There’s also some weird colour schemes, but again, not so much a problem. Conflicts are resolved way too easily and very little feels like a real threat. But none of these are nail-in-the-coffin problems as the show continues to be relatively functional.
Then we have our villains who are as cliché and hopeless as they come. They fail to provide any real sense of drama, their motivations are usually basic or not explored, and their goals seem relatively trivial or pointless in the grander scheme.
Basically, this show works but it isn’t really worth your time. There are plenty of shows about normal humans who acquire some sort of power and then get recruited to do whatever that are much more entertaining. While this show has glimmers of interesting ideas and occasionally does something that strikes you as reasonably clever, mostly it fails to really land its mark not being funny enough to just be viewed as a comedy or serious enough to view as a drama. Both elements are watered down by the existence of the other and the end result is something that is overall pretty bland.
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Karandi James.
Unfortunately the adaptation wound up being fairly “meh” in the end by never getting to the two most recent Manga arcs where things escalated to actual stakes (people dying, actual threatening villains and the like).
That being said, I can’t really disagree with a lot of your points. While I still really enjoyed the show, it’s safe to say that much of my enjoyment came from being a huge fan of the infinitely superior source material and Amano’s works in general. I wouldn’t say it bored me though, although that may also be a by product of my previous exposure to the story and what comes afterwards.
Maybe a second season will happen. Maybe not. I guess I have the Manga at least.
I enjoyed reading your write ups on this when it was airing because it was clear you were being fair but also a lot more optomistic about this series then a lot of other pepole. And in fairness, it isn’t actually bad, but meh is a great description. Maybe I should try and check out the source for this at some point because I really did like the premise.
This really is too bad. Exactly like you say, this show has really got an interesting premise and story. There are so many possibilities to go with a story like this, and that is why it is even more of a shame that they wasted this opportunity. Still, I am secretly relieved as well, as I have so many series that I still need to watch that it pretty much scares me lol. Great review as always though 😊
Glad you liked it. If it ever gets a continuation, maybe they’ll do something now that everything is all set up, but that might be a mater of too little, too late.
After constant recommendations from Lethargic Rambles on Twitter, I became curious as to this show’s quality. Further insight like these reviews are always appreciated. You’re getting better with your critical bite.
I think it is because this show struck the worst possible nerve and bored me. I usually prefer to watch something that is actually bad but at least fun to pull apart than something that works but just doesn’t ever really excite. That said, I’d take this a thousand times over Hand Shakers. My review of that is coming out at the end of next week and I’ve pretty much given up trying to make it into anything other than a rant so I put a warning label on it and moved on.
In the end I’d recommend the Manga over the Anime since this wound up being a huge letdown once it was clear it was never going to get to the serious story arcs where things start happening.
The Anime only got to the end of the introductory story arcs, which was a real shame.
I wouldn’t say it was bad, but it was disappointing.