These are more so extended personal notes rather than a thoroughly planned review so it wont be exhaustive. First of all this passion project is a small miracle of animation especially considering its short staff and needless to say its hilarious that this aired together with Blue Locks 2nd season it goes to show how badly big projects can fail. Unfortunately however the art style of MechaUde is cut down to the bare bones of absolutely essential lines of objects giving it sometimes a very flatland feeling. Yet to some extent this is done to account for the constantly fluid and clean animation. There is definitely no static scene in this show your eyes will be busy. Admittedly this can cause some scenes to have poorer readability but I would also nitpick this about any show with busy animation so this is not much of a problem. On another hand its kind of unsettling how there is next to no shading throughout the show. Still the detail given to movement both from the camera that rotates around to cover the entire playing field of the action as well as from the bodies and objects themselves is a fair artistic choice. The show also gladly received Hiroyuki Sawanos music which albeit nauseating at this point cannot fail to push an animes presentation a few steps up in score. Being emotionally invested in the fights is generally not a problem. And I could not skip the catchy OP even once Furthermore everything about its inspiring atmosphere and the vivacity of its characters brought about mostly by their voice actors and how they deliver some amusing dialogue lines grants the viewer a generally positive experience though never quite chilling. Sadly the runtime for this series is too short and poorly used. It provides no real statement about anything while also leaving us with characters that are too simple to be worthy of mention if charismatic. Our protagonist is an unchosen one who is thrown into a supernatural situation and just happens to be too kind to walk away from it even when everyone else tells him to. This heroic character works along with Alma the most important individual out of the MechaUde creatures since he holds a fundamental ability for their grand objective of reestablishing the MechaUdes previous status quo of reality and thus in the process also free themselves from certain groups of humans who aim to control and suppress their minds. Naturally you would expect some themes of oppression deception coexistence of living beings friendship and heroism to result from this setting. And they do but they are all helplessly clich you might have already figured out some of them in your head just from reading this. If you watched shounen anime before this show you have watched this show. It cannot stand out. For instance the MechaUde are presented as alienlike sentient beings but those beings are incapable of being anything other than humans with a different skin. Their behavior and thinking is too anthropomorphized to the point of being ridiculous when it comes to certain characters such as Ayumi. Not to spoil much but imagine a stereotypical futile high school girl speaking in modern slang and acting all chatty this is exactly what she is despite having lived for who knows how many centuries and until recently being stuck in an indefinitely long slumber. The plot is also too obvious and unsurprising. It doesnt makes bad diversions but it also doesnt take interesting turns. Nearly every single thing about it is predictable to the point that I genuinely cannot talk about it without risking spoilers. It follows the shounen scifi formula too close to a tee. With that being said in terms of story and characters alone this show is skippable unless youre a fan of some fun action/comedy driven scifi anime who is looking for a comfortable watch. As for the production side of things with its handcrafted and ambitious nature and quality this underrated piece very much deserves a chance.
55 /100
11 out of 13 users liked this review