As an Uta-Pri fan who has watched this series and every prequel as they came out, I have to say that I'm not impressed by the latest addition to this title. While the addition to the series presents great animation and sound as always, both 1000% and 2000% were more in-depth in that the characters actually had meaningful encounters and relationships with each other.
While the newest series is not yet complete, so far Revolutions offers ultimately no meaningful events or developments. In fact, the series is rather episodic. It doesn't matter what order you watch the episodes- and every episode feels like deja-vu. Every episode, we see a new group (which the head of the agency slapped together seemingly at random), who Nanami follows in the hopes of creating the perfect song for them, they encounter a bump in the road, come back together through Nanami, and then they finally sing about how awesome they are. Frankly, this cycle has grown tiresome, and it's getting harder and harder for me to keep watching, 10 episodes in.
This series has grown extremely frustrating in that there just doesn't seem to be any significance or development in any of the episodes. Every week I watch a new episode and wonder why I wasted 25 minutes hoping for some sort of development when I know there won't be until the last episode. This frustration is because of several reasons. First, each episode, in and of itself, is extremely predictable at this point. I already went into the baseline plot of each episode, and there's not much more to them. Second, the band members are forbidden to have romantic relationships with Nanami, which has so far translated into her simply (and rather unexcitingly) learning about them and translating that to music, every single episode. Lastly, the audience has no reason to be attached to the characters, save for the blatant fanservice, because they have no time to do or say anything meaningful.
Ultimately, the biggest flaw in this addition to the Uta-Pri title is that there is not enough screen time for any character to come out at the end of the series any different than the beginning- and I think fellow viewers will agree with that. There are simply too many characters in Revolutions to focus on any one for more than an episode at a time, what with the 7 STARISH members, the 4 Quartet Knight members, Nanami, and everyone else in the agency, and they are indeed shown sporadically. The addition of new major characters, pointedly the addition of Quartet Knights, was a huge risk, and is indeed critical to the resulting dissappointment factor- It feels like this anime is having to focus more on character screen time/fan service than the plot, in this sense. And it's not even GOOD screen time- The number of times the musical groups just repeat a random line with a smoldering shot, it's blatantly obvious that the creators are just depending on fan service and are more focused on getting each character as much screen time as possible than developing a meaningful plot behind their journey to get into the SSS.
Story- 3/10, simply because it is too episodic, and there is no sense of deeper meaning behind the ending of getting into the SSS that we all already know they will succeed in doing.
Animation- 10/10, because it is bright, colorful, crisp, and overall aesthetically pleasing.
Sound- 9/10, because while all the songs sound great (it is a music anime after all), there is really no difference in their meanings between every single episode. They're ultimately just character songs.
Characters- 5/10, which I feel is generous given that there are way too many of them, which has adversely impacted the time each one had to do something other than stand there and look pretty.
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