I know this is two days late but... whatever.
For once I feel like I more or less agree with Green Platinum. The show does a decent job of representing the characters that people already know and love from the game, but it hardly does any work on expanding on those personalities. Having them regurgitating quotes referencing their ingame lines is pleasant to see the first, or heck, even the second time, but when they begin to do it over and over again, the characters effectively become as one-dimensional as their ingame counterparts.
And don't get me wrong, I loved this show from the start. I felt that it actually had pretty good potential, and the writing (albeit not with regards to the plot), art, and animation all seemed to be pretty good from my standpoint.
In fact, I didn't even mind that the story was jumping all over the place (during the beginning). If you try to view the whole thing as a slice of life, the drama points come as sort of an added bonus in each episode. It works if you don't take anything too seriously to begin with. I think they could've pulled it off if they stitched things together a bit better. It's a unique quirk.
But after about the halfway point, the whole series started to take a tumble. You all already know what it was like, so I won't waste time reiterating. The last episode just really stood out though. I think it left a really bad impression on most people (which is probably why we're seeing so many negative reactions). It was really unfortunate that things ended up that way, and while we can't really expect anything from the second season, I can just hope it'll be better.
And also,
[Superstar] wrote:
As someone who didn't touch the game beforehand, I can say that I mostly really enjoyed this. Sure I might have missed a lot of references but in the end Anime for me is all about enjoyment and I surely had it for this one.
I'm actually pretty surprised to see this. For the most part, I feel like the show has been heavily catered towards actual players of the game (after all, pretty much everyone in Japan plays it). I honestly think that without knowing the nuances of the game and what the characters are like, outsiders will be left completely confused as to what kinds of biases the characters have and will probably have a much harder time watching the show. Considering how the show played out the way it did, I'm amazed you managed to enjoy it at all. I guess I'm also glad for you, because as a pretty dedicated fan of the game, I can say that I was genuinely excited at the beginning of the series, and then completely let down by the end of it.
Also, if you guys could refrain from throwing shit at each other, that would be appreciated.