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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:4246#628] | ||||||
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(Two episodes watched): This show has a distinctly CG-ish animation style which, for better or worse, grabs a large share of the viewer's attention. Faces seem to be lacking expression and the acting in general seemed kind of wooden and unconvincing at times. The big shootout in which Alma, an android, takes on a small army of sub-machinegun armed villains looked like the visuals of a video game. I found myself wondering if this show would have worked better with conventional animation. It was hard to buy the fact that nobody could hit Alma, even at point-blank range, while she employed exaggerated martial arts moves apparently inspired by American movies. This EX-ARM system seems to be capable of bending the laws of physics themselves. I had a hard time making sense of what the main villain, Ex-Arm #8, was capable of, and the trick that was used to defeat him seemed pretty weak. He's impervious to bullets yet he can be beaten if you just attack him from behind? Some nudity seemed to have been censored out of this TV compatible episode. In general this felt like yet another of an all-too-common sub genre of anime: action shows with sensational action and technology but unremarkable characters and plot. On the other hand, I must admit being curious why Akira has become a pariah. He vaguely remembers doing something which apparently caused a catastrophe. I know that chances are that we'll never get a convincing or intriguing explanation--we seldom do. Still, will there be any chemistry between him and Alma and Minami, Alma's human partner? I watched episode two to find out. The message seems to be that it wasn't Akira in particular, but Ex-Arms in general who devastated Tokyo in 2020, and even so how they did it isn't explained in a manner which makes much sense (electromagnetic pulses somehow trashed the city?). As was expected, he quickly earns himself a spot within the elite police unit that deals with Ex-Arm crime. The plot to terrorize the city with suicide bombers was strange but not really interesting. It's a simple good-guys-versus-bad-ones plot, and the characters--even Akira himself--are two-dimensional and uninteresting. Akira's mind can somehow be switched from one high-tech device to another, but that doesn't make him likable or intriguing. Apparently he has already accepted his fate and only wants to be as useful to his comrades as he can. The trick Alma uses to stop a helicopter was hard to believe, and how were police snipers already in position when the fact that the terrorists would be travelling in this manner had only been deduced moments before? It doesn't look like this show is going anywhere and I think I will quit watching. (In the end, the critics at ANN agreed that this was one of the worst anime of the Fall 2021 season) Last updated Thursday, January 06 2022. Created Friday, January 15 2021. | ||||||||
