tollie01

First some items I need to adress. I'm Dutch to expect some spelling errors, if they are to annoying just message me and I'll fix it.

My opinion may vary from others and this is fine. People are different so there is a good chance that I will not like what you love. Deal with it. I'm not telling you that you should hate it too, I'm telling you why I didn't like it.

I'll try to keep swearing to a minimum but fail utterly on occasion. In general it is the more the anime pisses me off the more I swear so watch out for the low scored ones.

Art: Art is fine. There is a heavy use of CGI but is not to noticeble. With the massive use and showig of gears in use it makes perfect sense to use CGI and here is works pretty well.

Sound: No real complaints actually, it's pretty ok. Voice actors are good and I don't remember any music either. This is how I generally prefer my anime.

Characters: The main character is Naoto. He is a highschool student who struggles to become a clocksmith. He is very passionate about gears in general and the more complex the mechanic is the more he loves it. He has perfect hearing and can find faulty gears just by listening.

RyuZU is a automaton that was created a 1000 years ago by Y. After Naoto fixes her she accepts him as her master, believing him to be the greatest clocksmith of the era. She is fiercely loyal to Noato, threatening to kill any who slight him just to put them in their place yet never loses her cool.

Marie is a genius clocksmith from a long line of clocksmiths who tries desperately to keep the world from falling apart. Quite literally in this case.

Halter is Maries' cyborg bodygaurd and quite powerful. He usually acts as a father figure for Marie and helps to keep her grounded.

Story. A 1000 years ago the world reached the end of its life and humanity was about to lose their home. Then a brilliant clocksmith, known only as Y, came along and said that he could save the planed. He did this by rebuilding the world from gears, creating the clockwork planet. Since then the world has kept on ticking but even the best parts start to show wear and tear. To fix these glitches a group of master clocksmiths banded together into a powerful guild. Unfortunately humanity is plagued by more than faulty parts as curroption, power hungry people and terrorists threaten the world 24/7.

Rant. I liked the concept and I liked the world they created but the execution sucked balls. It is rare to see an anime fall apart so quickly but this fails within minutes of starting It does this by committing the cardinal sin of starting a month into the future before going back to the beginning.

The problem with this is that it completely removes any tension from the anime because no matter what happens YOU KNOW THAT THE CHARACTERS WILL SURVIVE! You know this because the anime showed that one month from now all main characters will be alive and well.

So when they need a Deus ex Machina and RyuZU rips out her own heart in a very dramatic scene. The main characters are panicking because if they fail then RyuZU will die. All this drama goes completely by me because I know that in the 'one month later scene' she is there and completely fine.

When Noato and RyuZU jump into a bottomless pit to certain doom, you see Marie completely lose it because she believes them to be dead. As for me? I don't care as I already know that they are alive because in a few weeks time they are in that scene that the anime started with.

STARTING YOUR ANIME IN THE FUTURE BEFORE GOING BACK TO THE BEGINNING ALMOST ALWAYS FAILS BECAUSE IT REMOVES THE TENSION FROM THE ANIME. IT RUINS ANY DRAMATIC EFFECT BECAUSE YOU KNOW THAT THEY ARE FINE.

Naoto sucks as a main character. In the first arc you learn that corrupt officials plan to drop a city, killing 20 million people. Marie wants to prevent this and comes across Naoto who will be able to find the faulty parts by sound. When she tells him about the planned drop, he is horrified. So when she tells him that only he can prevent he naturally refuses.

He should NEVER rufuse! Or at least not the way he did here. If you have him refuse, he MUST have a valid reason or it taints your main character going forward because no matter what he does later, I will always remember that one little 'no'.

Speaking of character motivations.... with the exception of Marie I don't think anyone has any. Halter protects Marie and is like a father for her. Great. RyuZU is bound to Noato and serves him in any way she can. Fine. Marie wants to save the world by fixing shit. Clear. Noato.....uhm....likes gears and wants to become a clocksmith?

Naoto being a bad clocksmith doesn't work as he really shouldn't be. The anime properly starts with Naoto walking into his room, stand in front of a wall of broken clocks and loudly declares that he is a bad clocksmith. SHOW! DON'T! TELL! Have him try to fix shit and fail.

He fails to fix even the simplest of mechanics, yet when a highly complex piece of macine drops through his roof he fixes it in minutes. So either he is a genius clocksmith or he isn't. He can't be both. My suggestion is to have him be a misunderstood genius who doesn't fit in with shool but that would require more lines of dialogue to get the point across I guess.

Villain motivation. There isn't any. The final villain maybe but he was so poorly developed that they might as well replaced him with a piece of wood. You wouldn't have noticed the difference.

Fanservice.....the only good thing I can say is that they didn't go all out with it. There is plenty of it but I've seen much much worse.