[Echoes]

Originally Posted by Allium

Spoiler for Bit o' rant...:

The greatest disappointment (in terms of characters) was Inori. She had a great appearance, she was a singer - and that's all! She does absolutely nothing except look pretty, and we don't get a glimpse into her thoughts until episode 18, not to mention her past. Like many of the characters in GC, she was "just there." Thus, when she died in the final episode, I felt nothing, even though the scene was decently executed. This is a real pity; even if GC's plot was terrible or cliched, if the characters had been decently developed, it would probably have fared better.

I concur. That really is an important part of why the series failed for me, even more-so than the lackluster writing. With Shu in a constant state of flux between uninteresting and just plain annoying, and Inori left without any personality to speak of at all, the leading pair fails to satisfy on anything more than a wholly shallow level.

The plot has a lot of ambition, and that makes it at least interesting, but it fails to ever really capture your attention for any extended period because of the inconsistent writing. It was hard to ever let go of my suspension of disbelief. This was always just a script to me; never a story. The characters hardly felt alive, and the world was paper-thin. The villains were particularly egregious, often seeming like they existed for no other reason than to be mean and evil.

Visually, the series had quite a few things going for it. Inori's character design was a stroke of genius, and overall, the characters looked distinct and had a nice level of detail. The backgrounds looked good and had a interesting style to them, and there were several scenes where the animation was really impressive. Smooth and stylish, I have no complaints in this department.

I actually thought the ending to the show was decent. I'm glad they didn't go with a complete happy-ending cop out. Unfortunately, I was still not able to enjoy it or take in the emotions it was trying to evoke, because at this point it was just too late. I did feel a little sad seeing Shu's fate, but the impact was severely lessened because the characters just didn't matter to me that much. Outside of butchering Tsugumi, there's little they could have done to affect me emotionally.

Overall, the series falls far short of its high ambitions, and comes off as contrived and hard to immerse oneself in. It has visual flare, and some genuinely good moments and episodes here and there, and it has Tsugumi, but there's little here worth revisiting. I don't hate the series, and I did enjoy myself from time to time, so I'm going to round my rating up and give it a 5; a mixed bag.

Final Rating: 5/10 (Average)