Akudama Drive

Oh yeah, thanks to you, gentlemen, I now really do not know what else I could possibly write about this anime series. I read one, a second, and even a third review and I just had to nod my head and think - Yeah, that's true!. The world it is set in is excellent, engaging, and has a lot of potential. The beginning is great, it definitely has some style and the drive the title promises. However, from the moment the characters get on the train, there are moments where I have to raise my eyebrows and think to myself that half the stuff that happens from here on out is absolute bullshit that could probably make me really depressed. The pacing is unnecessarily fast, the character development is really sloppy, the development of the interesting aspects of the stories is severely truncated. True, that's pretty true... Sometimes it is visually pleasing though, the last two episodes literally explode with color and movement. The whole thing has some drive, so it still somehow managed to engage me and I sometimes looked forward to what was going to happen next. However, I was also worried about what they were going to absurdly overdo or stupidly mess up again. That is also true! So, what am I supposed to contribute? I have read all the reviews and agree with everything that has been said already by others, and in the end, it is mostly an exceptional load of wasted potential and I think that it is a mediocre anime series that has some pretty good stuff, some pretty bad stuff and a lot of other stuff in between... I am off to play elsewhere, my review is pointless. 5/10. (2020.12.25)

Akame ga Kill! meets Cyberbunk. This relatively entertaining ride through a futuristic world with elements of dictatorship literally almost shattered into pieces halfway through. What at first appears to be a more ordinary gangster adventure of one extraordinary group of criminals eventually unfolds into a Matrix-like plane and starts waxing poetic about horizons farther afield, whereas they can only touch on them in an annoyingly fleeting manner because there's no time for more! To its immense detriment, it's not just the potentially rich worldbuilding that's being skimmed over, but also the characters, where you can strongly feel the colorful handwriting of the creator of Danganronpa. As it grinds on and on and on in a rather nonsensical manner, the protagonists only manage to fulfill their basic justifications and only minimally do we get to see their roots, leaving them boringly parked in the black-and-white and tired templates of familiar archetypes. I wanted desperately to know more about Kant, more about the social structure, propaganda, connections to other worlds and what the local "Big Bang" was/caused by, whereupon we get our answer in a fast-paced penultimate episode full of deus ex machina, which I would figuratively liken to spitting in the face, in an already over-the-top conclusion. It’s made up to us in the lavishly colored and stylized audiovisual design of Studio Pierrot, which is easy on the eye. The detail of the action scenes is fantastic, with explosions that would make even Michael Bay jealous, all culminating in a supercharged epic final act of battle royale format. Akudama Drive could relatively easily have been a masterpiece, it just lacked the desire to grow and go deeper. It hurts, it hurts, because the excellent passages in the opening half were entertaining. This way, it's a kind of undercooked one-off that will soon be forgotten. A better 3 stars (2020.12.25)