Akujaku reidžó nano de Last Boss o katte mimašita

The biggest issue I have with this anime is the pacing which isn’t doing the series any favors. The writers decided to take what could normally be spread out into three seasons and crammed it into twelve episodes. Everything just flies by at breakneck speed. A lot of things simply happen, without the story building up to it properly, and a lot of surprising twists are just announced in a matter-of-fact way, or they happen in a rush, and the viewer is left to make sense of it all. Even if you are able to keep up with the story and understand everything, it's all a bit confusing and accelerated, the surprises don't really work, negatively affecting the atmosphere, which is quite a shame. The final episode is a case in point. A lot of things happen at the same time, various revelations are made (in one or two brief sentences) and everything gets very quickly resolved. The story still makes sense, the likable characters might make you enjoy it, and the ending might even move you, but the experience can be compared to that of eating fast food that you won’t remember in a few weeks. It really is a shame because the main couple is fantastic. Aileen is a charming, smart, and proactive heroine who is the driving force of the story, so it's not hard to quickly grow to like her and root for her. Claude is very charismatic and affects the story in interesting ways, too. Plus, when the couple have great chemistry, it actually makes for a pretty decent and enjoyable romance that’s fun to watch. It was the main reason I watched the series in the first place. The rest are just minor characters, but still likable, and I even have some favorites among them that I would have liked to know more about, but there was just no space for that. The musical direction wasn't bad, and especially in the last episode you can really feel the effort to elevate the overall impression and enhance the important scenes. The animation is rather mediocre. The characters and some of the backgrounds are good, but the CGI vehicles look pretty awful. If the creators had stretched the story out a bit, developed the plot more, and given more screen time to the main couple who carried the whole show, or maybe fleshed out some of the supporting characters, it could have been worth a 4*. This way, it's a kind of extract of the essentials, which does work in terms of a narrative, but the story isn’t as powerful and intriguing as it could have been... 6.3/10 (10.12.2022)