kilrazan

A real sleeper hit of a show that is easy to overlook if you just judge a show by its cover. I know I had never even heard of it and would have passed over it if not for a recommendation I got. Luckily, I did decide to watch it and what I got was an incredible ride from start to finish that I'll not soon forget.

Story - We follow Odokawa through a series of seemingly disconnected events that all happen to - or as a result of - people he's driven around town. Over the course of the series, we see these disparate events and characters start to interconnect with each other to culminate in a story that impacts many lives in a dramatic way. Every little detail is important, every story element is somehow connected in this interwoven tale, and - most importantly - every loose end gets wrapped up in an extremely satisfying way by the end of the show. 10/10; I haven't been this excited to see a bunch of plot elements come together in a long time.

Animation - A beautifully stylized show that borrows heavily from some child-like cartoon styles and blends them together with more traditional Anime styles to create a uniquely symbolic piece of art. It's great to look at, it's well detailed to provide every bit of information the viewer could need to piece the story together, and it even carries a distinct symbolism that ties into the story as a subtle plot element. Beyond the art style itself, the character designs are very well done and provide an interesting take on anthropomorphic characters that is very well suited to the animation style. Really my only complaints about the animation are A) Some of the scenes of the cars feel very stiff with the 3d animation used, and B) a couple of situations involved fight scenes that were fairly lackluster. But frankly, those are easy to overlook in the greater tapestry on display. 8/10; Simply gorgeous artwork.

Sound - The Opening song is, much like the show itself, a sleeper hit. The first time I heard it I wrote it off as another one of those OPs that you just skip after the first run, but I found myself with it stuck in my head almost immediately afterward and I've enjoyed it quite thoroughly since. Beyond that, the Voice acting is absolutely stellar, and the foley art is on point. The rest of the OST doesn't really stand out to me, and there were a few times that I felt like they were overusing some of the sfx, so it's not exactly perfect. But I'm still very impressed with the overall tone it brought to the show. 8/10; Hearing Usopp's voice come out of the monkey character was oddly fitting.

Characters - Much like the story, this is a standout category for me with some genre-defining character writing. I'm not even sure I can properly express how much I loved the characterization on display here. Not a single character stands out to me as having bad or lazy writing, every character demonstrates clear motives and shows human error and weakness, and every character demonstrates some sort of growth by the end of the show. I could write entire paragraphs about every single one of these characters and not run out of positive things to say about how they were written. 10/10; You can't get much better than this.

Overall - A damn-near perfect work of art, through and through. It's well paced, it's got so much meat to it you could analyze every scene and probably find details you'd missed on your first watch in every single one of them, yet its also not so brooding as to be incomprehensible without some sort of online guide. You can enjoy it even if you're not the sort to hunt for details, but there are so many pieces that interconnect that there's loads of things to enhance the experience if you pay close attention. 10/10 Without a doubt one of the best stories told in Anime in recent years. I would even reccommend this to non-anime fans as just a good story in a similar vein to stuff like Pulp Fiction.