So after I reached my 150 review milestone last year I decided to start experimenting with shortlength informal reviews so I could not only expand my scope beyond more substantial media but also just open myself up to the possibility of not every review I write being some huge project. These reviews havent done well statistically but I have really enjoyed writing them especially with the degree of freedom theyre given me. For example when Im halfway through a series and I have some thoughts I dont have to find a way to justify writing them down. I dont have to release them as a series of comments that are going to be visible for maybe a day before being buried. I can just write whatever I want exceed the minimum character limit and immortalize it on the front page of an asofyet unreviewed anime. And sure enough when I was halfway through Kaginado thats exactly what I decided to do. For those who dont know Kaginado is a creation from Key a visual novel production company whose works have become so popular that almost all of them have been adapted into anime series. Ive never gotten into them myself so the only thing I really know about the original VNs is that theyre moe dating sims that are full of tragedy porn and in some cases actual porn. I dont know how many of their titles are Mrated but I have it on good authority that at least Air and Kanon had Hscenes in them. Do with that information what you will. Anyway Key adaptations are popular enough that fans have grouped them into a branded stable and while this stable sometimes only includes Clannad Air and Kanon for most casual fansWith Angel Beats being considered the Shemp of the group there are other lesser known titles like Little Busters Rewrite Planetarian and a few more that are so obscure that even Kaginado ignored them. Now what sometimes happens when a brand name has several recognizable titles coexisting under the same umbrella is there may be a crossover event. Disney had Kingdom Hearts and the Princess line... Nintendo has Smash Bros... Nickelodeon and Playstation ripped off Smash Bros... Cartoon Network had Fusionfall and its famous bumpers... Shonen Jump has Jump Force... But more importantly TypeMoon had Carnival Phantasm and Kadokawa had Isekai Quartet. I call these more important because these titles are basically the blueprints for what Kaginado would become. Kaginado like the others is a crossover gag anime. It features chibi versions of characters from around half a dozen different Key titles and just like Phantasm and Quartet the whole show is just them interacting with each other. Okay so its a tried and true formula that gives you popular characters forming unique dynamics with people they never should have met bouncing off of each other while making fun of themselves and their respective properties so this should be awesome right? Well I can only speak from my own experience but no. Honestly this show sucks pretty hard. To be clear I really did enjoy Carnival Phantasm and Isekai Quartet but even at only four minutes an episode Kaginado was difficult to sit through. Im not 100 sure why this show didnt work for me despite both of the previous shows entertaining me perfectly fine but I have a few theories on this. First off the previous shows were parodying much more relevant material. Carnival Phantasm came out in 2011 when the Fate series was arguably right at the peak of its popularity and Lunar Legend Tsukihime... Okay it was nearly a decade old but Fates popularity WAS propping it up quite a bit. Personally speaking as somebody who knew the Fate series well enough at the time but didnt know jack shit about Tsukihime I can clearly remember learning enough about Tsukihimes characters THROUGH their interactions with Fate characters that I was able to follow their material perfectly fine. Also the kitties at the bar were new to me but I still liked them and their adorable nodding animations. For Isekai Quartet that show chose probably the four most popular isekai anime that they had access to at the fuckig height of the isekai boom and as a result clips of the characters interacting with each other spread like wildfire. As for Kaginado there are two shows represented in it that came out in the last ten years. Theres ReWrite which I have not heard good things about and Planetarian which seemed to be a decently big hit at some point. I had no idea either of these tiles were Key titles and Ill be honest their connection to the more popular titles feels tenuous at best. As for the three most popular titles that Kaginado used I think its fair to say they havent aged well and while all three of them do have relatively strong fanbases theyve each also received some substantial critical backlash not only over some rather problematic themesremember two of them started out as porn but over just how manipulative and misogynistic they are with their manufactured somewhat repetitive tragedy porn. Even regarding the people who still cherish these titles to this day were talking about shows people love for the feels. You love them for the dramatic and tragic elements in them and you love them for making you ugly cry so why the fuck would you want to see these serious tragic characters getting kicked in the balls and trading gag expressions? Hell Ill be honest here... From what Ive personally seen in my opinion the best thing KyoAni did with a Key property was the comedic side of Clannad. Ive reviewed both seasons of Clannad its fair to say I dont like the series overall but when Clannad wanted to be funny it was fucking funny. I loved every single one of Okazakis pranks and I loved seeing Sunohara get his ass kicked in increasingly ridiculous and overthetop ways. The comedy was well timed it was well animated and it was about a million times funnier than Kaginado. The actual humor in Kaginado is the absolute lamest most derivative least clever least imaginative chibi gag humor you can think of. Some characters say nonsequiturs other characters quietly call them out. Characters will occasionally find something they have in common but not one damn clever observation will be made ABOUT that fact. Out of the three famous Key anime series... Ill admit I havent actually seen Busters Planetarian or Rewrite... The only one whose cast was designed to be funny was Clannad and they were a lot funnier IN Clannad. And Im sorry but there are TOO many fucking characters in this and the writers have no idea how to use them. Remember in Quartet how a characters level of fame decided how much focus and screen time they would get and yet somehow the cast was so well balanced that even characters as relatively barebones as Tanyas soldiers still felt wellutilized? Yeah speaking of someone whos only seen half the anime in Kaginado and barely remembers two of those at least ninety percent of this anime was a blur for me. I grant you its my fault for not watching all of these shows but you know what? Air only had three important characters in it but Kaginado still used the entire fucking cast so maybe its not my fault. And yet the series ended on a reveal that gave me genuine joy. Im not going to say what happens right at the end of season one but it actually got me hyped for season two and for show that was so boring that I would have dropped it early on if the episodes were any longer than four minutes apiece thats saying something. Im gonna go watch season 2 now but Ill leave you with my final rating first. I give Kaginado season 1 a 2/10.