mdchan

It's not the first time an anime concludes before the manga finishes...but instead of giving the audience an anime-only ending (ie - the first Fullmetal Alchemist series), it just...doesn't conclude.

At all.

Thus is the case with World Trigger.

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Story

Four and a half years ago, a mysterious gate opened up in the middle of Mikado City in Japan; through it came monsterous creatures which destroyed, killed, and captured until they were finally put down by a group of people.  These people went on to establish "Border", which is a headquarters built in the leveled section of the city from the first attack (called the "Forbidden Zone") and technology to make sure that gates only spawn in that area...and keep combating the creatures with technology from beyond the gate:  The Triggers, which utilize Trion.

Enter 15 year old Osamu Mikumo, a C-Rank Border agent, who encounters a strange youth named Yuma Kuga when the boy transfers to his class.  From there, the two have to stave off other Border agents, play keep-away with the powerful Black Trigger Yuma holds, get caught in the middle of a game of branch politics between the three different heads of Border HQ, and along with 13 year old Chika, go head to head with other teams in a rather weird rank-up system in order to achieve A-Rank.

To start with, the pacing is freaking awful.  Like...Saiyuki levels of awful.  There are pauses and explanations in the middle of fights instead of a "show don't tell" method; and if I've said it once, I'll still say it a million times:  If the writers have to info-dump the viewers, then something went wrong with the storytelling.

And the flashbacks...oysh.  During the B-Rank team tournament, so much time is spent trying to get us to care about some of these teams we've never seen before and will never see again; for example, the Nasu team.  I really couldn't care less, and kept skipping their backstory to get back to the battle because it didn't matter; none of those people even appeared during the large scale battle earlier on, and will probably never be seen again.

The actual story jumps around a lot.  The first few episodes are great as it showcases this premise of these terrifying creatures called "Neighbors", and that there's more than meets the eye with them.  But after that, it quickly goes to a dispute within Border HQ itself between two of the branches:  One branch wants the Neighbors all exterminated (and have possession of the super powerful Black Triggers), and the other knows there are friendly Neighbors.

Then after that concludes, everyone is suddenly friends again; it was really disorienting.  And the rank-up tournament arc (if you can even call it that) is brutal and boring.  The invasion arc was the best, but even that was drawn out...

...not just in the battles and footage, but also due to recaps taking up to 3 minutes in length, plus the opening song (1.5 minutes), adding in a minute of footage from the last minute of the previous episode, then leaving another 2-ish minutes at the end for a recap lesson on some term we learned in the episode...plus ending song.

After going through all that, the episodes themselves don't just feel short, they are short; at most, they'd be around 18 minutes in length (about 4-5 minutes short of the typical 23 minute runtime of anime; about 20 minutes subtracting opening and ending songs).

The plot itself was all over the place and didn't seem to know if it wanted to be some Border HQ political story, a character-driven story, or a story about the other world(s) and the Trion soldiers which invade Earth.  What a mess.  2/10

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Characters

I think there might be less ants in a single colony than there are characters in this show, because holy heck does it have a lot of characters.  Only three or four characters take the main stage, but so many recurring side characters are thrown in that I can't even remember the names of half of them...or a quarter of them. 

The protagonist is the never-changing Osamu Mikumo.  By never-changing, I mean skill-wise he isn't that much different at the end of episode 73 than he is at the start of episode 1.  The biggest change is his tactical ability, but he is a consistant character in that he almost never changes.

Yuma Kuga does change a bit, but very subtle changes.  He's very naive and ignorant of Japan at first, but not only does he slowly learn about it, he also really shows that he does care about Osamu and the others (even though his expression is typically constantly blank). 

Chika Amatori is...annoying.  She can't seem to do much of anything for herself and is either constantly running around/away or being targeted/captured due to her high amount of natural Trion ability.

Then, there's Yuichi Jin (yea...I had a bit of difficulty figuring out which was his first name and which was his surname at first) who is carefee and sort of happy-go-lucky, but also one of the Border's strongest...in part due to his Black Trigger, and the other part due to the ability he gained due to a side effect of having a large amount of Trion.

The other characters are one-dimensional stereotypes not even worth mentioning even if I could remember their names.  Most of the adults, with the exception of a couple, are conniving sleezeballs...and most of them don't even participate in any of the fighting; nah, that's left to the teenagers who joined Border (and the occasional 20 and 21 year old Border member).

The only reason I kept watching was hoping that Osamu would improve, and because Yuma is an amusing character.

Aside from that, the characters aren't really too interesting, and you'd only find yourself rooting for Yuma (or wishing that Osamu and Chika would at least be able to hold their own in a fight without getting the snot beaten out of them or caught by enemies).

4/10...mostly just due to Yuma and his partner, Replica.

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Overall

Not too many issues with sound and animation; I didn't particularly care for any of the OP/ED songs, and music during the show was alright I guess.  VA acting was what kept the anime afloat, to be honest.

Animation was where there were some issues; it had a lot of repeated footage scenes when the characters used their Triggers, since it changes their physical bodies to Trion.  Battles are done well, and visuals are fine...though on a note with the battles, sometimes it was either over too quickly or was drawn out so long that the animation almost felt like stillframes (in fact, sometimes there were stillframes...that, or the video froze momentarily).

To be honest, I did enjoy the start of this anime (the first few episodes).  After that, however, the main crew clashed with a division within Border trying to keep Yuma (and his Black Trigger) safe...and then it immediately switched gears after that to Yuma and Chika trying to get to B-rank...

...then in the middle of that came the invasion arc.  At least that one (sort of) concluded reasonably, but the anime would continue to jump around various arcs and reveal bits and pieces of information (or entire dumps of information, such as Yuma's backstory) without resolving it.

Let me repeat:  There are 73 episodes in this season, and neither Yuma's situation nor Chika's situation was resolved.

Not even an "anime only/exclusive" ending.  Just...nothing.

Oh, but there are plenty of chracters!  So many that I often have no clue who they're talking about on screen unless it's someone who has appeared more than once...and even some of them (like the spear-dude) I can't remember the names of.

None of the main cast really change through the anime, so of course none of the side characters change or grow either.

I was disappointed, because the first few episodes had me going from one episode to the next eagerly...but the slow, terrible pacing and writing (along with half-finished and unresolved plots), along with the ever growing cast of one-dimensional characters, was so off-putting that I just sort of skipped around past episode 49.

The potential was there, I feel, for at least an interesting shounen anime (particularly since Osamu only fills half the critera for the typical shounen protagonist; most of them aren't strategic like he is)...but it just couldn't deliver on the premise it built the first few episodes upon.

4/10