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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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 Stretch
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[series:3481#628] | ||||||
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(Three episodes watched): A mark of a good first episode of a new anime is that it leaves you with a number of questions which you feel you must have answers to. A mark of a less good anime is sometimes that you are left with a bunch of questions which you feel should have been answered already, and the fact that that hasn't happened leaves you frustrated and with little confidence that decent answers will ever be forthcoming. Such was Beatless. Why are shapely hiEs with hot costumes and lots of firepower and combat skills being hunted down? Why are they considered to be so dangerous? Why are they so powerful, yet willing to accept a new 'owner' so readily? Who or what is doing all the apparent computer hacking? As a result of all these unanswered questions, I still had little idea what was going on after watching episode one. I didn't need definitive answers, but I did need at least a hint that answers would come about someday. One possibility is that this show will simply attempt to titillate young males on a visceral level, with too-good-to-be-true stuff like a sexy hiE, which has a trove of deadly weaponry yet will submit to the wishes of her new male owner, Arato Endo. I noticed that hiEs were always female, at least so far. While the fanservice was restrained, you can tell that the makers of this show had no problem with boys indulging naughty thoughts. Yet I must admit that I was a little curious about how the hiE, Lacia, would get along with Endo and his sister; and since I still wanted answers to countless questions, I decided to watch episode two as well. But this show had been warned that some substance was needed to go with all the glitz. I was sure that there would be at least one big shoot-out in episode two, but it didn't happen. Instead, Lacia somehow finds a career as a fashion model(?)--does that make good sense when you are still trying to figure out how such a valuable hiE has somehow fallen into your lap, and there is clearly a good deal of risk involved? About the only interesting development of the plot was when Endo's friends determined that her origins could not be traced (even though she is cutting edge technology), which is highly suspicious. I was frustrated that the episode spent so much time in the fashion world while the main plot moved forward at a painfully slow pace. In episode three Lacia is kidnapped then a hostile 'sister' of hers shows up and we get the big shootout that was missing from the previous episode. I still had little idea why armed-to-the-teeth super ('Red Box') hiEs exist, or why they fight each other, or what they hope to achieve. This show is frustrating; I sometimes found myself thinking up better lines for the characters than those the actual episodes include--like, perhaps, Arata's little sister quizzing Lacia if he has done anything 'weird' with her. That might have been good for a laugh. Instead, this show seems to be relying to a good extent on the daydreaming that male viewers no doubt engage in about what they would do if they had a hot artificial girl that was eager to serve them. But I ran out of patience and decided to dispense with Beatless. Last updated Tuesday, April 03 2018. Created Tuesday, January 16 2018. | ||||||||
