I enjoy deep, cerebral anime and I enjoyed this one. But it was lengthy and drawn out... and at times the plot quite confusing. They finally tied up everything in the end, but it's definitely way over the head of the average child, who will likely become bored with this rather quickly. Children may also be afraid of the Searchies and dark figures... to the point of nightmares (both were exactly the type of characters to freak out a child).
The primary downside to this is that it's a 12-episode anime done in 25 episodes. It's repetitious, with a whole lot of running, dodging, firing weapons, temporarily disabled virtual objects that quickly re-rez and then back to yet more running, dodging and firing weapons. That got old pretty quickly.
Some of the characters were drawn so similarly that seriously... one has trouble telling them apart. And while they did tie up the loose ends in the final episode, it was somewhat sloppy... with no real lead-up to the climax and conclusion.
When I was finished with the series instead of thinking, "That was a great anime"... I instead felt mentally drained and exhausted from trying to follow what was going on. That's not a good thing for an anime to do.
In the end, it had mediocre animation, bland characters, and a plot so complex and convoluted that one doesn't really figure things out until the final-episode "reveal"... in which essential facts to the plot are suddenly presented with no real prior heads-up. It did tie it all up, but unsatisfactorily-- somewhat like a murder mystery solving the murder in the final chapter by bringing in characters or facts that hadn't been introduced prior in the book.
So 6 stars for "better than mediocre, but I can't rate it higher due to the convoluted plot and undeveloped, one-plot characters. The story line was just too disjointed and complex to be an enjoyable watch.
The primary downside to this is that it's a 12-episode anime done in 25 episodes. It's repetitious, with a whole lot of running, dodging, firing weapons, temporarily disabled virtual objects that quickly re-rez and then back to yet more running, dodging and firing weapons. That got old pretty quickly.
Some of the characters were drawn so similarly that seriously... one has trouble telling them apart. And while they did tie up the loose ends in the final episode, it was somewhat sloppy... with no real lead-up to the climax and conclusion.
When I was finished with the series instead of thinking, "That was a great anime"... I instead felt mentally drained and exhausted from trying to follow what was going on. That's not a good thing for an anime to do.
In the end, it had mediocre animation, bland characters, and a plot so complex and convoluted that one doesn't really figure things out until the final-episode "reveal"... in which essential facts to the plot are suddenly presented with no real prior heads-up. It did tie it all up, but unsatisfactorily-- somewhat like a murder mystery solving the murder in the final chapter by bringing in characters or facts that hadn't been introduced prior in the book.
So 6 stars for "better than mediocre, but I can't rate it higher due to the convoluted plot and undeveloped, one-plot characters. The story line was just too disjointed and complex to be an enjoyable watch.