Sorry, can't be bothered to find a screenshot for this one
Pros: The story that they didn't carve up.
-Although it is technically an extension of the original story...and they technically muffled some of it, they didn't flinch away from the more graphic bits of the show. Well...some of it anyway.
-Up until the last 2-3 episodes, the story is the impressive original work that made me so eager to see this anime
Cons: The ending, hands down.
-I saw the paving stones they laid for it early on, but I was honestly okay with the alterations they made, because they looked like they were just to end the story quickly, which the original content easily allowed for with minimal alteration. Instead, they horribly carved it up like Freddy got a job as a butcher.
-The ending is channeling waaay too much 'magical girl' themes. It's disgusting. particularly in this shows context
-The ending isn't anything like the original except for two points, which I can't mention because spoilers.
My Opinion: Skip it. No, really, just...skip it. Go read the manga.
A) The story has several more potent moments that the anime trimmed for time
B) It doesn't go magical girl at the end like this did, and
C) It keeps going.
The story is much more impressive than the ending of this lets on. The first 10 or so episodes are a good taste of what it has to offer, but after that it starts cutting corners. Hard. No one would give this thing a drivers license. People would die. (oh wait, they already are. Bad Joke, Fnar Fnar).
I put the last episode for this off for a very long time, as is readily apparent from this posts time stamp. I wasn't looking forward to this last episode at all. After the one previous to it, I just couldn't see them concisely wrapping it up without horribly butchering anything. Normally I wouldn't care so much, it would just be another in the pile of 'butchered to shorten the anime because budgets' or whatever other reason they have for it. This particular show though, could have ended better. Like, 100% the manga facilitated a concise ending for this many anime episodes. Hell, I thought the manga had ended where the anime chooses to stop, it was that ready for it. All they would have had to do was trim a few pieces of foreshadowing that lead into the story after, which they were already doing anyway. But no, we get this carved up corpse of a thing.
Impartial Judgement: Aside from the original story having crawled up my arse and died making a stink all over the place, it's not...horrible. Certainly in the realm of most of the things you would find from anime about magic, it's much more interesting, for it's down-to-earth practicality of what it would really be like if we had magic within our reach. Just another way for us to horribly murder each other, en masse. Oh, and sometimes help some people, when we felt like it.
All that aside, I'm trying really hard to be impartial after the bad taste the last few episodes left in my mouth.
In summary, I recommend about the first 9-10 episodes just for the colored motion picture of what the manga can offer you. If you absolutely cannot stand reading manga, which I honestly can understand, then I don't recommend this show at all, unless an incomplete or poorly stitched together story doesn't bother you at all. If those don't bother you, then I recommend this with complete abandon, because it is still heavily built from the good story and plot of the original material. The only thing that may be grating is the characters, some of them are a little trope'y at times.
[Aside]
They always prefer to behave and act in context of their horrible situation, but when the pressures off, it feels like they switch into these weird almost-too-trope to stomach persona. . . actually...that makes a little bit of sense. Any kind of light-heartedness in the kind of day-to-day hopelessness these people live with would feel a bit forced...Never thought of that before. Really, I'm just dredging for the cons I couldn't think of three paragraphs ago. I've given my poorly rendered two-bits for this show.
[Aside end]
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