The first episode gave me the same impression as the PV: it tries too hard to be edgy. The cryptical statements, the nightmare-like scenes seemingly out of nowhere, all the visual cues, the sound effects... heck, some of the OST, like when the protagonist realizes only she can hear the card's voice, reminded me of
this, except without the actually dark story to back it up. I don't mind edgy at all but I think this show takes it a tad too far, since it doesn't really have what I just said - so far.
And yet, at the same time its presentation is pretty generic, plus it doesn't seem a show that will actually take the plunge and get some truly high stakes on the table. Ruko is introduced into this whole exposition about becoming "Eternal Girl" very suddenly and unceremoniously and that takes much of the potential impact away from this card battle world. The "battle" itself, or the pretense of one, was fairly underwhelming as well, just as is how easily Ruko is accepting all these supernatural things. Also, a battle gets nullified if anyone interferes from the outside? Sounds pretty lame to me, most serious situations can be avoided that way. The end of the episode also has no hook whatsoever, which I'd argue is a very important aspect for a series like this in its premiere. I mean, if I didn't have an intention of finishing it from the start I probably wouldn't give ep 2 the time of the day.
Animation-wise, I do enjoy the grim-ish color palette so it's not without merit, but I'd agree the character designs are a tad too generic for the constrast they're going for to truly work.
Characters and dialogue are absolutely meh thus far.
Overall it wasn't neither bad nor good, but if I had to pick one of those I'd go with the former. If they want to go down a more serious route in the future I imagine they'll make it so people die when they get three losses or something, but then again I don't think this show will have the balls to kill off characters from the main girl group that's just being formed at the moment.
Bottom line:
Meh.