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Impressions:
You’d have to screw the pooch pretty hard to get me to speak ill of a sci-fi girls-with-guns show in this day and age. Though of all the things you could safely change, the year it occurs seems like something you should have no reservations about changing. It’s just silly to see it start out with “In the far off future year of 1998, cybernetic nanochips were invented.” I’m also not sure the retro blobby style meshes all that well when it tries to get more serious. A lady gets her head exploded, and sure, she was a cyborg with a backup, but it was gruesome. Same with the torturing of children scenes. It makes it unclear what is meant to be brutal and what’s just being overexaggerated for comedy. Similarly, the music through the end when the antagonist was highjacking all of them was all placid and classical. Not to invoke SAC, but a more techy or at least dramatic soundtrack feels like it would’ve worked much better. Hell, a Burn Up jazzy soundtrack would’ve as well.
But take these as minor complaints. I’m sure other people will have more, especially about it randomly spewing technobabble making things a bit iffy to follow, and how completely unserious it is in comparison to its SAC big brother, and I do think they’re warranted. That was how you do an actual adaptation to the time and place, while this feels more… I dunno, transcriptive, I guess I’d put it. An effective transcription, with actual animation, stylistic flair even, in a genre of action that is badly lacking in anime over the last decade, and one that I am particularly fond of, so I’m pleased with it existing at all, and especially being done relatively competently, but the spectre of such an iconic franchise will be hanging over this, and like Nanoha, I can’t help but feel like I’d be more excited for it if it wasn’t trying to hitch its success to the old franchise.
