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I dropped the show after watching the first two episodes, and picked it up again and watched the whole thing in about two days. I did enjoy watching the show (or to be more precise, about two-thirds of it), but it turns out that my initial impressions of the show were correct. I dropped the show because 1) I did not like the character designs and 2) I found the background set-up to be shallow and unconvincing. Well, I got used to the character designs, and I thought the background details would become more intricate as the show progressed.
Wrong. I could not think seriously about the implications of the Sibyl System simply because I could not take its premises seriously. The whole story isn't very effective without having established the Sibyl System as at least somewhat justifiable. As more and more spoilerish information were revealed, I found it more and more ridiculous. Therefore, it was difficult for me to consider Akane, Kogami, and Makishima's problems to be worth pondering over.
More detrimental, in my opinion, was character development. There was hardly any except for Akane, and even that was quite disappointing - what was her development for, may I ask? 22 episodes is too long a length to be about bittersweetness and despair over the cyclic nature of life and systems. Well, the last sentence could be just my personal opinion. But moving on to the other characters, I could never swallow the supposedly fateful relationship between Kogami and Makishima - why is Makishima that interested in Kogami anyways? And given separately, the two are quite underdeveloped, flat characters. The minor characters fare no better - that standalone episode about Yayoi was quite confusing. It added very little to her character and even less to the show overall.
All in all, I enjoyed watching a decently made show in a sci-fi setting, but both the world and the characters need to be more solidly built to be taken seriously and to become more engaging imo.
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