JustInCaseD

Clockwork Planet was suprising. I went into this one thinking it was gonna be another one of those school-based psuedo harem animes after the first few episodes, but after the first few episodes they moved away from that and it become so much more interesting. It had to potential to be something genuninely good.

What really gave the story it's points was it's approach similar to that of the hit DC Comics film, The Dark Knight. Having the main cast become criminal vigilantes, taking the blame for the villains and currupt government, just to ensure that chaos doesn't ensue was a pretty unique and interesting direction to take the anime. I know most Shonens have arcs where their characters do this, but the vast majority have a resolution where everyting becomes hunky-dory after it all ends. But C.P didn't, and it was a pretty interesting execution. They also managed to maintain a fairly consistent cast of secondary characters pretty well outside of it's core main cast, which was nice and made seeing them recurr throughout the story something to look forward to instead of just going "oh, them again". 

Unfortunately though, there are several significant flaws that hold this anime back. First up, the main villain was poorly executed. He pops up basically out of nowhere midway through the story, sparce introduction and despite having a good deal of diologue via internal monologuing - we learn hardly anything about him. Yet in the ending clips of each episode where it teases the next, it talks about this guy, including his name (which we never hear him say until the last episode) and expects us, the audience, to know exactly all the fine nuiances about this guy and his backstory. Maybe they expected us to all have read the light novels? Or perhaps they though leaving his backstory out would get us interested in reading the light novels?... Either reason is pretty bad, and it has the opposite of the intended effect. The ending was also pretty rushed - the final climatic fight was pretty good, but the sendoff scene was pretty cheesy and you can tell that the animation of the epilogue conflict was outsourced. The ambiguous ending could qualifiy as a closer to the anime so that you could technically call it "complete", but given it's setup, questions still unanswered, and the fact that the light novels go past this point a bit would call it... unloyal to the source material. 

Running it down by cateogry: Story was good, until the final moments. Animation was generally passable (tho the excessive amount of gears in some scenes sometimes was a reccuring eyesore). Sound was fairly good: It has a pretty nice OP and passable ED, not something you'd listen to more than once or twice but not completely unforgetable or unlikeable. It's tracks also went well with the general tone of the anime, although it's not expansive and they tend to use the same 3 or so a lot. Characters were so close to being good. The main and secondary cast were well done... but the main villain was so poorly executed that it drags this anime down hard. Trying to weigh this downside between the story or characters category is difficult, so while the rest of the cast is about a 6-7, it's dragged down hard due to the poor main villain. Overall, it's an anime that would most accurately fitted somewhere between a score of 5-6, depending on personal enjoyment - with myself being on the higher end of the scale since I liked what they were going for, but know it could've been done much better.

I doubt we'll ever see Clockwork Planet revisted. The light novels were abruptly cut not long after the anime, so there isn't any more source material to go by. From what information I've gathered from r/Clockwork Planet subreddit: it's alleged that one of it's 2 authors had been reportedly seriously ill some time ago (if that's true I genuninely hope they're doing better or have fully recovered by now), and the other is one of the writers for No Game No Life - meaning they are most likely focusing their attention on continuing that story due to it's extreme popularity and success over this one. And the fanbase has pretty much fizzled out not long after the anime concluded, so there isn't much motive around to continue the series.

Clockwork Planet's fate mirrors that of Black Bullet; another underrated anime that had the right ideas going for it, unique and very interesting ones at that - but were held back certain elements pretaining to the handling of the villains, the final episodes of their respective animes, and above all else: the discontinuation of their source material leaving it eternally unfinished...

Overall could certainly reccomend this as a good casual watch on your own time if you happen to like the theme, you may genuninely enjoy it. But it's not something to highly prioritize watching over other anime that are likely much better than this.