Quite unoriginal, but still entertaining

Written by Wolqua on November 17, 2012 at 5:05 AM

Anyone familiar with any story about VR will have seen this exact same plot before. Many times in fact. Deranged rich people/genius makes VR environment, traps people on there, got to do X to survive, blah blah blah. Good the first time, but gets old quickly. If this was purely this, then it would be immensely boring. The only reason it saves itself from getting a 1 star for plot is that it doesn't drag it out with infinitely many long, tedious fight scenes like many anime would. A definite plus.

The character development and interactions are however where the anime shines. It takes nearly no time at all to get an idea of what the characters are like, a few of their flaws, motivations, etc. they behave in a realistic manner for their situation, have believable personalities and do sort of realistic things. Very nicely done.

Animation is a bit above average, but has no remarkable features. There aren't any body parts/environments that look wierd, which is something that many have at least once, but so far there's nothing that shows that. Choice of title screen background and some of the 3D effects in there just look bad and irritate me every time I see them. The first person sections are well done though, and add a nice touch to the show.

While the story is unremarkable, it is reasonably unusual to find a story like this outside of a book. It's almost worth watching for that reason alone. Otherwise, the characters are well made, a few humourous elements, no long, drawn-out fight scenes which could easily have been included just to fill the episode. It's fairly entertaining. Again, only drawback is the unimaginative plot.

This is probably worth a watch, especially if you aren't familiar with VR based stories.