Basically, I’d say it has one strong suit: the sort of soft-around-edges surreal fantasy aesthetic was, while not particularly original, quite stylish and well executed. The problems - ignoring the nonce stuff for the moment - were the pacing and progression. The story had basically two modes for pacing: breakneck glossing over all the weird, surreal fantasy environment, and bogging down while tons of nothing happened. The problem with the progression was that there wasn’t any: the main characters remain static through the whole thing, neither growing nor being diminished as they go through their requisite training montage and suffer horrible things - there’s no leveling up and becoming more actualized from their experiences nor is their catharsis in their suffering, Riko and Reg are fundamentally the same people when they leave Orth as when they reach the golden city, being neither more competent nor just barely hanging on, the scars they get along the way just being decorations added to their character design.
The movie is vile and can be summed up as “the author-insert serial killing mad scientist responsible for Nanachi and Mitty’s conditions (and much worse), has plot armor, the story revels in the heinous shit he was doing, and then even after he’s beaten he still wins because the main characters don’t even think to stop him after they have the upper hand and instead they just keep going, happy and completely oblivious to all the horror, maiming, and trauma they just went through.” I got maybe halfway through the second season before deciding that continuing to watch it constituted self harm, but it gets worse from there with the story bogging down completely to just wallow in the village of horrible nonce ancap blob/tentacle monsters and all the gross vile shit they do as a whole bunch of literally no story happens.
Ultimately it’s all just gross empty spectacle: the suffering isn’t for anything and it’s not making a point anywhere. It’s just gratuitous, in the true meaning of the word. Even if the characters were all adults it would still be gross and horrible and pointless.
Basically, I’d say it has one strong suit: the sort of soft-around-edges surreal fantasy aesthetic was, while not particularly original, quite stylish and well executed. The problems - ignoring the nonce stuff for the moment - were the pacing and progression. The story had basically two modes for pacing: breakneck glossing over all the weird, surreal fantasy environment, and bogging down while tons of nothing happened. The problem with the progression was that there wasn’t any: the main characters remain static through the whole thing, neither growing nor being diminished as they go through their requisite training montage and suffer horrible things - there’s no leveling up and becoming more actualized from their experiences nor is their catharsis in their suffering, Riko and Reg are fundamentally the same people when they leave Orth as when they reach the golden city, being neither more competent nor just barely hanging on, the scars they get along the way just being decorations added to their character design.
The movie is vile and can be summed up as “the author-insert serial killing mad scientist responsible for Nanachi and Mitty’s conditions (and much worse), has plot armor, the story revels in the heinous shit he was doing, and then even after he’s beaten he still wins because the main characters don’t even think to stop him after they have the upper hand and instead they just keep going, happy and completely oblivious to all the horror, maiming, and trauma they just went through.” I got maybe halfway through the second season before deciding that continuing to watch it constituted self harm, but it gets worse from there with the story bogging down completely to just wallow in the village of horrible nonce ancap blob/tentacle monsters and all the gross vile shit they do as a whole bunch of literally no story happens.
Ultimately it’s all just gross empty spectacle: the suffering isn’t for anything and it’s not making a point anywhere. It’s just gratuitous, in the true meaning of the word. Even if the characters were all adults it would still be gross and horrible and pointless.
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